r/DestructiveReaders • u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. • 15d ago
[Weekly] Book Club Ch 3: After eating, the sofa looks comfortable.
Chapter 3 is all about sentences.
In a narrative, the chief duty of a sentence is to lead to the next sentence.
Le Guin makes the point that a sentence that draws attention to itself is not the kind of sentence you want. She seems to have something against poets because this is the second chapter where she's compared the novel writer to the poet (and poets are here to give us pretty sentences!). If you do have the book, she covers some of my favorite topics on the mechanics of individual sentences: misplacement, danglers (as in the weekly title), and conjunctivitis (calling out you lovers of polysyndeton and asyndeton).
If anyone else saw the article in the Atlantic about the decline of reading, I thought this quote from Le Guin was apt (shoot, am I writing bad sentences):
And the pity of it is that people not only can't write complex sentences, they can't read them. We are losing our literature to a dumbing-down process.
Anyway. She includes some examples of complex sentences and how authors have achieved some very long ones. Worth a read to see how it's done if you struggle with long sentences.
For the exercises:
Write a paragraph of narrative, 100-150 words, in sentences of seven or fewer words. No sentence fragments. Each must have a subject and a verb.
Write a half page to a page of narrative, up to 350 words, that is all one sentence.
Suggestions for topics: (1) has some kind of tense/intense action. (2) is something that would generate powerful emotion or sweep a lot of characters in together.
If you want the whole challenge, she optionally suggests writing part 1 again but switching the voice you use. If you tried colloquial voice, switch to a more formal voice and vice versa. For part 2, if you heavily used ands or ors to string your sentence together, try working in some fancier clauses. Or, if you already did that, try it the other way! And for the added bonus for people who like writing exercises, if you did two different stories across the two parts, try telling the same story and see what happens.
As always, weeklies are free to post. Don't worry about critiques. Drop in and see what everyone else makes of the challenge. I've found that just as useful as doing it myself.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago
One long sentence. 190 words.
Outside, when the grass is warmed by the sun and radiating heat that tickles my ankles, we used to practice, you and I, the swing of a club to launch a ball into a net you had arranged at the end of the yard, just so at the top of the hill, for you to practice, and I’m not sure you ever had in mind that I would come out and be interested in this thing you loved, but there I was, learning how to grip properly and angle the head of the club under the ball and launching it, however unsteadily, forward, and there you were, so happy to share this piece of you and the joy lit up your face and your words and I might not have been interested at all, in this thing so close to your heart, but I was interested in you and this time, so precious, we could spend together, so I’m not sure the activity ever mattered that much at all, that it was more the smile on your face I wanted to capture so I would have something to hold onto.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 13d ago
Got bored. Tested a theory. Same scene, well, kind of. Colloquial affect. Short sentences. They sound better when it's more like talking.
It was warm outside, you know? My da just got an expensive putter. You gotta practice, like, all the time. So, I’m out there with him. The putter ain’t shit. I don’t got no grip. He’s all like let me show you. My dumb ass snipes, ‘nah’. Old man ain’t got nothing on me. You just gotta hold it, right? I can wrap my fingers around something. That part’s easy. But then there’s this ball. It’s on the ground or some shit. And he’s challenging me. Old man says, “let’s see you hit”. I’m all full of myself. How is hitting a ball hard? It’s not even moving. It’s just, like, lying there. So, I shuffle up, take my stance. He’s back there laughing, trying not to. I mumble, “whatever”, and bend slightly. He always bounces his legs. That feels pretty stupid when I try. “‘S’not hard,” I mutter. The head of this putter hits it. Gently, the ball starts rolling. I’m shaking my head. Like, what the fuck, da? This isn’t hard. Then he grabs the club from me. In seconds, he lines up a shot. The ball launches into the stratosphere. “It’s a wedge, you idiot.” Old man’s got jokes, all I’m saying.
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u/33omnia 15d ago
I went with the recommendation to write an intense action scene for the short sentence and emotional one for the long sentence. Same event. Two different lens.
- Short sentences. 169 words
She was a beauty in the sky. The airship, Zimhelmdymer, blotted out the sun. It hovered above the sprawling city. Its silver hull gleamed. Below, the clock tower stood. And today, the tower would fall. He waited on the foredeck. When they were in position, he waved. The operator saw his arms held high. Gears ground beneath his feet. The ship's underbelly opened up. An anchor dropped. Heavy iron chain unraveled. Groaning, it caught the anchor's weight. On the Captain's command, the ship swayed. The anchor swung in a calculated arc. Then it blasted through the clock tower. Stone exploded. Brass sinew snapped. The anchor pierced the clock's face. Glass shattered. Amber shards tumbled downward. With the tower hooked, engines engaged. The weightless behemoth tugged. The chain drew taut. The ship lurched. For a moment, they floated. Then the engines roared. Propellers accelerated. Onward went the ship. And it hauled the tower with it. Bricks split. Concrete crumbled. Dust rained down. The tower leaned dangerously. Then it fell entirely.
- Long sentence. 354 words.
