An interesting and, ironically, short article in the Los Angeles Times by way of The Passive Voice on the reason it's a good thing not all modern fiction embraces the short, declarative sentence - an idea for which many would say I have an apparent (and extensive) appreciation. Hats off to all writers who like to capture the human mind's tendency towards tangents, ruminative driftage, paradoxical ambivalence and addendums.
The point of the long and winding sentence
In prose, I've always felt a sentence should be as long or short as needed to render a single, coherent idea. Simple as that. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment, Jon. I got the impression the author of the article was trying to say that there isn't only one way to get across an idea and that, sometimes, the journey to it is as beautiful and as significant as the idea itself. As far as my own post comment on the article, I was simply making a somewhat comical reference to my own tendency towards more complex sentences, especially in my On the Soul series, which is written from a first person POV and in the voice of a character who is far from modern (born in 1197) in his thought and speech pattern. I appreciated what she was saying in the article for that reason and also because I believe, in general, most people don't think in shorter, declarative type sentences, so when a story is of the type that gives a lot of a character's interior thought and reflection, the sentences would probably tend to be more complex simply for realism's sake - doubly the case if the character was born before the 20th century.
DeleteThanks so much again for sharing your ideas! :-)
Thanks, Krisi. Yup... I think I was trying to be rather comical myself by simply stating the obvious paradigm "don't over think it."
ReplyDeleteWhile I haven't read your first book (although I've read the sample at Amazon.com and have now put it on my TBR a.s.a.p. list!) it's quite understandable why you would choose a more complex sentence structure in your work. It's about balancing style with the needs of the story you want to tell.
Frankly, I found what I read of your work to be, well... eloquent. How's that? :)
Thank you so much, Jon! I hope you enjoy it when you get a chance to read it. I've added your Soul Runner to my wishlist for my next order of books. It sounds great; I love thrillers (and I can't help but love the title, of course!). I'm looking forward to reading all of your books in the near future. :-)
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