Writing Advice; Long Sentences and Over-description · 1:15am Sep 26th, 2013
I am not an expert on grammar, but lately I have been seeing a particular beginner mistake pop up very often; namely, trying to use a single sentence to describe too many actions and emotions.
Sentences are designed to deliver information to the reader. It is all too easy, however, to place too much or too little into a single sentence. In my experience, the former is a much more common problem. Writers don't always know when to say a sentence is over, or when to give different ideas and actions more space to be understood and contemplated. Whether it is because of a desire to move forward to other parts, enthusiasm for their own writing, or some other reason, I can't say. Hopefully this post will help point out some common signs of the problem and some potential ways to restructure sentences.
Let’s look at some examples.
Once Rarity’s lips departed from his forehead, Spike swooned, on his back on the floor with his tongue rolled out and his vision blurred by hearts and images of Rarity’s face. Rolling her eyes, Twilight sighed and dragged Spike away from Rarity.
This is from RainbowBob’s Forever a Hatchling. There is a lot of information being presented here, and it is obvious that it could be split into smaller sentences.
Rarity’s lips left Spike’s forehead. He swooned, his back quickly meeting the floor. Hearts and images of Rarity swam in front of his face. His tongue fell limply out of his mouth. Twilight sighed heavily, and her gaze drifted sideways. She dragged Spike up and settled him onto a nearby cushion.
The previous paragraph already describes the kiss itself, so there’s no need to add to that. I feel that making the initial sentence more abrupt matches how it feels to Spike, but you could easily argue the opposite (that takes a long time to describe because Spike latches onto the experience). This revision makes it clearer which order things are happening in, and it gives readers a little more space to process each action. This slightly slower pacing means that a few more details can be laid out without overwhelming the reader. My edit has its own problems (what I call “stage directions”--X did, Y did, X said), but it presents the same information in a more digestible way.
Noticing her still-preening teammate, Cloud Kicker’s expression changed into a sultry grin as she sat down next to her and slowly ran a half-lidded gaze over Lightning Dust’s still open wing from tips to tertiaries.
This is from Seether00’s The Wonder Years. This single sentence contains many different actions (noticing, changing, sat, ran) and two different characters (Cloud Kicker and Lightning Dust/preening teammate). I personally had to read it twice to properly picture what was going on.
Cloud Kicker suddenly noticed Lightning Dust; her teammate was still preening obliviously on the couch. A sultry grin spread across Cloud Kicker's face. Target acquired. She sat down next to Lightning and slowly drank in the mare's outstretched limbs, from tips to tertiaries and back again.
This revision makes it clearer who is doing what. There is also more room to picture each action, so we have a dash of inner monologue to keep things varied.
She opened it slowly, partly because she didn’t want to damage the letter inside, and opening an envelope with a hoof isn’t easy, and partly because she was still afraid of the news that is might contain. When the letter was finally out, she immediately noticed that it was a lot shorter than the last rejection letter they had sent her, and her name at the top hadn’t been filled in by a secretary like usual.
This is from I Put a Spell On You, by some amateur me. Unlike the previous examples, a large part of the problem here is that there is bunch of unneeded information, in addition to the sloppy structure of the sentence.
She opened it slowly; opening an envelope with hooves wasn’t easy, and a part of her was still afraid of the contents. The letter finally slid out, and she noticed that it was a lot shorter than the last one. Her name hadn’t been filled in by a secretary, and the signature at the bottom looked different.
This revision makes it much clearer what is going on while still delivering the same information. It is a little bland, but so was the original passage.
Obviously I am not a great writer, but hopefully these examples help illustrate my point; sentences need to deliver information, and delivering too much too fast can greatly damage pacing and readability.
If you aren’t sure about a sentence you’ve written, consider the following questions, both for individual parts and for the sentence as a whole;
* Does the reader need to know this information?
** If I leave it out, can they figure it out themselves?
* Is more than one character taking an action?
* Is a single character taking multiple actions?
* Could this be described with less words?
* Could this be described with more words?
As with all advice, however, remember that the final decision always rests with the author. Your work, your vision, your call.
If you have any questions, comments, or especially additions/corrections, please don’t be afraid to comment or PM me! If I used your writing as an example and you want me to remove it, please ask and I will do so.
First, let me caution that the below is something I've worked out entirely on my own, based solely on the patterns that occur when I, my readers, and sometimes other people's readers* try to determine whether a sentence flows well or flows poorly. This isn't something I've ever heard ANYONE else advocate, and it could be that I'm on entirely the wrong track. With that said, this is the evaluation I'd give based on my experience.
Below, I've capitalized the syllables that are stressed and not capitalized the syllables that are unstressed in the selection from Rainbow Bob. Wherever there are two stressed or two unstressed adjacent in the same sentence, I've italicized the word that causes the break in flow (unless a word is three syllables and has the accent on the first--more on that later.) I'll also explain in a moment why I do and don't capitalize some of the one-syllable words.**
Once RARity's LIPS dePARTed FROM his FOREhead, Spike SWOONed, ON his BACK on THE floor WITH his TONGUE rolled OUT and his VISion BLURRed by HEARTS and IMages of RARity’s FACE. ROLLing her EYEs, TWIlight SIGHed and DRAGged SPIKE aWAY from RARity.