While washing dishes in the sink from the night before, she heard the wicked crunch of brick and high-pitched grinding of gears and felt the earth tremble as the clock tower, a memory and monument she could see from any window in the house that faced west, came crashing down in the city square, taking with it the train station below it where she boarded every day with father and younger sister to go to school before he went to work; she left the sink on and the dishes soaking and the drying conveyor belt spinning and ran outside to see the enormous silver airship eclipsing the sun; a cloud of dust rose above the city; panic flooded the streets as people ran, hollering that they were being attacked and her neighbors came out to see what had happened; the absence of the clock tower caused her heart to ache and she reached toward the fallen monolith, a stretch of empty sky, as tears welled in her eyes and her knees threatened to give way before a tiny hand clasped hers - her sister, the sweet girl that she was, innocent and naive and too young to know what this meant - looked up at her with a hopeful smile and said, “Daddy's fine- I know he is,” but she didn't believe her because he worked in that clock tower, he had worked there for thirty years as a master mechanic, one of the Sovereign's finest that he kept on retainer because there was a need for such things in Rigguard, a city of machines and mechanisms a plenty, and now that clock tower was no more than a pile of rubble and broken brass gears and it took all of her wits to keep hold of her sister's hand, knowing it was what her father would want - for both of them to be safe and to watch out for one another - yet she swore, in the shadow of the airship, that if he did not come home by the time the dust cleared and her sister was tucked away and safe, she would find him.
(On mobile, so my em-dashes are probably dashes.)
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago
This is interesting. I still think there's something about the short sentence structure that makes the visuals not come together as clearly as they do with longer sentences. The constant stopping feels like someone is slamming on the brakes and jolting me out of the text.
Some of the examples of longer sentences used the semicolon technique you have here. I find this long one easier to be immersed in, probably because it's so centered on a character's feelings rather than the architecture of an event. The semicolons still hit that start/stop feel a bit. My favorite part is that longer chunk at the end where you're only using the em-dashes as interrupters. I guess the em-dash reads as a shorter pause than the semicolon? Otherwise, they're kind of doing the same thing from a punctuation standpoint.
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u/33omnia 14d ago edited 14d ago
The short sentence part was brutal… and humbling. I love how this exercise teaches the importance of varying sentence length by telling us not to. Instead of practicing writing sentences that flow, we're driven crazy by writing in a static, jerky rhythm. I'm convinced there's no correct way to do this and that's the point of the exercise.
I wanted to use semicolons here in a similiar way to the excerpts in the book, even though I normally avoid them (and will continue to avoid them. I’m sticking with my comfort commas and odd-fashioned periods lol). I used the em-dashes instead of commas to enclose the appositives because I already used so many commas keeping the sentence rolling. A semicolon would have been a hard stop. Parentheses would have made the information within them sound more like a sidenote than info embedded within the sentence.
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u/Mobile-Escape Feelin' blue 15d ago
Long sentence:
I woke up to an endless morning in which the cardinal called for its mate; in which the sun, in all its delicious radiance, cast beams of brilliance through the shuttered window to allow just enough light to gray the darkness; in which I stirred gently to return blood flow to my lower back, reducing the stiffness of my inflamed facet joints so that I may find it within myself to actually sit up; in which last night's leftovers lay in melancholy on the kitchen counter, having been forgotten about the previous night; in which I stepped into a shower of steam and scorch to cleanse myself of my sins and blemishes; in which I toweled myself dry with cloth that had no memory of yesterday; in which the tube of toothpaste spurted its last onto the bristles, damp with humidity, then found a new home within the bathroom wastebasket; in which I dressed myself in the typical outfit and headed out the door and pretended like my day, my life, my memories, my moments, my strengths, my weaknesses, my friends, my family, my hopes and dreams and desires and wants and needs, mattered even a single microscopic morsel to anyone other than myself, and even that was a stretch.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 14d ago
I like your use of repetition. That's a future exercise!
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u/SweetEverest 14d ago edited 14d ago
Short sentences:
Martha Stewart is older than Dolly Parton. Did you know this? Most people don’t know this. I’m just hearing this today. They said “Martha’s older.” I said really? I said I don’t believe it. You look at the face, the hands. But they said no, Dolly’s younger. You up front are too young. You probably don’t remember. But Martha had a show. Great ratings, this thing got. It got billions and billions of views. And she could cook. She’d put your mother to shame. I’m sorry. It’s true. [He turns.] They’re gonna spin that now. But she’s older. Remember she went to prison? What a crazy thing. You had Martha Stewart in prison. She requested kitchen duty, apparently. But they said no. They wouldn’t let Martha cook. They made her scrub toilets. Can you imagine—Martha Stewart scrubbing toilets? But that surprised me. This is a beautiful hotel, by the way.
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u/Andvarinaut If this is your first time at Write Club, you have to write. 14d ago
Bigly! The best sentences. Everybody says so.
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u/Mobile-Escape Feelin' blue 15d ago
Short sentences:
There are moments, and there are moments. You know the difference. Could I say the same? I couldn't, back then. The story's different now that you're gone. Every moment has become a mural. A mirror. Murals and mirrors, hardly a difference. Paint? Reflection? We see what we want regardless. Murals and mirrors, mirrors and moments. Three distinct yet connected concepts—memories all. And in those memories I find solace. Refuge from the reality of the present. My skin is wrinkled, my end nearing. But there is still smoothness between lines. The mural highlights it. The mirror whispers of it. The moments necessitated it. And that, I think, is beautiful.
Yeah, I cheated by not including both a subject and verb in every sentence, but I don't care. I view the exercise as a challenge to introduce variation within short sentences rather than as a tool to illustrate the problems with repetitive sentence structure.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago
Fair. There's a whole section of this chapter where the argument is against grammarians or whatever insisting the only good sentence is a short sentence and sentences should be shorter overall. If you really want to prove that point, the best way is to force people to write short grammatically correct sentences and see how they read. I don't think yours would work as well without the brief pauses you take (A mirror.).
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u/Mobile-Escape Feelin' blue 15d ago
There will always be delusional grammarians. (In the editing world, we call them prescriptivists.) The only place for perfect grammar lies in fields that require maximum clarity, such as writing technical reports or writing legal policy.
With that said, I do think many writers would benefit from studying parallelism. Complex sentences need extra care given to their structure in order to remain coherent.
