Writing short, sharp, staccato sentences

[Brian G Turner]

I stumbled upon a website where the poster rubbished Lee Child's short, sharp sentences - then praised his writing as effective and pacey.

The point is that short sentences add pace to a piece of writing, and can make a book feel a lot shorter than it actually is.

I've recently picked up a couple of Ken Follet books, and I've noticed how he also purposefully keeps his prose sharp and simple - no flourishes, just the basic facts. And it works.

I posted before about exceptional openings in fiction, and repeat them here - with the addition of Ken Follet's Fall of Giants:


1. Sword in the Storm - David Gemmell
Sample: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0031RS65A/?tag=brite-21

IMO the first paragraph grabs for its complete juxtaposition of what has happened, and what the boy wants.

2. Killing Floor - Lee Child
Sample: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0031RS2HC/?tag=brite-21

Strong opening sentence, and a great flow that IMO make it hard not to read the first two pages.

3. The Firm - John Grisham
Sample: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003IDMUV8/?tag=brite-21

The prose flows quickly, to tell us something about the protagonist, and why he'll be perfect for this cut-throat, dubiously racist and sexist company.

4. Fall of Giants - Ken Follet
Sample: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0330460552/?tag=brite-21

Billy is a 13 years old, about to spend his first day in the coal mine, and nervous about being man enough to face it.


Previously I've highlighted the first three as especially good openings because of the way they address issues of theme and engagement.

But now I'd like to draw attention to the sentence structure - most of the above have a clear tendency, IMO, to have short sharp sentences.

Arguably, Lee Child is the more concise - you could replace some of John Grisham's commas and semi-colons with full stops, and not adversely impact the text. You could do similar with Ken Follet's, though not so much.

I mention all this for two reasons:

1 - It's fairly common, among us aspiring writers, to cram as much information into a single sentence. Especially opening ones. And especially with descriptions. The examples above show how that's completely unnecessary.

2 - Issues of pacing. I know it's been mentioned before that shorter sentences imply a faster pace. Hence see how the above writers tend to apply them in their opening scenes. They are giving the reader what they need, then hurrying them along. Before the reader can realise that they have now become hooked into the story.

Of course, personal tastes and preferences come into it. I'm simply raising the topic for discussion, so that others here can thinking consciously about how their opening sentences may work better. By being more concise. And being shorter.

Perhaps someone will even come up with a rule of thumb for the best ratio of words to sentences for effective pacing...

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I think a balance is best - too many short sentences and flow is lost, too many long and it slows. Anything I've read that is all short sentences gets wearisome after a time and loses the impact of having them. I also think semis are overlooked and hopelessly misunderstood as a means ofbalancing short and long

 

[HareBrain]

Of course, personal tastes and preferences come into it.

Very much so. I'm afraid I really dislike the Lee Childs opening. I hear William Shatner narrating it. For me, it doesn't flow at all, it jerks, and it would certainly put me off reading any farther.

That might not be a problem, because I might well not be the kind of person who would enjoy that kind of book anyway, but it's not giving me any chance to find out.

I think several things come into play here. One is taste, or what we're used to reading. Another is pacing. And then there's rhythm, which on this evidence Lee Child seems to lack an ear for.

There's a kind of "internet writing" style that's crept up on us in the last few years, which many bloggers such as Chuck Wendig use a lot: short sentences, lots of sentence fragments, and very short paragraphs. This is probably to hold the mayfly attention of blog readers. I don't know that you need to do the same for book readers, who are (you'd hope) to some extent committed to paying attention to a book they've decided to read. But I can only speak for myself -- I'm of a generation not reputed to have a short attention span, and I don't read on mobile tech in snatched moments between tube stops etc.

It is an interesting topic, though, and I'm looking forward to others' thoughts.

ETA: agree with Jo about semis. I don't know why so many people seem to be down on them.

 

[KyleAW]

Great database of examples Brian.

I personally think less is more with description. The more you try and cram it in, the less impact it has on the reader. That said it can work great if your story follows that style I guess.

In fact it is probably most true that long or short, consistency is most important. If the pace picks up then the sentences can incrementally get shorter in a natural way. As apposed to a sudden paragraph where it is three word sentences.

Thoughts?

 

[Toby Frost]

Hmm... This feels like an extension of the argument that you should start a book with excitement, deep in a character's point of view. Yes, that's probably the easiest and safest way to start, because it's one of the most immediate and entertaining. But it's easy to get hung up on that to the exclusion of other options, and not every book needs to (or should) be 100% excitement and 100% POV.

As to the examples, I'm afraid that I don't like the Lee Childs one at all. It may work and it does sell, but it reads like the absence of writing. "Went to town. Ate eggs. Some dudes came in, fired at me..." I'm reminded of James Ellroy's later books, but that's being harsh on Lee Childs because this is at least readable. I think you can try too hard at this sort of thing. But what do I know?

It seems to be that there's a fine balance between sparse prose and blurting out phrases without any flow. None of the excerpts strikes me as especially good (as opposed to effective) in terms of its writing, not in the way that the opening to a Raymond Chandler crime novel does (I choose Chandler because his prose is praised as hard boiled and not flowery).

