Unnecessarily Angry Disclaimer: I do not own my grammatical mistakes, though I do leave them on purpose for grammar Nazis to pick up and choke on. So please, if you see a run-on sentence, feel free to tackle it, grapple it, and call it a dirty, dirty mudblood, because you know, knowing when a sentence ends or how to use a comma doesn't make you a better person or a writer for that matter. You may judge me, but I think you are an elitist turd who is proud to wear the name Nazi when those people show you what intolerance does to people-- they make you into inhuman monsters. So yeah, the golden rule people. Don't tell me to eat my , and I won't tell you eat yours. That's by Jesus, you know, paraphrased of course.

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After finishing the latest review, I noticed that I talk a lot about narrative techniques, and I thought, hey, wouldn't it be useful to have some references I can go to if I talked about it again? Yeah! Yeah, it will! This is, after all, a writers' help article, and I think it's pretty useful to talk about writers' tools, don't you? I mean, I enjoy talking about writing, so this is going to happen even if you are mentally screaming; no, sevvy, no! Drop that ball, sevvy! (Because you know, you never have time to play fetch with this doggy. :( I am sorry. I am just... a little crazy today.) But I really do hope this is something someone will find useful aside from this doggy who likes to think and write about writing (i-is that a very boring inception!? No. Sevvy. No.)

But anywho, in this writing advice entry, I will be talking about one of the basic stylistic narrative techniques which is varying sentence lengths. I do not know if they teach you this in English composition class. I personally only encountered in a writing workshop, and it was more of in passing commentary of, "I like that you vary your sentence length." And I was like, whoa, I did something right?

Because I went into writing as some of you did, with the haphazard well-whatever kind of mentality, and I mostly went in writing and feeling my way in intuitively. I am not saying that my starting stories were not awkward or (because they are!), but I am saying that sentence length, for me, at least, is something I have always considered subconsciously, and I have never really thought about.

I should attribute this largely to my literary influence JD Salinger who was influenced literallily (booyah! Made-up word!) by Ernest Hemingway. If you didn't know, Hemingway introduced the modern approach to writing prose which is cutting back on ornamental language. Hemingway is all about being straight-forward and lean sentence,s and though his sentences are not always short, he favours them often.

I should segue, of course, to talk about the effects of sentence lengths (before I go into Hemingway writing style! Help. Help. My thoughts are a vortex!). And did I lose the opportunity to apologize for the rather inappropriate, ually suggestive title?! I did, didn't I? Oh well, I... I was... thinking about sentences definitely not about es, so if you had a dirty thought, that would be on you. :3 But yeah, let's just begin before I talk about something else.

SENTENCE VARIETY

One of the most common writing tip I have encountered is read your story out loud. What would verbalizing your written story reveal? The rhythm of your writing! When your writing is on the page, I don't think you hear the pace of your story. But when you read it out loud, you will hear the effect of a period. (Full Stop.) And that comma that would tell you this is a time to pause, but you can continue shortly.

This is what this meme tell you:

You. Can't. Help. But. Read. This. And. Stop. At. Every. Word. Arg. Arg. Woot. Woot. Let. Us. Do. The. Boo. Gy. Woo. Gy.

Okay, so that's not a real meme.

But yeah, sentence length is what gives your story pace. This is a narrative technique that a lot of new writers overlook, and newwys (that's my new word for newbie's because it's cuter. No? WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T MAKE UP NEW WORDS?! HOW COME SHAKESPEARE HAD ALL THE FUN.) tend to favour either short sentences or longer sentences without variety. And just like anything in life, spicing it up breathes life to more than your life stew.

1. SHORT SENTENCES

This is, as I have said, a modern approach. I think after Hemingway the reading public lost their patience with the longer variety, and now, with our generation and twitter's stoking that word count flame, we want people to just get to the goddam point.

What do short sentences do? It gives a sense of abruptness. It grabs attention.