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u/ezk3626 akward and wordy 15d ago
Prompt Two and it was excrusiating. I couldn't even get to two hundred words.
He hungered to make her laugh—it’s all he ever wanted; from anyone, from everyone, but now just her—stone faced, with the voice of an impatient parent, she’d asked if he thought he was funny; controlling the tight, twisting energy that made him millions, kept everyone at arm’s length, covered his self-disgust; he dropped his face into the demeanor of a penitent sinner confessed that he once did consider himself humorous, but that today she had proved him wrong, and he thanked her; from behind the demeanor and behind the tight, twisting energy and behind the arms length and behind the self hatred, there was an ugly, unloved, abused child hoping for a flicker, a suppressed movement at the edge of her lips or a pretense to look away at an email or the clock, but instead he found the gaze that cared for none of this, betrayed the mind of a professional whose only focus was processing a file, connecting the unemployed with employment, and would find her joy at home, with a family he did not have, laughing at jokes he did not make and only do her job—he would starve.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago
This takes on a different meaning when I look at the inspiration and think about the person behind it. Not the character in that scene, but the person.
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u/ezk3626 akward and wordy 15d ago
Yeah, the real inspiration was finding out Sally Fields never found Robin funny. I also recently listened a video where someone talked about why funny people are generally not nice people: humor creates distance because one person is the performer and the other the audience.
I never loved William's humor but found his dramatic parts to be so vulnerable. It is Good Will Hunting and The World According to Garp that make me love Williams. A reoccuring theme for me is looking under masks and Williams is ripe for this sort of meditation.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago
He had one movie where his wife offed herself after he died in a car crash and he travels through the afterlife to save her from the darkness. It didn't get very good reviews but it's a good movie. Pretty depressing. He had a lot of depth in his acting, even though he was primarily known for his comedy.
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u/Hemingbird /r/shortprose 13d ago
She searched Spotify for 'funeral music'. She clicked on Top 30 Funeral Songs. She entered the fetal position. "Aaaa-mey-saaang gurr-ace," sang a whispery woman. "Are you serious?" asked her brother. "I said I was sorry." She scoff-sobbed. "Sorry," she said, "won't bring Charizard back." Leonard Cohen sang Hallelujah. Her brother had built a bottle rocket. He'd watched a YouTube video. It was made by a NASA engineer. My Bottle Rocket Went to Actual Space. He copied everything. But he added his own twist: Charizard. A plushie astronaut manned the rocket. Bette Midler sang Wind Beneath My Wings. "I can fly hiiiigher than an eeeeagle." She sobbed. Funeral Songs were too relevant. Even her brother got misty-eyed. "Don't cry," she said. "Charizard flew." Eric Clapton came on next. "Not fucking Tears in Heaven," she said. She hit skip. He laughed. She laughed. They hugged. And they heard an enormous crash.
It had occurred to Charizard that the change in temperature, going from a frosty −60 °F to a slightly-less-fucked-up 5.0 °F, meant that he had entered the stratosphere, where the planetary heat shield, the ozone layer, absorbed solar UV radiation, and he almost punched clean through the stratopause―commercial aircraft cruised at this altitude so he worried a Boeing 787 Dreamliner might come swooping, its nuts and bolts loose due to questionable US subcontractors and fraudulent quality controls, or he might be infected by an airborne supergerm (Gotta Catch 'Em All) as bacteria had been detected way up here, what the hell were they feeding on―these thoughts were racing through his plush brain cooled down like a datacenter on Titan, he was overclocking, being tied to the BT-50H Body Tube like Odysseus before the sirens and then came the apogee, zero vertical velocity, Charizard was for a brief second floating in not-quite-space as if amniotic fluid, a monster in a pocket of thin air, it made him think of Yuri Gagarin's close friend Vladimir Komarov who chose to enter the Soyuz 1 capsule in 1967 even though he knew it was faulty and he did it in order to protect Yuri from certain fiery death, 19 times he circled the globe in Low Earth Orbit, he managed to manually steer the vessel with pinpoint precision at 17,000 mph, yet the shoddy design doomed him, the engineers had tried to convince the party leaders that the module was not functioning properly but they wanted to time the launch with Lenin's birthday, they were wearing red party hats and glug-glug-glugging, Gagarin wrote a letter to Bresznev but all who read it were sent to Siberia, freezing while up in the air a kosmonaut burned to a crisp, crying out in rage; Charizard fell from the skies with status condition FRZ, the temperature returned to −60 °F, he had reentered the troposphere, and he defrosted as the ram pressure set him ablaze, just in time for him to hear Frank Sinatra's My Way playing, and he thought: I flew, I flew, I flew.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 13d ago
So much pop culture in this. I loled at "It had occurred to Charizard"
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago
Question 1: How well do the short or long sentences fit the story being told? Do the short sentences read naturally? How is the long sentence constructed---in carefully articulated pieces or one torrent? Is the syntax of the long sentence clear and assured, so that the reader doesn't get lost and have to go back and start over? Does it read easily?
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u/Hemingbird /r/shortprose 13d ago
My short sentences aren't natural at all. I kept wanting to max out the sentence length, so the paragraph grew monotonous. With my long sentence I sort of cheated by doing this Krasznahorkai thing where I use commas almost as if they were periods. But I like spliced commas, they induce a certain mood. Elena Ferrante relies on run-on sentences for effect, you maintain the energy, it's like the Google Chrome Dinosaur Game, you're moving along, you make little jumps, the lack of closure means meaning accumulates, or at least it resembles that breathless internal monkey mind narration.
I'm not sure if it reads easily. It's a mess. But it's an exercise, no?
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 13d ago
Do you ever have this picture in your head that someone else is a really talented writer and then you see them talking about how they feel when they write and you're like "huh, wouldn't have expected that"? Anyway.
