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In the last few weeks, we’ve made Writhm better for both Free and Pro users.

Check out these exciting updates.

NEW FEATURE #1: Writing Goals 🏆

There’s a new page where you can set writing goals, track progress, and see a boatload of stats on your habits.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive. …” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.

That’s the opening of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, and this is one hell of an opening.

That first sentence starts calm, almost conversational — but then it goes straight to: “when the drugs began to take hold.”

That turn comes FAST, and then everything unravels after that.

We go from a dizzy aside (“I feel a bit lightheaded…”) to full-on spiraling: “…a terrible roar all … and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car…”

What’s cool is the chaos doesn’t come from short, frantic sentences. It actually comes from a long sentence that just runs and runs and runs and stretches out and builds up speed like the car itself. And the rhythm mirrors the drug trip. It’s disorienting and fast and packed with tons of sensory details.

So here are 3 takeaways you can try in your own writing:

#1. Start with dissonance. A calm tone followed by something jarring (“We were somewhere around Barstow”… “when the drugs began to take hold”).

#2. Use long sentences to simulate momentum. If your character’s spinning out, let the sentence spin with them, AND…

#3. Let your rhythm reflect the experience the character’s going through. Here, the writing feels like a bad trip that’s spinning out and being processed in real time.

Watch the video for the full visual breakdown 👇

For more deconstructions, follow on TikTok — and if you want to play around with Writhm, sign up for a free account. It’ll help you improve the flow of your writing.

The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years—if it ever did end—began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

That’s the opening of IT by Stephen King, and this one’s so much fun.

He starts big. Cosmic. Existential. “The terror.”

And then he shrinks it down to a child’s paper boat in the street.

You can see it’s a long clause (38 words), so it triggers the blue highlighting in Writhm. But it’s also punchy because it’s got all these small concrete images — the boat, the gutter, the rain — which keep it grounded and specific.

What can we learn from this?

Here are 2 takeaways you can try in your own writing:

#1. Try contrasting scale. Start big (“the terror”), end small (“a boat”). That zoom-in creates suspense.

#2. Try interrupting yourself more. Take a shorter sentence and inject some parentheticals or asides to experiment with building tension. In this case, it was when the first sentence doubted itself when it said “if it ever did end”. That doubt and uncertainty creates suspense.

Watch the video for the full visual breakdown 👇

For more deconstructions, follow on TikTok — and if you want to play around with Writhm, sign up for a free account. It’ll help you improve the flow of your writing.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

That’s the opening of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Listen to the next paragraph, because it’s hilarious.

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

He’s basically saying here: yeah, this is a ghost story, but it’s not going to be grim and horrific. It’s going to be fun. Heavy themes, light voice.

And the sentence pacing – it’s short, short, long, long, short again.

It’s repeating itself for the sake of humor, BUT it’s not monotonous.

So what can we take from this?

#1: Set the tone right in your opening. If it’s spooky-funny, make it spooky-funny immediately.

#2. Repetition + variation = rhythm. “Marley was dead” hits different each time because the context keeps shifting.

Watch the video for the full visual breakdown 👇

For more deconstructions, follow on TikTok — and if you want to play around with Writhm, sign up for a free account. It’ll help you improve the flow of your writing.

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, “Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!” This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.

That’s the opening of Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, and it’s is a masterclass in first paragraphs.

It’s soft. It’s almost a bedtime-story voice.

But the theme is right there.

This is a story about childhood — and losing it — and even though it’s clearly written in an older style, the sentences still pack a punch today.

And that last line — “Two is the beginning of the end.” — that is GOLD.

Watch the video for the full visual breakdown 👇

For more deconstructions, follow on TikTok — and if you want to play around with Writhm, sign up for a free account. It’ll help you improve the flow of your writing.

My first indication that food was something other than a substance one stuffed in one’s face when hungry—like filling up at a gas station—came after fourth grade in elementary school.

This is opening of Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, and it’s a great example of how to control rhythm on the page.

Let’s keep reading, and see if you can pick up on a subtle trick he’s doing that you can use in your own writing. It’s in this next part; see if you can spot it.

It was on a family vacation to Europe, on the Queen Mary, in the cabin-class dining room. There’s a picture somewhere: my mother and her Jackie O sunglasses, my younger brother and I in our painfully cute cruisewear, boarding the big Cunard ocean liner, all of us excited about our first transatlantic voyage, our first trip to my father‘s ancestral homeland, France.
It was the soup.
It was cold.

Do you see what he did there?