Of course, by sentences, I use this term lightly, because you can, le gasp, fragment sentences to make a point. Certain people don't like fragments. But that doesn't mean they don't make an impact. My brother hates fragments and calls them Stephanie Meyer's school of pooping fragments. I like fragments. I don't like Meyer. I like to think it as more of a Dickens/Hemingway/Thomas Wolfe influence. Leave me alone, grammar-bro.

I do like fragments and short sentences. Its effect on pacing is giving it a rushed feel. Use this effect on fight scenes, general rushed activities. Fragments are used for emphasis and used with repetition, it can be very strong, so watch out for those.

Do we need examples? Do I want to write them? LOL

Okay.

Example:

Seung hyun slumps to the floor. His breath rushing in and out. He could barely catch it before the first gun shot. Bang!

"!"

He rolls to the side. He slides the barrel of his gun. Then he pops up for a view. A rustle of movement. Aim. Shoot. Fire! A deader.

Okay, so that wasn't very good. But you do get the point, right? If you read fight scenes in any of George RR Martin books (preferably from the Song of Ice and Fire series, lol), you will see he employs this brilliantly, and mixing other events into it makes for a real frenzy. Ugh. I love those.

WARNING: Like everything, use short sentences in moderation or else your story telling gets too choppy. At the end of fight scenes, when the protagonist has a time for breath and to check his or her wounds, a long sentence feels like a deep breath and a long exhale. Oooh. Wonderful.

2. LONG SENTENCES

Longer sentences are what I like to call the classics. Why? Because calling something a classic makes you classy. Oooh, such class.

But this is why some would find reading classical books overbearing, because it's almost counter-intuitive to what we are so used to. If you read a lot of contemporary mainstream novels, you will see a heavy preference to shorter lengths. If you venture to a more, literary style, the sentences gets longer, and more loaded. If we go again with pacing, longer sentences are more thoughtful, and as you hold off that ending and prolong your thoughts, it develops drama and suspense. Depending of course on your word choices, you can make a long sentence serenely beautiful or a weird, comedic tangent such as:

Whimsy-full

The thing was, is Seung hyun liked the way she spoke, that melodic pitch, that little lilt, and the way her eyes speaks in volumes more than her quiet voice. He could barely see the background which was sure to be like the velvet sky to her, the moon, who hangs, so low, so low—can he touch her?

Foolish-full:

She stumbles out of bed, cursing the goddam sheets that roped around her ankles, kicking, mumbling. When she finally manages to be out of bed, she could not find her . Holy . She looks over to the sleeping form of a man who she kind of vaguely remember. She mostly remembers the tequila shot, shots, shots. She should really stop drinking.

Okay, maybe sevvy can't pull off these examples bit. But I think you get the point, don't you? The last example is shorter sentences but you can really go of on a tangent and go on, and on, and on, like this sentence you know, and you're reader is like, oh, god, stop this runaway sentence before it kills the cat. See?

If you're going, but that's grammatically incorrect sevvy! I am not going to argue with you. You see narrative techniques often break grammatical rules. But this doesn't mean it's wrong, if you know what you are breaking and you can convince your reader that it's more for effect than from carelessness. This is the difference between a grammatical error and narrative techniques. The former is careless, and the latter is careful. Of course, this is decided, unfortunately, by your readers and not you.

Grammatical transgressions aside, I hope this discussion about length helped you visualize writing pace, and help you write your stories better. If you don't like fragments and are afraid of run on sentences. You can stick with legal guns, of which, still can be longer and shorter--sentences, I mean--and vary it according to your desired effect.

WARNING: As with short sentences, using too many long sentences would tire your reader, and make your writing sound overbearing (either in humour or despair). Keep in mind: Variety is king.

Well, let me know what you think! If you have something, you want me to talk about let me know... but as of now, I am leaning towards talking about my pet peeves, which I think would be another useful reference. Or about another narrative technique, hmm... decisions, decisions.

Well, anywho, I hope you take away something from this as I have! (I took away this bad, bad eye strain). If you have comments, questions, a passionate appeal, please let me know in that comment box, that people use for review requests, that no one uses because sevvy looks like a rabid mutt who has a lot to say about a lot of things....

As always, happy writing!

Yours,

secretseven