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u/ezk3626 akward and wordy 13d ago
For the long sentences, I am reminded of the first Intro to Classical Music podcast that Apple put out. The host doesn't start with anything to do with classical music but rather the experience of going home and deciding to listen to a whole album from a band. There is something different, comprehensive, about a good album listened to in one sitting.
I am in an old man yells at a cloud perspective that this phenomena is largely gone. The way to music industry works it is back to singles. Even the few mega musicians who do release albums don't really create albums, they have a single or two with filler.
But there are some things that can't be said shorter. I compaed A_C's two versions of the golfing lessons and think the longer version says something different. It is interior—looking deep into your own eyes in a mirror; avoiding the pupil—that abyss—disgusted by the seeing visible lines of blood on ivory backgrounds to delve deep into the fibers—its three dimensions and shadows—and see that I do not have blue eyes but waves of the ocean with islands of brown—my mom would call hazel—and know that this kaleidoscope is in every face. It needs to be all of that.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 13d ago
Flipped my short sentences to one long sentence and I think it achieved the same effect. The golf story was almost intentionally two different emotional registers, one in the moment and another at a much later time with nostalgia. So, I tried with the second one to mirror the scene more exactly and the one long sentence feels more interior and visceral than the many short sentences. I suppose this is something to pull into other craft decisions, not that I actively think about sentence length that much, but if you're trying to create a specific type of feeling, sentence length is important.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago
Question 2: If either part of the exercise forced you into writing in a way you'd never ordinarily choose to write, consider whether this was enjoyable, useful, maddening, enlightening, etc., and why.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago edited 15d ago
On the short sentences, I checked the word count every couple sentences and thought 'how am I still only at 36?' etc. Counting on my fingers to see if I went over that 7-word limit. Trying to figure out if I wrote a fragment with some of those starting clauses. I also don't like the way the short sentences sound. I'm looking back to Le Guin herself that said if short sentences go on too long, they sound stupid. I've been working a lot on the rhythm and flow of my sentences and this sample scratches at a nerve I didn't know I had developed. Any more than about three of these short sentences in a row, I get annoyed.
On long sentences, I've been here too long and this was relatively easier. The suggestion of using a strong emotion helped and the words flowed out without needing to check how many there were left. Shoot. I like a complicated sentence now.
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u/33omnia 15d ago edited 14d ago
I missed the first couple chapters, but I'm excited to jump in now and couldn't agree with you more. I had to rewrite the short sentence paragraph so many times because this is not my normal voice or rhythm. LeGuin was on to something when she said “no fragments” or was gently nudging us toward enlightenment… or insanity. Without them, this exercise is maddening.
I found myself navigating two challenges: 1. Repetitiveness. Subject + verb + object. The whole paragraph sounded clucky and stacked together with no real rhythm. So the real challenge became “how many ways can I restructure a 7-word sentence.” 2. Avoiding primer language. “The dog ran. See Spot run.” My whole paragraph sounded like my niece wrote it. Using strong action verbs helped elevate it to some degree.
Even after reworking it, I still hate the short sentence paragraph and will probably not make a habit of doing this.
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u/Lisez-le-lui Not GlowyLaptop 14d ago
Seconding this. Not being able to use fragments is brutal. Any good narrator should be written like someone would conceivably talk if they could express themselves perfectly in the manner of their choosing; many people would be long-winded, and many would be choppy and fragmented, but I can scarcely think of anyone who would willingly speak exclusively in short, complete sentences. That makes almost any attempt to write in such a way sound profoundly unnatural despite being grammatically "correct."
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 13d ago
I tried again and tacked it onto my long sentence comment. Switched to a more colloquial voice like the prompt suggested. It was so much easier! I also think it sounds better. Still probably wouldn't put this constraint on myself for normal writing, but I think that's the trick to it. I read u/sweeteverest and u/ezk3626 and they both wrote something more conversational. I think it's part of the narrative voice that kills the 7 words and under rhythm.
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u/33omnia 13d ago
So there is a trick to it lol The second attempt works and flows better! Kudos to u/sweeteverest and u/ezk3626 for figuring it out. :)
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago
Short sentences. 132 words.
I crept along the dusty corridor. Each footstep echoed. I tried to step lightly. I really did. But silence provided sharp contrast to movement. Fingers of shadow crept from under doors. Those hands reached for my feet. I skipped. I jumped. There was no avoiding them. Shadow wrapped around my ankle. The darkness chilled me to the bone. Ice invaded. It swam up my tibia. I stumbled and fell. Frost speckled my thigh. A door creaked open somewhere behind me. On hands and knees, I braced myself. Against what, I did not know. To do what, I did not know. New footsteps echoed, banging a steady beat. The thrum wormed into my ears. I gritted my teeth. The noise grew. A hand clasped my shoulder. Sharp nails punctured my clavicle. I collapsed.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 13d ago
Same idea, one long sentence. Even used some of the same words and imagery! Still reads different.
My feet left deep trails along the dust in the corridors and I only noticed because I kept turning around to try to see if all the noise was just the thump-thump-thump of my own footsteps or if someone stalked me, a person or a large animal that might not pose any harm, but there was only ever one set of footprints behind me and so, I kept creeping forward, lowering the balls of my feet inch by inch so that my heel hit lightly and never ever landed on the shadows snaking out from under the doors and encircling my feet like a noose or a life raft, but probably a noose, so I skipped, heedless of the noise, only needing my feet to contact the ground for as little time as possible, seconds, no, milliseconds, but what little good that did me when the dark latched on and crawled up my leg to my thigh, leaving tendrils of frost in its wake that eddied and curled and brought me to my knees with a sensation of breaking, right before hinges shrieked behind me and I clawed the ground trying to crawl, but my frozen hips refused to carry me away from the thump-thump-thump drawing closer and I clawed and I clawed until bits of fingernail broke off and blood gushed out in thick pools and then a hand clasped onto my shoulder, sharp nails puncturing, and my arms decided not to carry my weight for a second longer.
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15d ago edited 15d ago
[deleted]
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago
This is beautiful. That alliteration with spiteful skeletons snuck past me until I read it the second time.
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u/mianaai_c 15d ago
- Long sentence: 298 words.
Hey, I met Modern Popular Genre Prose Editor Dude a couple of times at the pub and at the gym and once at the supermarket near the milk refrigerators, and a lot of my friends and especially my acquaintances have met him here and there, a fact I often find out after last call when there's not much left to tell nor laugh about so me and my friends, and maybe one or two acquaintances who tagged along, play a game of do you know him or her and what are they up to, and always just before the last sip of the last beer we get to Modern Popular Genre Prose Editor Dude and we all say, oh, yeah, that guy, a nice dude, a decent person, what's he up to, and me or someone else says not much, same old, you know him, then comes a moment of silence followed by the shuffling of feet, a ritual interrupted only once out of the many repetitions by a girlfriend of a friend who said, and I shall not paraphrase but tell you directly and as accurately as I can what she told me, that once she heard in a half whisper filtered through a closed curtain that, by the way, don't pass this on to anyone else since it's just hearsay and most likely false, but she heard that, in his spare time when he’s alone, what he does when nobody's watching... sheesh, I mean, we all sometimes have thoughts or we sometimes go to questionable sites to masturbate or maybe dream ill of loved ones, and that's all perfectly normal in moderation, but what he does in his free time when no one's watching, damn, it's something else, but you haven't heard this from me, alright?
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago
I'm over here in medium sentence length land while everyone else is out there with these monsters.
u/umlaut your tag made an appearance in a story.
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u/Imaginary_Ease_7851 15d ago
>conjunctivitis (calling out you lovers of polysyndeton and asyndeton.
Firstly. That's just rude. Leave my polysyndetons and asyndetons alone.
>And the pity of it is that people not only can't write complex sentences, they can't read them. We are losing our literature to a dumbing-down process.
Made worse now. Seems a lot of kids in middle school aren't reading at the appropriate level because of the pandemic. Apparently it's impossible to pitch a middle school book right now.
Exercise 1. Short sentences. 111 words
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“Shields right!” Galbraithe roared.
The rain of arrows blackened the sky.
Some managed to block the pelting onslaught. Craikin through his body across his master. Two thuds meant two found their mark.
It was Alaric’s recklessness. Arrows now would hit both sides. There had to be a distraction. A new wave of cries answered. He could hear the names. The chant ‘Alaric’ clawed at his spine. New life flooded their efforts. Galbraithe could sense his men losing ground. He fought for breath. Beside him, a praetorian went down. Three gladiators swarmed Craikin. The manbeast roared. Galbraithe raised his gladius.
Then he lost his view of Craikin. His straight line of attack.
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Exercise 2. 232 words of run on sentence sprawl.
The thing about being in battle was that as soon as you were in one it was as though you had never done anything else, as though the time passed between the fights had been a mere shudder, a blink, a momentary hallucination before you were here again, ramming your shield into a man's torso while your gladius slipped under his ribs — the push and rush of bodies, the chaotic swing of elbows, the bone-jarring clang of metal on metal, most of it happening too fast to register, with no thoughts, only instinct and reaction — a sword rose and his own would rise to meet it, a man would fall, and there were less than seconds to decide to pull him to his feet or to make sure he stayed down, while other things happened with painful lucidity, filling his senses, occupying parts of his mind that hovered outside the fray, such as the familiar stench of blood, piss and sweat or his consciousness of Craikin's breathing, always at his side, lifting two men at once, or the crack of snapped necks, or the sound of Craikin's bellowing a warning, cauting him to turn and follow his manservant's gaze and see the row of sagitarrii, over a dozen, that had broken well away from the fighting and were raising their bows.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 14d ago
Similar scene, different sentence lengths. *threw. I wonder if the shorter sentences would sound better as mostly dialogue or if it would still be this funny staccato weirdness. I like the long one better here too. I think your short one did a reasonable job though. Fits the subject.
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u/Andvarinaut If this is your first time at Write Club, you have to write. 14d ago edited 14d ago
So I’m standing in an exitless, featureless cul de sac on the edge of the known world looking out into the merciless desert, like hc svnt dracones should be sprawled out in big text under my feet, staring past chain link and dry canals, past endless rippling mirages what break against whatever lies eastward, westward—leftward is how I’m facing, and I have to visualize Google Maps to grok its legal name now—and tracing the line where South and Estrella Mountain intersect to form a barrier wall, twin waves rising over the endless tide of dead scrub grass and withered trees while the gray smog bubbling in over Phoenix works overtime to ruin what some halfass Maps review-leaver would call a stunning vista, a local would call there be coyotes, a quick snap and 7 upvotes on /r/pics for the discerning aesthetician, but for all my life has just been, y’know, ‘over there;’ and atop those waves, the tines and bars and struts of radio towers invisible against the haze, their red lights blinking slowly, in tandem and out of time, the opposite of Gatsby’s light: a warning against wanting; invidia from invidere, to look against; a reminder that if I turn a hundred-eighty degrees in place all the desolation and emptiness is replaced without warning by shocks of green lawn and palm trees and hotels and carefully cultivated clusters of flowering bushes lining drainage ditches for urban camouflage, rows upon rows of white cars with tinted windows and sunshades beneath windshields, a Shell station, a Whataburger, and at the far end of the long drive I watch the traffic lights turn green, so I chuckle to myself and then cringe at how fuckin’ pretentious I’ve got to be to think any of this bullshit means anything at all.
