Stack sentences for clearer writing

Write line-by-line to clear your mind

This is a fascinating writing approach from the great Derek Sivers.

When starting a piece of writing, write out each sentence on a separate line. Instead of a continuous snake of sentences, start with a vertical list. When you stack your sentences in a column, they become easier to see and move around. This line-by-line approach can bring clarity to your writing.

This technique is basically “sensemaking.” It's the same process you'd use to organize a closet: amass an inventory of stuff, step back to find connections and relationships, throw out anything you don't need, and then put it all in order that makes sense.

Your stack of sentences will grow unwieldy, but every every few lines you'll start to see what Steven Pinker calls “arcs of coherence:” a clutch of lines that work together to convey a larger idea. These become your paragraphs.

If a paragraph is a city block, a group of paragraphs starts to resemble a neighborhood. But every city starts at street level. If you stack your senten…