This is an example of a beautiful descending pattern.

You’ve got two long sentences that are painting a picture of this wonderful memory. A family vacation, a boat, France.

And then he lands here:

It was the soup.
It was cold.

After ALL that buildup, you get two short sentences that punch you in the face.

That is CLASSIC Bourdain.

This is what makes his style so fun. He writes so visually and descriptively, but then he’ll smack you on the head with those abrupt lines just to rope you back in.

So the big takeaway here: try descending patterns. Write a few long sentences in a row that carry the weight of a full idea, and then follow it up with something short and sharp to really stick that landing.

Watch the video for the full visual breakdown 👇

For more deconstructions, follow on TikTok – and if you want to play around with Writhm, sign up for a free account. It’ll help you improve the flow of your writing.

Behavioral Science, the FBI section that deals with serial murder, is on the bottom floor of the Academy building at Quantico, half-buried in the earth. Clarice Starling reached it flushed after a fast walk from Hogan’s Alley on the firing range.

Freakin’ Silence of the Lambs.

This is THE prime example of good pacing and rhythm and character building in a book, so let’s dive in and deconstruct the opening.

Watch the video for the full visual breakdown 👇

Right away, the structure is doing exactly what the scene needs.

It’s efficient, it’s matter of fact.

And the whole opening moves very quickly. In only 100 words, you’ve got Clarice rushing away from the firing range, you’ve got this telling character moment when she primps in front of a mirror, and you know something urgent’s about to happen because “Chief Crawford’s summons said NOW.”

Think about it. The writing itself is showing you there’s no time to stop and smell the flowers. When your story’s moving fast, your sentences should too.

Another thing that’s really interesting is the variation in sentence lengths when it comes to narrative vs. dialogue.

At the start, you can see a lot of long sentences, but when Clarice meets Crawford, It flips into almost all purple and green highlighting in Writhm (see video above).

The dialogue is very staccato, very to-the-point — which is PERFECT for the relationship between Starling and Crawford.

“Hello.” Her smile was only polite.
“Nothing’s wrong. I hope the call didn’t spook you.”
“No.” Not totally true, Starling thought.

So here are 2 takeaways from the opening of The Silence of the Lambs:

#1) Make sure your pacing reflects the environment you’re writing about; in this case fast, urgent, no fluff.

#2) For realistic dialogue, try short back-and-forth lines.

For more deconstructions, follow on TikTok – and if you want to play around with Writhm, sign up for a free account. It’ll help you improve the flow of your writing.

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.

That’s the opening of Harry Potter, obviously.

Check out a couple cool things that are going on here.

The first sentence is doing a lot of work. It’s a fairly short clause, but it’s dressed up with these fun little interrupters (“of number four, Privet Drive”) and this cheeky tone, right? That little “thank you very much” adds some nice dry British humor and makes it more fun than if it just said, “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley were perfectly normal,” right?

The next few paragraphs are still short-to-medium length, but they’re not triggering the monotony flag in Writhm because there’s enough variation that it flows nicely.

Watch the video for the full visual breakdown 👇

So the big takeaway is that it’s all about finding your Goldilocks sentences. Sentences that aren’t too long, or aren’t too short, but they’re just right to build some character.

And that’s the other thing I love about this opening.

It’s all about character.

It doesn’t start by saying, “Privet Drive was the perfect neighborhood. Emerald lawns, birds chirping, yada yada.” It started with Mr. and Mrs. Dursley. Character. When in doubt, it’s never a bad idea to start with character.

For more deconstructions, follow on TikTok – and if you want to play around with Writhm, sign up for a free account. It’ll help you improve the flow of your writing.

The Easter Bunny dropped off a special treat for Easter this year…

Repetition Checker is now live for Writhm Pro users.

What if I told you I redesigned Writhm from scratch…and it just launched?

It’s true. Check it 👇

Adjustable sentence ranges. Customizable colors. Savable projects and themes.

You’re going to love it.

There’s a Free tier and a Pro tier with extra features.

And here’s the best part…

We’re opening up 500 LIFETIME spots for the Pro tier starting today.

Whether you upgrade to Pro or remain on Free, I can’t wait for you to check it out.

Note: If you’ve signed up for Writhm before, you’ll need to sign up again. (Dang tech.)

This is the only writing app out there focused on flow and finesse, not “correctness” or grammar.

It’ll make your writing more beautiful and engaging, guaranteed.

—D. Melhoff

P.S. Watch the announcement video on TikTok and check out all the buzz. Craziness!