What Do Sentences Actually Do?

Like a word, a single sentence can make or break a book. Books come in all forms; fiction, non-fiction, entertainment, information, third person omniscient, first person narrative, but the structure is basically the same.

A writer uses words to form a sentence, and the sentence is presented in order to define and clarify an idea, but there are some sentences that do the job better than others.

Last time, I made my point by showing how changing a single word in a sentence can elicit different imagery. This time, I want to show the first few sentences from an actual, published book.

I went to Amazon, and by utilizing the look inside feature, I was able to look at the following sentences from the introduction of Marion Gropen’s The Profitable Publisher: Making the Right Decisions.

The following are the first sentences:

Most publishing folks would rather have their teeth pulled than wade into their “numbers.” But, if you want to survive and thrive as a small press, you can’t afford to avoid the math. My aim here is to get you past any difficulties, painlessly. I’ve never found anyone who couldn’t learn this material. Nor have they ever needed anesthesia! You can do this. You may even enjoy it.

Where do I begin?