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alias_sqbr) wrote2025-06-09 11:05 am
alias_sqbr) wrote2025-06-09 11:05 am
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Steering the Craft Chapter 3: sentence length and complex syntax
Masterlist
I feel kinda bad about how badly I'm butchering LeGuin's flowing prose for these posts. But I learn by summarising and sometimes even a clunky summary is easier on the brain. And maybe I'll inspire some of youse to go read the original!
Here are some of the commonest problems in sentence design:
She has a long rant about how, although many people argue that short sentences (and then later, short paragraphs) are necessary to good writing, what matters is a good rhythm, which requires a variety of lengths of sentence, word, and paragraph, used thoughtfully.
She gives some examples of good prose, many of which contain very long sentences, but carefully constructed and deployed, divided by semicolons/parentheses etc, emphasised with repetition, and followed by short sentences. For contrast!
EXERCISE THREE: Short and Long
Part One: Write a paragraph of narrative, 100–150 words, in sentences of seven or fewer words. No sentence fragments!* Each must have a subject and a verb.
Part Two: Write a half page to a page of narrative, up to 350 words, that is all one sentence.
Part 1: What's been making me tense lately is playing Blue Prince.
I nearly have it. I'm sure. Yesterday I came so close! I just need more keys. Keys, and gold. Okay, yes, and gems. The days are ticking down... But yesterday I saw the antechamber. At least, I think I did. Something white reflected in the window-pane. Something new. If only the windows opened! But no, I must navigate endless doors. Doors, and doorways, so often blocked. But I nearly have it. I am so close. I'm sure.
Had to count on my fingers a few times there! Some of these definitely lack a verb, but I tried, and it just flowed so much better this way.
Part 2: My brain immediately said FOLLOW THE RIVER, this is kinda non-fiction but it could be part of a story that just happens to be set in Perth.
Like all rivers, it begins as rain, then creeks and brooks, then narrow rivers roughened by rapids and ancient rocks, all leading at last to the Derbarl Yerrigan, Swan and Snake, carved by Wagyl and dredge, a widening line that twines and curves around cliff and scarp and spreads out across the sandy plain, surface dotted with islands floating like scrubby skiffs, peopled by endless jellyfish and shy sharks and the eponymous swans (almost always black, no more an omen of disaster or the unexpected than the ducks), edges bordered by trees and reeds and thick walls of concrete and stone, smelling of algae and rot and ever more of salt, until the Narrows widens into Water and then estuary and then narrows again into harbour, and all is swallowed at last by the sea.
This feels like the sort of thing the government would commission to have painted onto a business centre where a wetland used to be. But I got to 135 words!
The short sentences felt like a kinda arbitrary exercise, a good challenge (which I did not entirely succeed at!) but not super artistically interesting since I write a non-negligible number of short sentences naturally (if not this sentence in particular). The long sentence stretched me more artistically. I would not want to write that way often but it could add a really interesting vibe in the right context.
Optional Revisits to EXERCISE THREE
Part One: If you wrote the exercise the first time in an authorial or formal voice, try the same or a different subject in a colloquial,* even a dialect voice—perhaps a character talking to another character.
If you did it colloquially to start with, back off a little and try a more detached, authorial mode.
Part Two: If your long sentence was syntactically simple, connected mainly with ands or semicolons, try one with some fancy clauses and stuff—show Henry James how.
If you already did that, try a more “torrential” mode, using ands, dashes, etc.—let it pour out!
Both parts: If you told two different stories in the two different sentence lengths, you might try telling the same story in both and see what happens to the story.
Let's flip them!
Part One Take Two:
The river starts as rain. It gathers in creeks and brooks. These become narrow rivers, roughened by rapids. Then Derbarl Yerrigan swallows them all up. These curves were created by the wagyl. Later, they were reshaped by dynamite and dredge. The widening water twines and bends. Cliffs are replaced by plains. Islands float like scrubby skiffs. Endless jellyfish share space with shy sharks. Elsewhere, black swans are singular omens. But here are they are common as ducks. The river is edged by plants and stone. It smells of rotting algae and salt. Narrows widens into Water. Estuary narrows into harbour. And then all is swallowed by the sea.
Phew! That was TOUGH to make sound remotely smooth. But I think every subject got a verb, go me!
