There’s a story about George Washington Carver. He asked God to reveal the secrets of the universe, and God was silent. He asked God to reveal the secrets of science and biology, and God was silent. Then he asked God to reveal the secrets of the peanut, and God did.
I don’t care about peanuts. But you could say I’ve spent the last ten years asking God to help me understand the secrets of a sentence. And I’ve worked hard to show God that I’m serious about the question.
Along the way, I’ve learned some tricks about how sentences work, and I thought I would share those in a regular series called simply “Sentence Tips.”
Let’s start with the easiest tricks I know—the effect of sentence length. Here it is in a nut shell. Are you ready?
Short sentences move quickly.
I’m talking about pacing here. In creative writing workshops, I remember the deadliest comment of all. “Your pacing seems off.” That’s workshop code for “the story was slow.” And everyone knows slow writing = boring writing. At least, slow writing is often boring.
Enough abstraction. Take a look at a master in action. This passage comes from a chapter called “How To Tell a True War Story” in The Things They Carried. The master is Tim O’Brien. In this passage, an American soldier in Vietnam is describing the actions of a platoon that has become spooked in the jungle.
The guys can’t cope. They lose it. They get on the radio and report enemy movement—a whole army, they say—and they order up the firepower. They get arty and gunships. They call in air strikes. And I’ll tell you . . . all night long, they just smoke those mountains. They make jungle juice. They blow away trees and glee clubs and whatever else there is to blow away. Scorch time. They walk napalm up and down the ridges. They bring in the Cobras and F-4s, they use Willie Petter and HE and incendiaries. It’s all fire. They make those mountains burn.
Those are some short sentences. And, man, they move. You can see how the choppy thoughts also do a good job of imitating human speech—even though in reality people ramble on and on and on when they talk without ever even working toward something like a conclusion or a period or a moment to pause and breathe and give their listeners a chance to get a word in edgewise. Or maybe that’s just me.
When I was a teacher, something like this always turned into an assignment. Why not here too? Imitate O’Brien. It’s the best form of flattery. And I’ll even do it myself later tonight. (But don’t feel you can’t comment unless you try the assignment. I’m not handing out grades here, people.)
The assignment: Write a paragraph with intense conflict and make sure your sentences average 5-7 words in length.
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I don’t mean to be off topic, but I sent you an e-mail to your iprofguy account and was wondering if you received it. I’m not sure if you still check that one or not.
Haha, I just checked and I think we had this conversation over a year ago. Oops. I can send it to your current email address. Sorry for cluttering your blogspace!
Matt, no worries about being off topic. Everyone should feel free to comment. This is a good reminder to me that I need to create a “contact me form.” So much to do to get this house in order here.
For the record, I don’t check my “iprofguy” account very often.
Short. Sentences. Can. Be. Hard. To. Read. Too.
That’s why I sometimes like to go on and on, without pause, as you did above (quite effectively, too, I think.)
Seriously, I think the best writers know how to establish just the right rhythm for their subject, their action. So, it may go back to having a deep sense of the appropriate emotional tenor. Gotta really feel that subject.
Absolutely, L.L. One thing about writing tools and tricks is that you can’t rely on any trick to do everything.
I think of short sentences as something like an air compressor nail gun. It works great to put up a wall quick–pow pow pow! But you wouldn’t want to use it to build something that is going to require some detail work.
(My next tip is going to be about the rhetorical effectiveness of long sentences. Then contrasting lenghts. Then multiple kinds of long sentences, and stuff. I’m just slow to put it all out there.)
Also L.L., I have to point out that your short sentences were actually fragments. So part of the reason they were hard to read is that you were using the periods rhetorically to work against the flow of conventional grammar.
Breaking the rules is great fun, but we have to remember that doing so slows our readers down. As long as we want to slow our readers down, and the content is worth emphasizing, I think those kinds of things can be a great tool.
Mental note. Future tips need to include the rhetorical effectiveness of sentence fragments and run-ons.
Everyone, I’m headed to a Brian McLaren conference this weekend. I’ll check back in a few days.
Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.
Enjoy! (That was a whole sentence, yes?)
Yup. It is the imperative (command) mood with an implied subject “you” and an implied pronoun.
“(you) Enjoy (it or yourself)!”
I hope I’m not sounding too pompous in these posts and comments. Reading through them just now, I realized I adopted my teacher voice. Oops.
Everyone remember, I AM A HACK MAKING ALL OF THIS UP.
Whew. Had to get that off my chest.
I’ve enjoyed this post, as well as comments. I think it must be natural. In snyc with our own way of communicating, as well as with those we’re trying to communicate with. This does present a challenge, to be sure.
I find sometimes, that when I have to edit a post very much, it really loses the original feel of what I was trying to get across.
I look forward to learning from you here. And a nice example you shared of interesting writing.
Was George Washington Craver?? The man was a genius! You gotta love him. There’s so much you could…
Rats! It’s late. Gotta go. (I hate rushing.) Later guys!!!
s/b “Was THAT George…”
I have been avoiding your blog. I haven’t finished the assignment. How could I? I had a fundraiser on Friday. My dad came Saturday. Sunday I rested. Sabbath, you know. And you want me to write what? Short sentences? Almost impossible.
(Did I do it? Did this count for the assignment? I know there were a few fragments thrown it. But was the conflict intense enough?
)
I responded to your comment at The Suburban Christian.
How was the conference?
I’m back!
Ted, editing really is difficult to do well. For me it is more about streamlining sentences and pairing everything down. As much as possible, I don’t change someone’s voice or syntax or diction, I just distill it down so that it makes the reader feel all warm inside.
Craver, loved the pun! GWC craved peanuts, for sure. The conference was great. More on that in a few days, I hope. I’m headed over to Al’s blog now.
Charity, great job! Your passage in particular pointed out the tendency of many short sentences to sound frenzied. Each sentence is a complete thought, and so many short thoughts feel like the speaker is going in a million directions. Of course, including fragments only accentuated the frenzy. It’s as if the speaker was so rushed, she couldn’t even finish some of the thoughts.
What a relief! LL’s comment, I mean. Finding spaces for punctuation is hard. My thoughts don’t abbreviate. Neither do my words. Apparently.
Bleah.
I’ll try again later.
But for the record, I’d like to say that I do often find short sentences hard to read, too. The passage you quoted in your post made me feel like hyperventilating, but also like I didn’t really know what was going on.
I know you’re a teacher and there are some absolute truths, but isn’t some of this about preference?
Certainly short sentences can be hard to read. Especially when they feel redundant–repeating subject phrases over and over.
Of course, reading level is still based in part on sentence length, with the assumption that shorter sentences are easier to read. Not necessarily a good assumption as you all are pointing out.
The key is probably not short sentences so much as simple sentences.
And although I’m not a teacher anymore, I would say that it is a general truth (not absolute) that simple sentences are easier to read.
On the other hand, “Hills Like White Elephants” is full of simple sentences, and it is still a difficult text because it communicates through implication. Reading between the lines in simple sentences is going to be difficult.
But then, this post is about the speed of short. And as you pointed out, the speed of O’Brien’s paragraph leaves the reader feel like he or she is hyperventilating. As if you have been forced to run through these sentences.
(Great job with the short sentences by the way.)
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