I can't believe I haven't posted this yet. Meh.
This is a really good way to check your sentence fluency in your writing. My 8th grade English teacher had us do it and boy does it help. I'm at the point where I do it mentally. It's both annoying and a godsend at the same time.
What you do is this, and it's best to do this in a table format:
1) Take your whole piece or an excerpt from your piece. Your choice.
2) Number each sentence.
3) Write the first four words of each sentence next to its number.
4) Count the total number of words in the sentence and write that as well.
This will show you any trends in sentence length and beginning. Now remember, you do have creative license as an author, and if the situation merits it, your sentence beginnings can be the same. Generally speaking, though, it's a bad thing.
This'll show you where you need to vary your sentence lengths/beginnings. It's actually really handy, because then you notice if you're doing something like "I have a cat. I also have a dog. I also have another dog." etc. etc.
Oh, and if there aren't four words in the sentence, that's okay. That happened to me the first time I did this. xD
Enjoy!
-:pirate3:
