Unsolicited writing advice, no. 7746: Consider the length of your sentences. Long sentences slow the narrative down, short ones speed it up again. Ideally, you need a good distribution of both to keep things interesting... - ThreadSky

joannechocolat.bsky.social • 85 days ago

Unsolicited writing advice, no. 7746:
Consider the length of your sentences. Long sentences slow the narrative down, short ones speed it up again. Ideally, you need a good distribution of both to keep things interesting...

Comments

susannefreeman.bsky.social•85 days ago

I used to get pulled up in school for my love of semi-colons & long sentences 🤣

micktheknife.bsky.social•85 days ago

I love Joanne's use of semi-colons and commas in long sentences, they just flow beautifully

adrianbowyer.bsky.social•85 days ago

""I want to slow down now, and check out the scenery, and put in a stop or two. I want some semi-colons." - Martin Amis, Money

(The only semi-colon in the entire book occurs shortly after that, in the final sentence.)

colin25.bsky.social•85 days ago

Wholly agree. Doesn't need to be long. Example "Jesus wept."
A colleague used to use that as an example when we tried to get people to understand rabbiting on when writing briefings.🙂

tadethompson.bsky.social•85 days ago

So the editor who told up-and-coming me 'don't ever use short sentences' was spouting BS (as I suspected)!

azzageddi.bsky.social•85 days ago

As a lit prof and an editor, that editor’s advice is indeed terrible. Studying good prose bears out your observation about varying sentence length.

micktheknife.bsky.social•85 days ago

What?!

unamccormack.bsky.social•85 days ago

Yes. (See what I did there?)

lifeisamazing.bsky.social•85 days ago

So, side observation - studied hypnosis for some time and there is a technique called "fractionation" (I know, what a name!?!) and the while point is to maintain the clients interest and focus by shifting speed, part of which is done with length of sentences... so, you know, it maintains interest...

joannechocolat.bsky.social•85 days ago

Absolutely.

tadethompson.bsky.social•85 days ago

Yes, I know this as hypnotherapy is part of my expertise.

lifeisamazing.bsky.social•85 days ago

Cool! I used to be the copywriter for the company that organised Paul McKenna's seminars, so I got to see a lot of his particular brand of hypnosis: NLP. Such a peculiar mix of the genuinely transformational and pure hogwash... a positive tool in the right hands, though!

joannechocolat.bsky.social•85 days ago

Total BS.

scsmith4.bsky.social•85 days ago

We read Hating Alison Ashley when we were still being taught that sentences had to be such and such. Our English teacher spent an unplanned but v cool lesson on why "And. Alison. Ashley." was so effective, and how and when to do it (...and making us promise not to until at least GCSE).

kncbooks.bsky.social•85 days ago

I recently read D.H. Lawrence's "The Rainbow". He used the lengths of sentences to his benefit, as cues to the reader, as well as setting a mood. I found myself re-reading passages simply to enjoy the flow of language.

6rams.bsky.social•85 days ago

This unsolicited advice is exactly the kind of stuff I was soliciting when I signed up for BlueSky. Thank you!

dflemmingsdatter.bsky.social•85 days ago

Why thank you
I’ll take my own response in langue.. For a Dane Ive a decent handle on it

revo-paula.bsky.social•85 days ago

The middle section of Sam Selvon's 'The Lonely Londoners' must be really boring, then.

pollybruno.bsky.social•85 days ago

It’s not about only about achieving a balance, though. Pacing can change based on the needs of the scene.

gwilymeades.bsky.social•85 days ago

ok henry james

adrianbowyer.bsky.social•85 days ago

I find it sometimes helps to write a paragraph out as if it were a poem*, then edit the poem, then put it back into a paragraph.

---
* Not necessarily one line per sentence.

starwards.bsky.social•85 days ago

It depends on your target audience, doesn't it?

If you want robust sales, you need to target people who apparently have the reading level of a sixth-grader.

If you want intelligent folks to appreciate your work, even if sales are disappointing, you eschew those compromises.

The rest is marketing.

keirharper-thorpe.bsky.social•85 days ago

Yes, my wife was surprised when reading both books by Charlaine Harris and by JKR that the grammar was of a level lower than she would have expected for a best-selling book and I suggested that it was in part because those books were not aimed at her.

keirharper-thorpe.bsky.social•85 days ago

I think there is also of an issue about success. It appears that an author's early work tends to get more editorial attention than when they have had a break-through. Of course, many leading authors are very capable of producing text which flows, but not all. I do note how difficult in this regard

keirharper-thorpe.bsky.social•85 days ago

work by Iain (M.) Banks in the mid-1990s was. He seems to violate many of not just the writing 'rules' but approaches which would make for smooth reading and comprehension and in that period does a load of telling rather than showing. It was if he was editorially untouchable by that stage. You do

keirharper-thorpe.bsky.social•85 days ago

sometimes see this as well in non-fiction especially with an author (I predominantly read History non-fiction) who is well established in their field. Their mid-/late career texts can be far less crisp/engaging than their earlier work. Of course with the decline of editing by publishers anyway in

keirharper-thorpe.bsky.social•85 days ago

the 21st Century, rather 'flabby' or repetitive text in non-fiction may now be deemed the norm anyway.

joannechocolat.bsky.social•85 days ago

You may not want to hear this, but here we go.
There are lots of reasons for a book not to make it, some valid, others not: but no-one who sneers at the readership deserves to have any readers.

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