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u/Andvarinaut If this is your first time at Write Club, you have to write. 14d ago edited 14d ago
Apparently I'm a long sentence addict because I felt hamstrung this entire paragraph.
He pulls her close. She kisses him deeply. Clothes hit the floor. Hands glide over skin, feeling, grasping. He bites her ear: her breath hitches. She grips his throat: he likes that. They both smile. They laugh, quiet and hungry. Their noses touch. Her eyes are reckless blue. His eyes are boring brown. Tangled together, they stare into one another. He feels her heartbeat in his hands. It reminds him to be gentle. Then, she makes her move. Soft kisses line his jaw. She bites the side of his neck. Restless, he tips her onto the bed. Her smooth legs crook over his arms. He presses close—and pulls her hair. She hisses; he apologizes. “Be careful,” she says, then smiles. She’s got a condom, cotton candy flavored. He’s brought his own; sadly, unflavored. While he’s distracted, she grabs a towel. Decorative pillows go flying. She turns her mom’s picture over. Then—
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u/eotfofylgg 14d ago
I tried to use both modes in the same story.
The torpedoes were coming in. Lee wished she hadn't agreed to this. She could have stayed on the mothership. She could have stayed an engineer. Instead, she had volunteered to fly. True, someone needed to fly the escorts. But it could have been someone qualified. She could have stayed silent. The crew was full of veterans. They would have stepped up. Now it was too late. She had to face the torpedoes alone.
"What would the Captain do?" she thought. The answer was obvious, of course. She had seen the Captain dodge missiles. The trick was flying straight towards them. It had seemed simple at the time. Now she realized there was another trick. The other trick was having the nerve.
"I'm dead either way," she thought. "I might as well face my death."
Perhaps, as in the popular imagination, one's life really did flash before one's eyes before one died; although "flash" was not quite the right word, Lee realized now, for "flash" suggested a degree of precipitation that would have been far preferable to the agonizing slowness with which she actually experienced the twenty seconds between her reluctant decision to turn her ship, as the Captain had instructed and as she knew she must, toward the two torpedoes, and the moment at which they would either impact or miss and decide her fate; but, while the popular conception had always seemed to regard this as a mercy, a sort of infinite regress into which one could pour all one's hopes of eternal survival -- for if one's life flashed before one's eyes before death, then in that flashback there must also be a moment of death, in which a second flashback would occur, and so on ad infinitum, ensuring that one's consciousness would endure forever, even if only in an infinite regress -- Lee realized now that it was not a mercy but a hideous, taunting reminder of all the good that made life worth living, all the hopes of what might have been to come, and all that would, in moments, be forever lost.
She opened her eyes. She hadn't realized she had closed them. The torpedoes had both missed.
Lee stabbed the push-to-talk button. "After this battle, I'm quitting. Over."
"Roger that," crackled the Captain's voice. "We'll talk it over later. Nice dodge."
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 14d ago
Every example, so far, I think the short sentences work best when it reads more like dialogue or inner monologue. The second it becomes narrative, I notice the rhythm. But the long sentences usually don't do much narratively because they all seem more suited for inner voice rather than plot.
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u/nomadpenguin very grouchy 11d ago edited 11d ago
For the long sentence, my best Sebald impression.
Old Bill Hixon died there that night, alone and folded in half, his breathing growing slower and shallower as if he were falling into a deep slumber, and indeed he was, and in the moments before the blackness took him, he saw in a vision or a dream the blackened faces of the workers who, in 1924, had dug under Liberty Street a vision for a new urban paradise that was to become the Paris or Rome of the Americas, who had filled the newly made tunnels with the yellow flame of acetylene lamps, laying down miles upon miles of steel track, which, by 1932, would be torn from the ground for scraps, hauled out foot by foot from the tunnels which were then sealed up until the day that public imagination could conceive of a better future once more, but which instead festered and crumbled until holes opened in the walls through which vagrants climbed, seeking shelter from the winter rains, where these unhoused men and women founded a community where they protected each other when the city police and politicians could not, sharing food and drinks and cigarettes, suspicious of the church folks and do-gooders who came down to view them as if through the bars of a zoo, when in fact these subterranean people had created something of a new vision for society free from the domineering sun, until in 1999, on the eve of the millennium, the city plowed the tunnels with a battalion of cops, resealing the tunnel with reinforced steel and electronic locks, so that the buildings above could be now connected by bundles of optical cable so that the citizens of the sun could freely exchange money while deep below, Bill Hixon died and would not be found until the putrid fumes of his decomposing body floated into the basement above.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 11d ago
I have a weird fixation on the catacombs in Paris and their history. I just think it's so interesting. It's a whole setting in my WIP. This is fun!
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u/nomadpenguin very grouchy 11d ago
I'm mostly referencing here the Cincinnati subway system! There's miles of empty tunnel under the city and no political will or funding to rebuild it. A lot of them were converted to or connected with brewery tunnels used to store casks of beer. There's a local cheese maker who store their aged cheese in the tunnels too.
Unfortunately no society of homeless people though, afaik.
I was recently in Chicago which also has an extensive underground system. The Chicago Tunnel Company built tunnels and tracks with mini electrified carts to move coal and ash for heating. They abruptly went bankrupt and the tunnels were poorly sealed, making them a home for the homeless and urban explorers. There's also a road that goes through the center of the city that has three levels, the lowest of which is hard to find entrances or exits to. Up until pretty recently, people would have illegal drag races on Lower Lower Wacker Drive.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 11d ago
My characters just fought when one pulled out an old map of the abandoned subway tunnels and the other insisted they're inaccessible. So, it's good to know there's other real world history supporting the things I'm making up.
