Hi, can someone tell me if they notice long sentences when they read and does it make it unenjoyable or grammatically wrong? What about long sentences with lots of commas and other punctuations?
I've done some recent research and the vast majority or published books seem to go along with short and medium sentences with an occasional long sentence for rhythm. Either that or they cheat with commas and punctuation for the long stuff.
But what about a novel written with long sentences throughout, with an occasional short or medium sentence for rhythm. An exact opposite is what I'm talking about.
I'll give two examples of long sentence writing featured in published novels. In the summer of '09, two novels were released: Rain Gods by James Lee Burke (A Mystery/Thriller) and Return to Sullivans Island by Dorothea Benton Frank (A Mainstream/Contemporary?). The novel by James Lee Burke apparently had some pretty good reviews. You can find both excerpts to these novels on Amazon.com. Although, I found Sullivans Island through another website quite by accident.
Now I've only read excerpts from both novels, not the actual books. But from what I can gather, Rain Gods featured the longest string of sentences even in the later chapters. Sullivans Island started off okay and then got a little long winded. In other words, trying to read it slowly, my inner mind would begin choking for breath.
The reason why I ask is because I was driving myself mad over trying to have short sentences (in my 3rd version) in my recent fantasy story I'm writing. But my intuition says to stick to the second version (out of 3 versions) that I wrote that continues to feature long sentences. I've always followed my intuition often when it comes to writing. Now I'm curious.
As a reader, I've never noticed this about the way novels are written. When I first read Rain Gods online, I thought I was being beaten over the head by a wizard of writing, the imagery was so powerful and I felt like I could never do anything as good. But after I took the excerpt and printed it out in Time New Roman single spaced 13 pt font, I saw its true colors. I was already kinda doing similar things with my writing, by accident relation of course. I was on a different track for something else. I've been printing out excerpts for a long time by the way, so nothing new there.
The point is, I originally read the long excerpt for Rain Gods without a problem. Since I began noticing the long sentences, I began to lose breath and panic.
But I've gotten over that now. My dilemma at the moment is to decide whether to stick to my guns and keep writing long sentences or to conform like the vast majority and to write short sentences.
Will an agent care? I've come to the conclusion that an agent knows as much about writing as a writer. Maybe or maybe not as much as an author, but didn't they go to school for this kind of stuff anyway? So I'm guessing an agent will notice this as well.
What is your take on this, AW?
I've done some recent research and the vast majority or published books seem to go along with short and medium sentences with an occasional long sentence for rhythm. Either that or they cheat with commas and punctuation for the long stuff.
But what about a novel written with long sentences throughout, with an occasional short or medium sentence for rhythm. An exact opposite is what I'm talking about.
I'll give two examples of long sentence writing featured in published novels. In the summer of '09, two novels were released: Rain Gods by James Lee Burke (A Mystery/Thriller) and Return to Sullivans Island by Dorothea Benton Frank (A Mainstream/Contemporary?). The novel by James Lee Burke apparently had some pretty good reviews. You can find both excerpts to these novels on Amazon.com. Although, I found Sullivans Island through another website quite by accident.
Now I've only read excerpts from both novels, not the actual books. But from what I can gather, Rain Gods featured the longest string of sentences even in the later chapters. Sullivans Island started off okay and then got a little long winded. In other words, trying to read it slowly, my inner mind would begin choking for breath.
The reason why I ask is because I was driving myself mad over trying to have short sentences (in my 3rd version) in my recent fantasy story I'm writing. But my intuition says to stick to the second version (out of 3 versions) that I wrote that continues to feature long sentences. I've always followed my intuition often when it comes to writing. Now I'm curious.
As a reader, I've never noticed this about the way novels are written. When I first read Rain Gods online, I thought I was being beaten over the head by a wizard of writing, the imagery was so powerful and I felt like I could never do anything as good. But after I took the excerpt and printed it out in Time New Roman single spaced 13 pt font, I saw its true colors. I was already kinda doing similar things with my writing, by accident relation of course. I was on a different track for something else. I've been printing out excerpts for a long time by the way, so nothing new there.
The point is, I originally read the long excerpt for Rain Gods without a problem. Since I began noticing the long sentences, I began to lose breath and panic.
But I've gotten over that now. My dilemma at the moment is to decide whether to stick to my guns and keep writing long sentences or to conform like the vast majority and to write short sentences.
Will an agent care? I've come to the conclusion that an agent knows as much about writing as a writer. Maybe or maybe not as much as an author, but didn't they go to school for this kind of stuff anyway? So I'm guessing an agent will notice this as well.
What is your take on this, AW?
