The Conjunction Trap: The Illusion of Creating Flow with "Also"

For years, I relied on a massive arsenal of transition words like "however," "on the other hand," and "in addition" to make my prose flow. Little did I know that each conjunction left behind a crude suture mark, visibly stitching sentences together in the reader's mind.

We were always taught that words like "furthermore," "consequently," and "moreover" lent professionalism and gravitas to our writing. For a long time, I took refuge in these crutches whenever I pivoted to a new idea. But one day in the workshop, we tried stripping the word "also" from our drafts and reading the text bare. We realized something crucial: the ideas weren't actually building on one another; they were merely piling up. The conjunction was simply masking a flaw in the underlying structure.