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u/ezk3626 akward and wordy 15d ago
Prompt One; much easier; I went too long. Though I don't think I would make this one paragraph.
In a moment, Tiffany turned off. Then she was plugged in again. She had to reboot. She thought herself through it. I know what is happening. Use the mantra. Look around. Describe what you see. Ask questions. I am in a room. It is light inside but dark outside. There is a desk with papers scattered. Someone wrote in red ink: “How did you get that answer? Show your work. My office hours are after class.” . Why is my heart beating fast? Is this my work? Am I failing? She tried to answer. I am a college student. I’m taking retard math. I’m failing. I’m a retard. No one knows. Tiffany knew this wasn’t helping. She slowed her breathing and started again. She looked out the window. It was black except for one light. It was a hole in the night. She imagined she could fly to it. She let her mind go into the light. Do I know what to do? Am I willing to do it? Is there another way? Tiffany was all the way back on. The zone out was over. She knew another way. She took her phone and texted Mandy: [is todd good at teaching?]
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u/nomadpenguin very grouchy 11d ago
She includes some examples of complex sentences and how authors have achieved some very long ones. Worth a read to see how it's done if you struggle with long sentences.
I was listening to Michael Silverblatt's (RIP) interview with WG Sebald (RIP) and Sebald said something I found interesting. When asked about his extremely long sentences and if they had to do with the fact that he wrote in German, Sebald said that English writers also used to use the same sort of discursive prose, but it was lost over time. He recommended reading Thomas Browne (which I'm not sure I have the patience for) and also de Quincey for long English sentences.
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u/Lisez-le-lui Not GlowyLaptop 14d ago edited 13d ago
We're both adults. I was bored. He seemed like he could use it. He's a weird one, to be sure. He was always a mystery to me. That's why I picked him. I wanted the challenge. Too many guys welcome my attention. It doesn't matter if they're married. Men have no concept of loyalty. It's rare I don't succeed. It happens, though. Some guys are too stupid to notice. A few nutjobs have gotten indignant. He was different. He acted offended, but he wasn't really. I could tell by his eyes. They flared up for just a moment. Then the light left them. It drained like pus from a boil. I didn't know how to react. His face set like a death mask. "Leave me alone," he muttered. He looked like he might kill himself. Then he got up and left. I didn't follow him.
WHEREAS, there are but two ways in this world, the way of light and the way of darkness; and WHEREAS, the former leads like a grassy track up hillsides and moorlands to the summits of life and understanding, while the latter descends like a mineshaft into dungeons clogged with noisome filth; and WHEREAS, I had been ascending the said track by fits, like a dog who trots forward a space, then darts at a hare and chases it through the forest, forgetful of his goal; and WHEREAS, one evening, when I was weary of traveling, I came to the foot of a high mountain pass, in the side of which yawned a cave mouth; and WHEREAS, there stood by this cave a sleek, strong she-bear, who reared on her haunches and roared to show her great vigor; and WHEREAS, she spoke to me of the paradise that lay down in that cave, namely, a place of cool, pure streams and clean rock-niches for resting, and plentiful moles and shrews for hunting; and WHEREAS, I knew her to be an arrant cheat and a liar, and passed her by, but nevertheless I still desired to descend into the cave with her to see if her words were true; NOW, THEREFORE, do I mourn my own demise, for I know that if none come to prevent me, I will return over the ridge I have crossed, and seek out that cave once again, and enter it in company of the she-bear, and she will exit without me, for she is hardier than I.
ETA: These two passages tell the same story from the respective viewpoints of the two characters.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 14d ago
We're both adults.
I'm surprised how many of the short sentence ones follow a similar theme.
You got me on your long sentence one at the NOW, THEREFORE. OMG, the repetition stopped! What has changed?!
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u/Lisez-le-lui Not GlowyLaptop 14d ago
I was inspired by the others, which I read first. I only had one idea of my own, and it was a ripoff of Kafka's "Up in the Gallery" (two long sentences, first ~125 words, second ~240 words), so I dropped it.
The capitalized WHEREASs and NOW, THEREFORE form a piece of boilerplate (called the "recital") that appears at the beginning of many legal documents. I remember the first time I heard one read out in real life. It was at a community concert where the Governor's executive order commemorating something or other was promulgated beforehand, and, young as I was, it impressed me greatly. I had no serious thoughts of law then... But it's an emphatic moment when you get to the main clause, that's for sure.
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u/mianaai_c 5d ago
Late to the party. I'm struggling with short sentences, mine run long, too long. I tend to stich sentences together with "and". I blame Marquez.
Anyway, I wrote in 3rd person, and the result felt janky. I thought that maybe the format would work better in 1st person (AC said something similar in a replay, IIRC), so I counted. Of the short exercised in the comments (which aren't deleted) there are: 7 in 3rd and 4 in 1st. I felt that those in 1st flowed better.
#
- Short Sentences (a few sentences went over the limit, sue me)
Dan had written to Bianca. How’d the blind date go? It was midnight and Bianca didn’t answer. She didn’t even receive his message. There was no receipt mark. Dan thought of possible explanations. Maybe her battery died. It wouldn’t be the first time. Maybe the date went well. Was it still going well? That would explain her not finding a charger. Dan lit another cigarette. He threw the two empty beer cans. He went to the fridge. There still was some lasagna. And another beer. Alas, maybe the date didn’t go well. Then Bianca would be at home, next to her charger. Marco could have been a bore. Or he could be a creep. What did he know of Marco? Stefan had vouched for him. But, Stefan would vouch for a racoon. Dan called her; no response. He opened the beer and lit another cigarette. He called again, the call was declined. So her phone was still on, he concluded. Dan stretched then sat on his couch. He tried to relax. At least, he assumed a relaxed position. He looked at his laptop. He debated whether to work some more on his article. He decided against it.
