maybe, baby. please?

i want to start by noting that ‘action after subject’ is a super normal way to construct a sentence in english. the simplest sentence you can make is subject + verb. but you probably don’t want to make every sentence the exact same, so let me go over the four sentence constructions to help mix it up!

simple

this is exactly what it sounds like — the simplest form of a sentence. it can quite literally be just subject and verb, but it can also be subject + verb + object. a simple sentence consists of one independent clause. this is your ‘action after subject’, which is the typical sentence structure used in the english language.

sentences in english usually follow the S + V + O order. the alternative doesn’t often make grammatical sense. you can move the object to the beginning if you want to emphasize it, although i personally think it feels weirder in writing than it does to say in casual conversation, so i rarely (if ever) do that. if you’re stating a command, you might drop the subject altogether. if you’re asking a question, you’re likely going to swap the order around to make it interrogative, so it would be something like V + S or Auxiliary + S + V. but generally, the action follows the subject! so yes, tiktok is lying to you.

i do think sometimes a particular subject feels clunky, and that might be what people on tiktok mean to say. in the second example you provided, starting with ‘his hands’ is fine, but it might not be the best choice contextually. it distances the actual person whose hands are doing the tugging, which might make sense for what you want to do! if it’s involuntary, for example, it might make sense to put distance between the person and the body part completing the action. but if that effect isn’t intentional, it might not make sense and it may make your sentence feel unnecessarily awkward. so it just depends on what sounds the best!

the below example includes an adverb, which could go a couple places in your sentence. i’ve gone with S + Adv + V + O, but you could also do S + V + O + Adv. Up to you!

Suguru slowly lowers his hand.

crossing oceans and jumping puddles

Compound

the next level up! a compound sentence contains at least two independent clauses. these clauses should still follow the S + V + O order, but there will just be more of them linked together.

you can link independent clauses with a coordinating conjunction, a semicolon, or a colon. side note: this is the thing people fuck up most about semicolons! unless you’re using them to denote a complex list, semicolons need to link independent clauses, not dependent clauses, and they stand in place of the coordinating conjunction. in the example below, i’ve used a semicolon so you can see what that looks like!

[Satoru]’s not sure why he’s crying; Suguru hasn’t even put it in yet. 

sharing is caring

complex

a complex sentence has one independent clause and at least one dependent clause. it differs from a compound sentence in that the clauses cannot all stand alone. this type of sentence will help your sentences feel a little bit more varied, because you can put the dependent clause in front and start with a conjunction or a preposition.

below, i’ve included a complex sentence with the dependent clause at the end of the sentence. in this case, it would probably feel weird to swap them, but it depends on the sentence!

Satoru did get banned from calligraphy class because he kept drawing dicks all over his fancy paper.

an astute observation

Compound-Complex

the most complicated! this type of sentence includes one dependent clause and at least two independent clauses. much like a complex sentence, you don’t have to start with the subject — you can start with the dependent clause, which gives you a little more flexibility in how you begin your sentence.

in this example, i’ve put the dependent clause in the middle. you can put it at the beginning or the end as well, depending on what sounds best! in this case, i could probably put it at the beginning, and it just wouldn’t sound as good. but it wouldn’t make sense to put it at the end, because then it would not obviously refer back to the hand-licking, which is what makes Suguru a troglodyte.

Suguru licks Shoko’s hand, because lowkey he’s a troglodyte too, and it all devolves from there.

master of my domain

i can definitely get way more in depth on grammar and sentence construction, but these are the basics! sorry to anyone who read this and got flashbacks to diagramming sentences in school. i do think it’s pretty easy to forget a lot of the grammar basics, though, so it’s always useful to consider even if it seems like old information. i love grammar (like, soooo much) so i’m always happy to go over anything anyone has questions about!

as usual, the best thing you can do is to simply keep writing. the next best thing you can do is to give your work a good edit before you send it anywhere! of course a lot of my advice here is geared towards fanfiction, and you’re not necessarily required to edit fanfiction before you post it. you can put it out in any state you want! however, i do think editing is a great habit to get into, and it can help you catch things like unintentional awkward repetition and strings of sentences that look exactly the same. you may decide that you want to work towards tradpub/ofic someday, in which case you absolutely have to edit your work before you send it to anyone reading it in a professional sense.

if you made it this far, hopefully you found something helpful in this post. please feel free to send me any other writing-related questions!

xoxo, em