Very long sentences: personal style or just bad writing?
I'm writing a story targeted towards children in which the protagonist is a young girl. I find that in writing her dialog and the narrative, I'm producing a lot of very long sentences, to the point that an entire paragraph may be seven or eight lines long, but consisting of a single sentence. It feels stylistic to me, sort of relating to the youth and impetuousness of the main character. It's not that the entire thing is written this way; these very long sentences tend to occur at times where the character is upset, or very busy, or rushed, or has a lot going on. I wasn't thinking about it specifically when I was writing them, they just came out naturally as I wrote, but I think they are meant to convey the mood a bit.
Or am I just rationalizing poor writing?
A few examples:
In context, the main character ("Antimony") is upset and thinking about other times she was upset:
And once in the kitchen, when Antimony devised what she thought would be a very clever recipe for a cake which she wanted to make for her mother's birthday, where instead of using baking powder, she would use paprika so the cake would be all red and beautiful, and instead of eggs and milk, she would use eggs and orange juice because everyone knows that orange juice goes better with eggs than milk does.
A few lines later:
And when the timer dinged and Antimony opened the oven and carefully pulled out the oven rack and saw what had happened, she cried because she had been so excited about her clever recipe, and because she wanted so badly to surprise her mother with a nice birthday cake, and because it had taken so much work and she was very tired and now she had nothing to show for it, and because anyway she didn't even have a present to give to her mother now.
An unrelated example:
The work was good to focus on to keep her mind off her troubles---especially once she was done gathering the wood and no longer had to wander around so much---and in no time at all she had a small fire going, which turned into a bigger fire, and then an even bigger fire, and then a fire which was a bit too large and she had to poke at the logs with a long stick to move them about the right way so that it would settle down.
I am not a native speaker and I have trouble with long sentences. A long sentence is tiring to the eye and requires mor …
8y ago
This is one of the many cases in which advice about writing is misstated. Long sentences are not bad. Convoluted sentenc …
8y ago
Young narrators often think, and string their sentences together, paratactically -- short independent clauses joined by …
9y ago
Actually, this is the only situation where run-on sentences should be used (and work better than short sentences). In or …
12y ago
I think it largely depends on what kind of "children's book" we're talking about. If this is a book for teenagers (or ev …
12y ago
I'd have to see these excerpts in context of her thoughts in other situations, but I think if you're doing it deliberate …
12y ago
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6 answers
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I am not a native speaker and I have trouble with long sentences.
A long sentence is tiring to the eye and requires more concentration. Long is bad; you need to come up for air.
Sometimes, a longer sentence may be needed to break the pattern of medium and short sentences, but even then a long sentence should not be longer than about 50 words.
Some academic writers using long sentences are tolerable because it is the subject matter and not the style that is important, but for creative writing, to me, it is a definite no-no.
Yes, some authors get away with them, so it may be in part subjective.
I agree that the “and & and” model works for some over-excited children, in some circumstances, but I think that most children will tend to speak in short bursts of short sentences and fragments.
There are some related Q in Writer's SE like seeking a humorous example of long winded paragraph one sentence long , and What's the difference between purple prose and vividly descriptive writing?
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This is one of the many cases in which advice about writing is misstated. Long sentences are not bad. Convoluted sentences are bad. A sentence can be long without being convoluted. A sentence can be quite short and still be convoluted.
However:
- Convoluted sentence do tend to be long.
- A greater percentage of long sentences are convoluted than short sentences.
- The process of fixing a convoluted sentence will often result in multiple short sentences being created.
- Length is easier to quantify than how convoluted a sentence is.
All of which makes it easier to say, "avoid long sentences" than "avoid convoluted sentences".
People often prefer hearing this advice as well because it may be difficult to tell if your sentence is convoluted, but it is easy to tell if it is long.
Still, the advice is wrong. Being convoluted is the sin, not being long. If your thought is convoluted, you need to untangle the thought. Merely introducing more periods into the mix just turns a convoluted sentence into a convoluted paragraph.
On the other hand, some thoughts are better and more elegantly expressed with a single long sentence than by many small ones.
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Actually, this is the only situation where run-on sentences should be used (and work better than short sentences). In ordinary situations they should be avoided like the plague, but if you really want to translate that the character is tired or nervous or upset, run-on sentences are the way to go. Especially tired or rushed, because the reader will also be slightly out of breath, so to say, after reading the whole sentence (and tired after reading several of them), which is actually something we want in this case. So I'd say you're good, don't change a thing ;)
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I think it largely depends on what kind of "children's book" we're talking about. If this is a book for teenagers (or even "tweenagers"), then it is an excellent way to convey a feeling of restlessness or stress. If we're talking about younger audiences, it might be dangerous simply because the sentences could be confusing to the reader, invoking in them an actual feeling of distress.
I see nothing wrong with the style, but relatively "new" readers might find trouble deciphering it.
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Young narrators often think, and string their sentences together, paratactically -- short independent clauses joined by conjunctions: We went to the zoo and we saw a lion and then we saw a monkey and the monkey threw some bananas at the people and we thought it was funny but then he ran at the bars and screamed and I was scared . . . " That's a pretty young narrator.
The older the narrator is, the more they will tend toward hypotaxis -- embedding one idea within another, using independent and subordinate clauses, and so on.
Of course, there will be something in between, depending on the age of the narrator. I think the notion of following the stream of consciousness works here.
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I'd have to see these excerpts in context of her thoughts in other situations, but I think if you're doing it deliberately to mimic her feelings and thoughts, it's fine. It feels like nervous-energy stream-of-consciousness, and if that's what you're aiming for, you have it down nicely.
If you're trying for a slightly silly book, I'd even ramp it up a bit more and throw in some hyperbole:
The work was good to focus on to keep her mind off her troubles — especially once she was done gathering the wood and no longer had to wander around so much — and in no time at all she had a small fire going, which turned into a bigger fire, and then an even bigger fire, and then a ripping great fire, and then a fire which was really rather too large for her taste, thank you very much, and she had to rush about and find a really long stick so she could poke at the logs and spread them out so they'd settle down and behave themselves like proper firewood logs ought to, which is to say burn respectably and give off some heat and light and not try to set the woods ablaze.
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