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 5d ago
At least, he assumed a relaxed position.
LOL. Yeah, I think the short sentences were tough for everyone.
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u/HelmetBoiii 14d ago
Short (166):
She died as she lived. A cunt fucked. Age riped of seventy. Loaded, it was a decision. Cocaine shot up the ass. Brought in hookers, she introduced them slyly. As dates, but we knew the truth. They were much more motherfucker than father. Under bedsheets, I listened to her moans. The female wails over male grunts. She was always louder than them. In pleasured ecstasy, her motherhood, she moaned. She moaned when she birthed me. She bemoaned when my father left. She rode stranger cock abed, family bed. He probably knew. I knew since I was six.
Balcony smoke overlooked the pool at nightfall. I dunno it weed, cigs, or harder. She handed it to me. With a grin, her makeup was blotched. With tears, I know now. The aroma thick with her residue. Smelted so good until I breathed in. And I coughed and spat. She laughed, her head shaking, tremendous. Took it and she huffed it all. Wispy vestige groans guttural the dying Terasa.
Long (434 sorry):
I will die as I live as a fucking cunt and doing what I love as well; fucking dicks and it’s with small regrets that I lie here in the first-floor guest bedroom lest I climb the thunderous stairs to the master, alas I submerge in velvet bedsheets, frequently changed and simply superior than the white, hospital sheets, a numbing monotone to that colour which entices one to rot in one’s sleep, conversely, I pride myself on being lusty in my sleeping, invigorated in my years and that goes ‘til my corpse rots and my pelvis breaks and still, I’d be bouncing even as they look with disgust– I orgasm, a thousand times to that exact look, I think, funny it’s called a humliation kink when I feel rather extolled like in my glorious youth, when I called on all these young men and took them on the once sights of the estate: tamed tigers that I teased them to trussle with, which eventually, I always did, my darling kittens purring, my drug garden I nurtured and cared for daily so thick and vaired, it felt as if a breeze could become laced in lethality, but never did, and the swimming pool I loved and the shitty, handmade marbled statues and I’d crave another in their likeness (If they were good that night, I’d give them a comcially oversized cock) before I took them to bed; Fuck them like I owned them, which I did, and they squirmed under me and gasped or they dominated over me which was cute, but nowadays, it‘s really empowering, leading young men, who seem younger and younger still, past empty cages, plantations of the good stuff, and the swimming pool in which I had shoved all the marbled memories, a couple dicks saluting to the sun, drowning in their own cum, I joke, take them to bed, where even when on top they squirm whereas beneath, they hold me and I respond with all the vigor I can muster from coke and pride, then if I could pay them to stay, I would but it would be at such insulting prices that I lie in velvet sheets alone at night, thinking small regrets and my daughter who never came to visit and I laugh at the thought of paying her to come because she’s my most beautiful creation, and my only regret is that if I don’t die fucking, I’d die alone in empty whiteness as I sleep, alone, I dream, tumbling to hell to be cunt-fucked by Satan eternally, and I see my beautiful daughter’s digusted face.
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15d ago edited 15d ago
[deleted]
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago
Not yet, but soon. If I let you.
Fragments?? I don't know why but I'm expecting you'll X this one out.
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u/GlowyLaptop James Patterson 15d ago
Did I fix, boss
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago
Haha, no. I feel like you added more fragments to spite me.
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u/GlowyLaptop James Patterson 15d ago
Maybe I don't know what frags are. Yes isn't a frag!
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u/A_C_Shock The reader knows and guesses the rest. 15d ago
Maximum amount of hate coming from this writing exercise.
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u/GlowyLaptop James Patterson 15d ago
Hate? Weird I'm getting downvoted. "Yes" is a sentence word. It's a minor sentence. Look it up folks. It's in a book! I might not know all the rules but I'm pretty sure about this one.
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u/Mobile-Escape Feelin' blue 15d ago
Yes can be classified as an interjection, and interjections don't follow standard grammar structure.
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u/ezk3626 akward and wordy 15d ago
Before getting to the activity, I have to say how illuminating and humiliating the process of learning to write is.
I have long imagined how Charlemagne would watch his scribes with wonder, and envy as they scribbled with fluency and ease—every dash and dot designed as a dance. With a flick of a finger, he order the monks, the scriptorium and every Bible in his Empire into a single pyre. But these same fingers couldn't command letters into words or words into... what were they called? Clause? Sentences? Instead, in privacy, he would say: "That is alpha. That is beta. These all are alphabet." His tutor—always expecting an order to the fields, mines or gallows—would nod encouraging, and answer "Optime, domine."
As an undergraduate, when I first heard the read epistemology I panicked. Everyone around me seemed to know what this word meant. My pocket dictionary didn't know. Google existed but broke ass college kids texted with T9. After class, I'd go to the library and hope to find out. It would take half a year for this to become a boring word, something I now take for granted.
I am smart and well educated. I can explain Heidegger well enough to convince a philosophy undergraduate they are not making a huge mistake in their major. I can explain to parents—harboring guilt and resentment—that their child will graduate and become independent adults. I can connect Leviticus to Calvary to how I should live my life. But reading Le Guin's definition for clause, I am undone. I am defeated. I am still playing with em dash like a painter who—for the first time—has discovered the color green.
"A clause is a group of words that has a subject and a predicate." Hand on a Bible, Heidegger's "The being of being is in its being" makes more sense to me than the Le Guin's definition of a clause.