In my last sentence tip, I completely oversimplified one effect of short sentences. You have to start somewhere right? I freely admit that I oversimplified things on purpose.
And I’m going to do it again. Heh heh heh.
Susanna Clarke is one of my new favorite authors. Read the opening of her story “The Ladies of Grace Adieu“:
“Above all remember this: that magic belongs as much to the heart as to the head and everything which is done, should be done from love or joy or righteous anger.
“And if we honour this principle we shall discover that our magic is much greater than all the sum of all the spells that were ever taught. Then magic is to us as flight is to the birds, because then our magic comes from the dark and dreaming heart, just as the flight of a bird comes from the heart. And we will feel the same joy in performing that magic that the bird feels as it casts itself into the void and we will know that magic is part of what a man is, just as flight is part of what a bird is.”
Long sentences tend to feel more dense to the reader. This seems so obvious, but a lot of writers don’t understand it. They enjoy weaving elaborate sentences with multiple subordinate clauses and phrases and elaborate parallelism.All of these elements are wonderful tools, but they slow the reader down. Just be careful and judicious. Trust your content rather than your style. Readers will gladly slow down for a passage as beautiful as Clarke’s. Those who enjoy meditative texts will love savory the poetry of her images. But how many of us can actually write something so beautiful and poetic? Even more importantly, how many of us can sustain such beautiful prose for long periods? And even if you are such a writer, you must come to grips with the fact that most readers are looking for escape not beauty.
Fiction allows readers to look through the window to another world. They want prose that is a transparent portal through which they look.
Nonfiction allows readers to find practical advice that will help them escape the problems in their actual lives. They want prose that sounds like their buddy but works like a good set of instructions.
Here’s the point. Don’t write a lot of meditative sentences and then get frustrated when you can’t garner a large audience. Not that large audiences should be your goal. But if you want to reach large audiences, you have to write for them.
The masses don’t meditate much. They’ll suffer through a good dense sentence every few pages, but if you try to write Moby Dick for the 21st century, you can expect to sell as well as Moby Dick did. (It was a complete disaster that can be said to have ruined Melville’s career.)
Of course, there are all kinds of long sentences. The next few tips will discuss some of the different ways to construct a long sentence and the different rhetorical effects you can expect the text to achieve.
Anyone up for some beautiful, meditative, and poetic long sentences in the comments?
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Nah. Not big on assignments, I find. But you could always visit my blog. (As you have.)
“beautiful prose for long periods?” It seems like there’s some kind of pun going on there, but I hesitate to name exactly what it is.
And Moby Dick? Yuck. No wonder it bombed. (Or harpooned. Or whatever.)
Jenn, glad you’re back! No need to practice any kind of writing assignments or anything. I just like to include a specific call to action for people who want that sort of thing.
As for me, this afternoon in the drizzly February weather that makes up our South Texas winters, I buckled down for business. Settling into a little local hideaway to escape email, armed with a red pen (because green pens are more expensive), holding my clipboard and a stack of articles, I began the good fight only noticing a little later that the parrot in the corner made me sneeze. And who keeps a parrot in the lobby of a business building anyway? Is the expectation that the poor caged bird will inspire shoppers, or is the bird itself just a forgotten purchase from some manager’s own shopping trip? Either way, I was allergic to that bird and had to relocate to McDonald’s where the coffee was as good as Andre said it would be.
Love that good long poetic sentence, Mark. I have to be in the mood to write like that. Dreamy. Dreaming. Guess a long sentence this morning isn’t in the cards.
That’s my problem! I can’t get my head out of the clouds. I’m all dreams and no action!
I liked your short sentence tip and assignment better than this one. Because it’s easier, maybe? But I’ve been reading The Elements of Style and trying to get a grasp on punctuation that allows for longer sentences: the colon and semi-colon, chiefly (and trying to get away from parentheses which I tend to abuse). So this assignment intrigues me with it’s invitation to long meditation. I don’t think it’s going to work in my comment here, although you do have me wondering if I could come up with a sentence that is grammatically correct and contains every form of punctuation –properly used–that is still pleasing to read.
Oh dear. I’ve got a lot of work to do on my writing skills. Thanks for the tips (and prompts).
A Musing Mom, we all need to work on our writing skills!
The real trick to writing long sentences is to be conversational. The purpose of punctuation, in my opinion, is to clarify in places where the words themselves are insufficient. I don’t think juggling punctuation tricks and tacking longer and longer strings of words together is going to make a better sentence–if I’m trying to appeal to a wide audience, that is.
I really prefer to avoid punctuation as much as possible? I almost consider colons and semi-colons to be a sentence’s death sentence. (How could I resist that?)
I’ll post something soon on long sentences that are easy to read. Thanks for the great comment!
Are green pens really more expensive?
They really are. It’s so dumb.
Good and interesting points, Mark. It is so interesting that some of the greatest works, in their day were largely unappreciated.
I think one has to be concerned with content. An Amos shouldn’t try to be an Isaiah. Though he could learn a thing or two from Isaiah. And vice-versa, for that matter.
Ted, the greatest work of all (Logos) was largely unappreciated in his day.
And your comment about content is spot on. There is nothing at all wrong with long and complex sentences, but writers need to understand the effect those sentences will have on readers. And they need to accept that some readers will be alienated by the complexity.
“And they need to accept that some readers will be alienated by the complexity.”
Or, as in my case in re-reading some of my work, they will feel like they just need to take a breath!
Marcus — This has been a really helpful post. I tend toward the long and dreamy sentences myself, loving the complexity and varying trains of thought. The WORST thing a graduate professor of mine did was complement me on my use of parentheses once (which I now ALSO abuse, A Musing Mom!). He said that the parenthetical element creates another layer of thought in which the writer is actually evaluating herself and her writing on another plane. So, of course I felt very smart and fancy about my parentheses after that, having all kinds of conversations with myself in my own writing.
And of course, as is the case here, leaving the reader totally out of the picture!
Points well made, and well taken!
Stacy and Charity and everyone, thanks for the comments. Thanks for reading.
Stacy, that’s what the editing process is for! (For all of us.) In fact, one of the easiest ways I know to edit is simply to read the work out loud. Whenever I stumble on a sentence, that’s a clue that there may be a problem. Certainly if I find myself gasping for breath, there’s a problem. : )
Charity, I used to make my high school students read out loud sometimes—especially if we were reading a play. A lot of them would literally skip parentheticals. They have a place (to be sure), but I think parentheses send a visual clue to the reader that they can skip this tangent (if they want to).