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Q&A Very long sentences: personal style or just bad writing?

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 ...

posted 9y ago by ewormuth‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T02:39:38Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/18668
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar ewormuth‭ · 2019-12-08T02:39:38Z (almost 5 years ago)
Young narrators often think, and string their sentences together, [paratactically](http://literarydevices.net/parataxis/) -- 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](http://literarydevices.net/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.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2015-08-15T00:40:05Z (about 9 years ago)
Original score: 4