Part Two Take Two:
I'm sure I'm nearly there, yesterday I was so close, but then of course (AGAIN, as ALWAYS) I had to stop, to sleep, but I swear I just need a few more keys, okay yes and gold, and gems, but I swear that once I figure that out it won't matter that the days are ticking down, because the antechamber will be mine, and from there the rest of the house, it has to work that way, and I saw it- the antechamber, all in white, reflected in an obstinately un-traversable window, but of course one door was locked, the other blocked, all these doors and I can't find the path, not yet, but I swear I'm close, I'm nearly there- I'm sure!
(I am so close... to downloading cheats, lol) That was easier, the first one was pretty stream of consciousness already.
I feel kinda bad about how badly I'm butchering LeGuin's flowing prose for these posts. But I learn by summarising and sometimes even a clunky summary is easier on the brain. And maybe I'll inspire some of youse to go read the original!
THE SENTENCE IS A MYSTERIOUS ENTITY, and I’m not going to try to say what it is, only talk about what it does.
In a narrative, the chief duty of a sentence is to lead to the next sentence.
Beyond this basic, invisible job, the narrative sentence can of course do an infinite number of audible, palpable, beautiful, surprising, powerful things. In order to do them, it needs one quality above all: coherence. A sentence has to hang together.
Incoherent, straggling, patched-together sentences can’t lead seamlessly to the next sentence, because they can’t even hold themselves together. Good grammar is pretty much like good engineering: the machine works because the parts do.
Here are some of the commonest problems in sentence design:
- MISPLACEMENT: He was sure when the test came he could pass it. (Does this mean that when the test appeared on his desk he saw that it was easy, or does it mean he was sure that whenever the test came, he was ready for it?) There’s one best way for the parts of a sentence to fit together, and your job as a writer is to find it.
- DANGLERS: Leaving the house, a giant oak towered over them. Almost all writers leave some danglers, and some do little harm; but walking trees... can really wreck the scenery.
- CONJUNCTIVITIS: They wanted to be happy but it was too dark to dance but nobody had any good music anyway. Stringing short sentences together with conjunctions is a legitimate stylistic mannerism, but used naively, it sets up a kind of infantile droning that makes the story hard to follow.
Paradoxically, if your piping is very fancy, if your sentences are highly unusual or ornamental, they may distract the reader from following you... though every sentence should move with grace, the proper beauty and power of prose is in the work as a whole.
Every sentence has a rhythm of its own, which is also part of the rhythm of the whole piece. Rhythm is what keeps the song going, the horse galloping, the story moving. And the rhythm of prose depends very much—very prosaically—on the length of the sentences.
She has a long rant about how, although many people argue that short sentences (and then later, short paragraphs) are necessary to good writing, what matters is a good rhythm, which requires a variety of lengths of sentence, word, and paragraph, used thoughtfully.
She gives some examples of good prose, many of which contain very long sentences, but carefully constructed and deployed, divided by semicolons/parentheses etc, emphasised with repetition, and followed by short sentences. For contrast!
- Jane Austen: from Mansfield Park
- Harriet Beecher Stowe: from Uncle Tom’s Cabin
- Mark Twain: from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Virginia Woolf: from “Time Passes” in To the Lighthouse
- She recs but does not quote Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian, Gabriel García Márquez, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway.
EXERCISE THREE: Short and Long
Part One: Write a paragraph of narrative, 100–150 words, in sentences of seven or fewer words. No sentence fragments!* Each must have a subject and a verb.
Part Two: Write a half page to a page of narrative, up to 350 words, that is all one sentence.
Suggested subjects: For Part One, some kind of tense, intense action—like a thief entering a room where someone’s sleeping. For Part Two: A very long sentence is suited to powerful, gathering emotion and to sweeping a lot of characters in together. You might try some family memory, fictional or real, such as a key moment at a dinner table or at a hospital bed.
Part 1: What's been making me tense lately is playing Blue Prince.
I nearly have it. I'm sure. Yesterday I came so close! I just need more keys. Keys, and gold. Okay, yes, and gems. The days are ticking down... But yesterday I saw the antechamber. At least, I think I did. Something white reflected in the window-pane. Something new. If only the windows opened! But no, I must navigate endless doors. Doors, and doorways, so often blocked. But I nearly have it. I am so close. I'm sure.
