Six ways to think about style:

1. Variety (of sentence structure).

2. Fluency. Nothing must interrupt the flow by making the reader stumble.

3. Consecutiveness. One thing must lead on to the next, so that the reader has no place to stop and bail out.

4. Precision. Use words to mean what they mean, and not something else. “If you have only a vague idea of the difference between one word and another, you are like a carpenter who has only a vague idea of the difference between a screwdriver and a corkscrew.”

5. Economy.

6. Clarity–both simplicity and avoiding vague references.

– Damon Knight, Creating Short Fiction

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