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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/22028
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I have a question regarding sentence openings in English language.

When I write most of my sentences start with determiners and pronouns (personal and posessive). This gets repetative quickly.

For example.

> Arkadiy Arkadiyevich was an interesting man. His nose resembled a potato...

In my native language (Russian) I can write this.

> Arkadiy Arkadiyevich was an interesting man. Nose resembled potato...

To a Russian reader it is clear from the context whos nose are we talking about. I can still say "His nose" or even "Nose his" but that is not required.

Because of this it is very easy for me to vary sentence openings. I know that in English you can use nouns as sentence openings as well.

Colors flooded his face. Pages flew out of the book.

But it seems it applies only to a set of "some" or "any" objects. Not specific object like in the case of Arkadiy's nose.

I can think of following variations.

- His nose resembled a potato.
- A little potato-like nose was planted on his face.
- Nose of his was as big as potato. (Doesn't sound right for my ear)
- Arkadiy Arkadiyevich was an interesting man with an interesting nose. The nose was just like potato.
- Arkadiy Arkadiyevich was an interesting man with an interesting nose. It was just like a potato.
- Even his nose was interesting, just like potato.
- Though his nose was just like potato, he nonetheless was very proud of it.
- When somebody looked at his nose all they could see was a potato.
- All round him were countless flies that attempted to land on his potato like nose.
- ...

So to avoid using words like Arkadiy's, his, he, a, the, it, my brain tends to rephrase the sentence often times completely loosing the original meaning or at least shifting the focus. E.g from nose to flies. Or it uses other words not nouns to add varaity. The problem is there are infinitely more nouns then these other special words and thus they are more flexible.

Can anyone point me as to how to achive varaity in sentence openings? Am I missing something? Can I start sentences with nouns in the abvoe example?

I know that you can start sentences with adverbs, verbs and using other parts of speach. And also I can combine short sentences into long ones. I guess I need to change my mindest, switch somehow from thinking in Russian to thinking in English.

Thanks.

Original score: 6