I'm a big advocate of actively choosing word sounds that get your reader reading at the speed you want, and the cheap way to get them to read at a smooth pace*** is to alternate stressed and unstressed as much as possible. (If you use one-syllable words, readers will tend to determine the accents based on their position in relation to the words in front of them, or will accent the word if it's the first word of the sentence--try reading such a sentence aloud and see for yourself. Three syllables is more complicated, especially with the accent on the first syllable--as best I can tell, what produces a positive response from most readers is if you accent the next syllable of the word immediately following.) Anyway, Rainbow Bob did a good job here--four flow breaks might sound like a lot, but unless you're writing in iambic pentameter, it's a very good number for a paragraph of this length. Let's compare your version:
RARity’s LIPS left Spike’s FOREhead. He SWOONed, HIS back QUICKly MEETing THE floor. HEARTS and IMages of RARity SWAM in FRONT of HIS face. HIS tongue fell LIMPly OUT of HIS mouth. TWIlight SIGHed HEAVily, AND her gaze DRIFTed SIDEways. She DRAGged SPIKE up and SETtled him ONto a NEARby CUSHion.
In revising for clarity, you've doubled the number of flow breaks! You also have four one-word nouns with no accent, compared to one in the original--accented nouns help draw the reader in better than accented other words. In addition, the mere fact of having many short sentences in one paragraph can slow the reader down somewhat--for maximum flow, you need to balance the relationship between sentence length, paragraph length, and even the number of short or long paragraphs you have in a row.
I'd like to note that this does not in any way contradict your argument that the sentence as Bob wrote it is too long and confusing. This is why I, a writer who focuses heavily on flow, like to proofread for and be proofread by Sessalisk, a writer who focuses heavily on clarity--together, I think we help each other find a balance. You yourself seem to be a very clarity-focused writer, but you've always had poor flow, and I think you might benefit from working with a writer who's more flow-conscious.****
* Most notably Shakespeare's.
** Let me know if I botched up a stress or unstress--it's tricky to do this consciously.
*** As distinguished from other paces--the most frequently useful are smooth and choppy, although I've seen a couple writers get a strong effect out of a pace that feels like molasses slowly dripping out of a jar.
**** I've never encountered another writer who can actively describe the patterns that make a "flowing" sentence, but I often encounter writers who naturally fall into these patterns when writing. Other writers often describe them as having "beautiful" stories.
1376393 Writing has many facets, and clarity and sounding pretty are just two of them. My examples focused on the former, because that was the entire point of my post. If a writer is naturally good at one or the other, that is fine. Speaking from personal experience, however, unclear sentence structure is a much more common problem than inelegant flow, especially in the world of untrained hobbyists we find ourselves in. Speaking from personal preference, the former is much more damaging to readability than the latter. If a story is inelegant, it may be boring or forgettable, but if a story is unclear it is difficult to read in the first place. If I'm too distracted trying to figure out what was going on, then the flow is moot.
Think of it as building blocks or steps; you have to work your way from one to the other. I am "clarity focused" because that is the step I'm still climbing, as my selection of editors shows. You have to make your prose functional before you can make it pretty, because the former impedes the latter.
If you have found the editing yin to your writing yang, that is certainly serendipitous, and one day I plan to be good enough to work at a different facet of writing instead. I think your advice is beyond the scope of mine, or a mere response to it, though. I.E. it deserves to be its own blog post, not a response to someone else's. My post was very basic because that is the scope of my abilities. I will not contradict anything you've said, and I greatly appreciate the response, but I can't properly respond to it because I'm not at that level yet.
1376499
"Speaking from personal experience, however, unclear sentence structure is a much more common problem than inelegant flow, especially in the world of untrained hobbyists we find ourselves in. Speaking from personal preference, the former is much more damaging to readability than the latter. If a story is inelegant, it may be boring or forgettable, but if a story is unclear it is difficult to read in the first place. If I'm too distracted trying to figure out what was going on, then the flow is moot."
This is a very good point, and one I've had to be reminded of a few times. I'd be remiss not to note one solution, though: some authors maximize flow and clarity by using very simple words! Here's an extract from Ckat_Myla's A Pony's Sympathy:
"She came without her friends this time. This wasn’t the safest thing to do – the princess would not have advised it – but if Discord showed any signs of trouble Twilight knew that she could teleport back to the library in a second."
Try reading that aloud--you'll note that it falls into natural rhythms just because so many of the words are one syllable. The downside is that this absolutely guts authorial voice, but that can be an advantage in some cases. Ckat_Myla uses it to emphasize the distinct speech patterns she gives each of her characters, placing the accusations they make against each other in an impartial context for the reader to pick apart. Despite the simple style, A Pony's Sympathy is actually one of my favorite stories on Fimfiction because of this.* (Among professional writers, Orson Scott Card also tends in this direction, although his structures are a little more complex.)
* Note that this is to some degree contextual--Discord's Resignation uses a similar style to try to tell a story of mounting chaos and paranoia, and the telling of the tale clashes horribly with the subject matter.
1376567 I tried that approach--simple word choices and blunt delivery--with I Am Not the Actor. Originally it was supposed to mimic the clone's simple world view. Speaking from experience, though, that style has more than a few issues. As you said, it prevents the author from developing their own voice. It is also much harder to remain consistent when you are being so simplistic (or should I say, it's more tempting to break your own convention). To be honest, it is also a bit more boring to actually write.
Like all stylistic considerations, it has its pros and its cons.
1376650
As long as I've got this comment chain going, I might as well thank you for getting me thinking about this. A lot of this is stuff that I hadn't actually written out, and now that I'm looking at it in terms of these rules, I'm already finding counterexamples that make me question how the rules really work. (One thing I'm noticing is that the great authors I've looked at so far who break some of these rules tend to have other rules they consistently follow. Perhaps really good authors can create their own unique patterns? This deserves further research.)
1376790 One sign of mastery is knowing how to react to rules; when to break them, when to follow them, when to ignore them, and when to embrace them.
Explaining things to others often helps you understand them better yourself, a phenomenon I'm quite familiar with. Glad I could help in some respect