It took me an hour to write one sentence.

I'm a natural Faulkner with Hemingway envy, I think.

I've been playing a writing game with myself lately; I take a paragraph of description and try to condense it into a sentence, Which is extremely difficult, but effective for condensing prose into neat, concise packages when necessary, as when writing a short story.

I've been practicing condensing description into the smallest package possible; A difficult but rewarding exercise.

I practice distilling my writing often; it's hard, but pays off.

I try to condense my writing for practice.

I practice condensing, when i can.

I try not use words for fun.

shrinkage cool.

no use words.

make tiny.

 

I am in the "all over the board" camp. 1 - 50 word sentences. I am more naturally Faulkner, but I've worked my way into using more short, concise sentences. Action sequences in particular feel more natural that way, maybe it's the old Batman influence... Bam! Pow! Wham!

For reading taste is the same as my writing, I want variety.

 

I was coming in here to commiserate because its taken me about a week to write three and I still haven't finished them yet but I see the topic is different to what I thought.

I think I'm naturally a Faulkner who increasingly finds himself becoming more of a Steinbeck. I find it natural to include it all in one sentence but often find it reads better in multiple sentences. I like a good mix though.

 

Definitely Faulkner no matter what is being said. I constantly think back to high school English and condense what I can after a first draft, and I find it refreshing.

Sent from my Alcatel_4060O using Tapatalk

 

Pro-Writing-Aid, an online editing program, is continually criticizing me for short sentences. Though, every now and again, I'll toss in a long one, maybe forty or fifty words.

 

I sometimes write lengthy sentences, which is easy for me to do when I'm writing my first drafts, though I try, when editing, to break such long sentences into shorter sentences that are more easily digested, because as a reader, I hate losing the flow of logic in a sentence that never seems to end, which, when it happens, forces me to start reading the sentence from the very beginning so I can remember the starting conditions and better follow the logic, which may or may not even be there, really irritating me when it's not and I discover I've been reading garbage that the author thought would be a fun exercise to write, having no regard for the reader's time and giving no thought to how many trees would be killed if the junk were published in paperback or hardback form, which maybe isn't that big of a concern, especially in a case like this, where I'm writing on an online forum, which will likely never be published in print format. And sometimes I don't.

 

I naturally lean toward longer sentences, but I've been making a conscious effort to vary their lengths. It creates a lot more contrast. When I'm writing academic papers I can get a bit long-winded, which I avoid when I'm writing fiction. Short sentences suit my current project a lot more. It's fast-paced and uses strong verbs and nouns and short bits of description to cut down on wordiness.

 

I saw the title and thought, relatable then I read the rest and was like oh...

 

Hmm. Well, currently I lean toward short sentences, but that's because of my narrator's voice (my main character) which doesn't lend itself to long sentences. In this next story I'm probably going to have very long sentences. So, yeah. My style shapeshifts with the project.

Microsoft Word underlines your sentences for being "too long" if they're over 60 words. I've had it happen a couple times, so apparently my writing style does not ALWAYS lean toward short sentences.

 

I've only ever read one of his books (high school English two years ago), but was more impressed by his writing style than that of any other writer (except maybe G.K. Chesterton.) I tried to imitate him and failed terribly. He truly was a master wordsmith.

 

I just finished The Old Man And The Sea; audible book narrated by Donald Sutherland.
Amazing.

 

Hi,

I too like longer sentences, but then some of my favourite writing is golden age sci fi and earlier - long before this current style of short, punchy prose with lots of action came in to vogue.But my editor is younger than me and tries to modernise me a little, and slowly I'm adapting. I will never hit the modern mark, but my sentences now usually have less clauses in them.

To me a lot of the issues in this issue have nothing to do with better or worse writing, not even with clarity as proponents of shorter sentences often claim, and much more to do with fashion in writing. And fashions come and go.

Cheers, Greg.

 

I just started a new book today D) and my first sentence is 31 words long.

 

Nice! And congrats!