long sentences

All that said, many of my biggest influences were pulp writers—Lester Dent who wrote the Doc Savage stories, Andre Norton, Fritz Lieber (there's one who wrote for the pulps but at a rather high level, considered highly literate pulp fiction). And Kieth Laumer, who wrote later but must have been highly influenced by hardboiled and noir and wrote in imitation of the style (as did people like Frnak Miller in comic books and many others). And it didn't turn me into a potato. I became quite literate and interested in a lot of material that's considered pretty deep and bordering on the intellectual (philosphy, psychology, highly literate writing etc). So reading pulps and playing video games etc isn't guaranteed to make you into a caveman. If anything is going to do that it's crappy education that keeps lowering the standards and cranking out Johnnies and Jennies who can't read. And still people pick up books and scratch their heads like a Geico cavman, stick their tongue out the corner of their mouths, and become readers. I write for them, not for the ones who only play video games. And I assume they're of average to somewhat above average intelligence. It isn't just a broad numbers game for me (a popularity game)—it's about reaching the right audience, one that will appreciate what I love to write, rather than dumbing down my writing hoping to reach a vast but dumb audience.

 

Thank you everyone. I know we have a fair number of people just starting out writing, so this seemed like a topic that should be addressed for them.

 

Long sentences can be interesting, but be careful you don't make them too long. If you do, you could easily create one of Sir Humphrey's speeches from "Yes Minister". For instance, something like this:

Here is Sir Humphrey in action:

 

One thing I learned early on was to use sentence length for pacing. I write WWII novels so there's a lot action. To increase action pace use short sentences. I also make paragraphs one sentence long for this. To slow down for your reader, perhaps to give them time to breathe after intense action, longer sentences.

 

Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft (archive.org) goes into shaping and rhythm quite a bit. You can also think of it as a division into symmetrical or asymmetrical parts, composed of beats, which changes the "feeling" of the prose. Yet, that can't be divorced from meaning (well... never say never).

I don't think it is possible to take a sentence "too far" any more than you might not take it far enough. For example, I really enjoyed this longer sentence put to use:

Arguably, you could break up all the clauses into smaller sentences. How would that change how its interpreted?

"Looking back at the eight of eight-eight over the fifty-seven years of my political work in England, I knew what I aimed at and the results. I meditated on the history of Britain and the world since 1914. I see clearly that I achieved practically nothing."

It's not as lyrical and it doesn't carry the same weight. The difference to me is that every part of the sentence builds on the other parts, and it creates a momentum, where the reader is given new and worthwhile information packaged in a pleasing rhythm that invests them deeper into a narrative, and then by the end of the sentence, there's resolution.

Personally, I used to avoid longer sentences because I didn't really know how to craft them comfortably. Shorter sentences appeared easier to write and "safe." See Dick run, and whatnot.

Spoiler

How language learning models will change perceptions of writing over time? For giggles, I asked ChatGPT to compose a sentence that is 100 words long. This was the result:

But what was more telling is when I asked it compose a 5 word sentence:

It had more trouble with a sensible short sentence than a long one! Though, arguably, the long sentence doesn't work, either -- just a mish-mash of metaphors. It has no point. The closest it comes is "a solitary figure meanders through crowded streets" but that quickly gets buried, seemingly inserted randomly. After some playing, I discovered it can't write a sensible sentence that is less than six words long, when prompted to write any sentence.

 

We don't need to create a computer program to write a long, pointless, meandering sentence that makes no sense. Just listen to any politician in any news conference. Or try reading modernist philosophy.

I could write one right now. Here goes:

Indeed, dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal -- of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelian provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psychosomatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence and its close ally, the epistemological fallacy with its ontic dual; of the analytic problematic laid down by Plato, which Hegel served only to replicate in his actualist monovalent analytic reinstatement in transfigurative reconciling dialectical connection, while in his hubristic claims for absolute idealism he inaugurated the Comtean, Kierkegaardian and Nietschean eclipses of reason, replicating the fundaments of positivism through its transmutation route to the superidealism of a Baudrillard.

(From Plato Etc.: The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution by Professor Roy Bhaskar, 1994)

Try saying that without taking a breath.

 

This density of supreme knowledge might rip apart the very fabric of space-time and unveil the secrets of the universe. Get this man a Nobel prize.

 

Word counts and sentence lengths, difficult bed fellows. Character counts are even more difficult.

I write to tight word counts a lot in my professional non-fiction writing life.

The verbose version comes first. Then you cut it down, and down, and down, and it keeps getting sharper and better. But unfortunately you simultaneously keep remembering more things you need to include, so even after hitting the word count you keep having to cut the sentences down, down, down. Still, even through this, you feel you're improving it. Its painful to do because you've gouged out whole chunks you were convinced were compelling or important, but it reads better, you're sure.

By this point its 4AM. The deadline is met, the word count is hit. You go out for a triumphal cigarette, come back in, send it, go home, go to bed...

... Wake up the next morning, post-submission, read it over, and realise the whole thing just broke some time around 3AM, became a jumble of overloaded staccato nonsense with no room to breath, and you never noticed. Now it has no flow at all.

Even more gallingly, a couple weeks later the Philistines on the other end --- the ones with the 400 character limits per text box --- say they love it, or they approve it without any questions even though you inadvertently cut out all the essential detail, or they approve the grant, or whatever.

 

Heh. Yep, I wrote a short-short story (just under 1,000 words) on exactly this topic ... only I gave it an unexpected twist.

I might submit it for your reading pleasure (I hope?), when I'm allowed to submit my work. No worries. I'll just wait until I can.

 

You can submit your work to the workshop—it doesn't matter how many posts you've made or how long you've been here. The only requirement is that you make two critiques on other people's work before you post one of your own. It's only the debate room where you can't get in yet.

 

OK ... is there a way I can see how many critiques I've made on other people's work? It's sometimes hard to keep track, that's all.

If it's not possible, no problem.

 

Click on your name or avatar picture and a little box pops up with some info. Your workshop credits are listed there.

 

Anyone conscientious enough to worry if they've made enough critiques has probably made enough critiques.