Had to count on my fingers a few times there! Some of these definitely lack a verb, but I tried, and it just flowed so much better this way.
Part 2: My brain immediately said FOLLOW THE RIVER, this is kinda non-fiction but it could be part of a story that just happens to be set in Perth.
Like all rivers, it begins as rain, then creeks and brooks, then narrow rivers roughened by rapids and ancient rocks, all leading at last to the Derbarl Yerrigan, Swan and Snake, carved by Wagyl and dredge, a widening line that twines and curves around cliff and scarp and spreads out across the sandy plain, surface dotted with islands floating like scrubby skiffs, peopled by endless jellyfish and shy sharks and the eponymous swans (almost always black, no more an omen of disaster or the unexpected than the ducks), edges bordered by trees and reeds and thick walls of concrete and stone, smelling of algae and rot and ever more of salt, until the Narrows widens into Water and then estuary and then narrows again into harbour, and all is swallowed at last by the sea.
This feels like the sort of thing the government would commission to have painted onto a business centre where a wetland used to be. But I got to 135 words!
If either part of the exercise forced you into writing in a way you’d never ordinarily choose to write, consider whether this was enjoyable, useful, maddening, enlightening, etc., and why.
The short sentences felt like a kinda arbitrary exercise, a good challenge (which I did not entirely succeed at!) but not super artistically interesting since I write a non-negligible number of short sentences naturally (if not this sentence in particular). The long sentence stretched me more artistically. I would not want to write that way often but it could add a really interesting vibe in the right context.
Optional Revisits to EXERCISE THREE
Part One: If you wrote the exercise the first time in an authorial or formal voice, try the same or a different subject in a colloquial,* even a dialect voice—perhaps a character talking to another character.
If you did it colloquially to start with, back off a little and try a more detached, authorial mode.
Part Two: If your long sentence was syntactically simple, connected mainly with ands or semicolons, try one with some fancy clauses and stuff—show Henry James how.
If you already did that, try a more “torrential” mode, using ands, dashes, etc.—let it pour out!
Both parts: If you told two different stories in the two different sentence lengths, you might try telling the same story in both and see what happens to the story.
Let's flip them!
Part One Take Two:
The river starts as rain. It gathers in creeks and brooks. These become narrow rivers, roughened by rapids. Then Derbarl Yerrigan swallows them all up. These curves were created by the wagyl. Later, they were reshaped by dynamite and dredge. The widening water twines and bends. Cliffs are replaced by plains. Islands float like scrubby skiffs. Endless jellyfish share space with shy sharks. Elsewhere, black swans are singular omens. But here are they are common as ducks. The river is edged by plants and stone. It smells of rotting algae and salt. Narrows widens into Water. Estuary narrows into harbour. And then all is swallowed by the sea.
Phew! That was TOUGH to make sound remotely smooth. But I think every subject got a verb, go me!
Part Two Take Two:
I'm sure I'm nearly there, yesterday I was so close, but then of course (AGAIN, as ALWAYS) I had to stop, to sleep, but I swear I just need a few more keys, okay yes and gold, and gems, but I swear that once I figure that out it won't matter that the days are ticking down, because the antechamber will be mine, and from there the rest of the house, it has to work that way, and I saw it- the antechamber, all in white, reflected in an obstinately un-traversable window, but of course one door was locked, the other blocked, all these doors and I can't find the path, not yet, but I swear I'm close, I'm nearly there- I'm sure!
(I am so close... to downloading cheats, lol) That was easier, the first one was pretty stream of consciousness already.
no subject
no subject
no subject
This is quite a good description of her own prose style, I would say.
no subject
I love sentence length/flow/cadence. I often think of it in terms of music. There are songs that have run on verses or choruses to set a vibe, and then will punctuate it with shorter ones. A great example of this in action is hilariously The End of the World (And I Feel Fine) by REM, where often people who don't know the verses will often pause the shout the lines that they know as short, sharp sentences. There's probably songs you know that use a mix too!
And this language gets extrapolated into film, where we can think of scenes where long, flowing cuts have a different vibe to jump cuts, but you sort of need a mix to sustain interest.
I know this isn't where the book is taking things I just find storytelling interesting saldkfjsa