 

[Brian G Turner]

This feels like an extension of the argument that you should start a book with excitement, deep in a character's point of view. Yes, that's probably the easiest and safest way to start

But it's not the easiest way to start at all, and very challenging to write.

And bear in mind that it's common - as an aspiring writer - to go through a stage where the first page is full of sentences containing 4 or 5 individual clauses. What I'm doing here is highlight how being short can be inviting, to a reader - and how clear and concise sentences can help build up complex pictures more efficiently.

 

[HareBrain]

What I'm doing here is highlight how being short can be inviting, to a reader

It can be, but isn't always. But it's better to err on the side of too short than too long. Here's a great example of the latter, the opening sentence/paragraph from The Ships of Merior by Janny Wurts.

On the morning the Fellowship Sorceror who had crowned the king at Ostermere fared northward on the old disused road, the five years of peace precariously re-established since the carnage that followed the Mistwraith's defeat as yet showed no sign of breaking.

I'm not sure how she ever read that back and thought it was OK.

 

[Vaz]

I think it does come down mostly to style and taste. But the most important thing for me would be the flow of the prose. Whether written with short and sharp sentences or long and complex ones, for me when reading the way the prose flows is the key.

And really well written short and precise sentences can flow and build a picture just as beautifully as long flowery ones

 

[Ray McCarthy]

The Ships of Merior by Janny Wurts.

I think that's her poorest series ever, though. It does seem to get a bit better later.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

A mixture of short and long (and medium length) seems to work best for most readers. If you don't vary the length of the sentences the writing can come across as flat. Also, if you only use short sentences they will lack the impact they would have had if you had only used them when you wanted a jolt, a punch, or to pick up the pace. Without the contrast with the longer sentences, they can be boring.

 

[Maieius]

I think it entirely depends on what the sentence actually is. A mixture is important. It keeps the writing interesting. But it also depends on what the information in the sentence is.

A lot of the time short sentences are used, it's for dramatic effect. It's often that a reader sees that short sentence before actually getting there and prepares for a dramatic change. At the same time, a long sentence can be used, using the last few words for the same effect to creep up as a surprise because it's unexpected in a longer sentence.

If too many short sentences are used, then it doesn't quite have the effect it might be intended for. I don't like the use of short sentences too often. I don't like reading them nor writing them, but it entirely depends on what the sentence actually tells you.

I do love the written word and its infinite methods for usage.

 

[KyleAW]

I think we all like the written word, hence us being here

 

[Brian G Turner]

Btw, I'd love to suggest that short, sharp sentences are the secret to commercially successful prose. Then I'm reminded of Fifty Shades of Grey.

 

[Bodhi]

Btw, I'd love to suggest that short, sharp sentences are the secret to commercially successful prose. Then I'm reminded of Fifty Shades of Grey.

Yeah, that must be more like hard, long, rounded, gooey sentences.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

Eugh!

Or was that just my grubby mind?

 

[KyleAW]

I motion that Brian Turner should be stripped of his staff rights for mentioning fifty shades without adding (not that I like it)...

Back to the topic, I usually find that I am more put off by long, flabby, pointless descriptions on every item in a room, when it was bought, who created it and interesting stories of the characters past with each item.

It's not interesting, it is dull and detracts from the story as awful filler!

 

[Ursa major]

Without the contrast

I think this is true for all sorts of thing, not just he way we construct our prose. Contrast is what allows us to appreciate the magnitude of something, because we have something else with which to compare it. So, for example, if you're writing a book absolutely packed with action, it's far more difficult to achieve the big climax, as you have to exceed -- and demonstrably so -- what has gone before.

When every sentence is short, how does one increase the apparent pace? Se. Pa. Rate. E. Ve. Ry. Syl La Ble. With. A. Full. Stop...?


As ever, I'm going to have to resort to classical music** to make my point

1. There is a limit to how loud an orchestra can play: once every player on the stage is giving it their all, that's it. To have a passage that forms the culminating climax of a piece requires that the rest of it -- even the lesser climaxes -- have to be played with less intensity and less volume (particularly when compared with what has come immediately before).
2. One of the most arresting sounds one can experience at an orchestral concert is a sudden and total silence after a very loud passage. Obviously, this is a harder effect to achieve with prose than with music, but I mention it because it shows that the power of contrast is one of difference, and so not necessarily dependent on throwing everything, up to and including the kitchen sink, into something.

** - Oh, and geography. Think of Denver, sitting there, dwarfed by the mountains of the Front Range immediately west of the city. And yet Denver lies about a mile (between 5130 and 5690 feet) above sea level, almost twice as high as the principal peaks in the Lake District. Guess which of Denver and those Lake District peaks look the most impressive in terms of altitude. Certainly not Denver.

 

[Toby Frost]

The Janny Wurts one (and I'm being harsh again here) doesn't work for me because it sounds too much like a parody of a fantasy novel, probably because it includes too many unexplained fantastical elements in too little space, and ultimately says "On that morning, things were as usual". That said, The Lies of Locke Lamora begins with a sprawling sentence about the 5th moon of the 9th day of something or other, and that seems to work for a lot of people. I suppose the aim is to be intriguing without becoming incomprehensible.

 

[hardsciencefanagain]

I think a good metaphor beats longwinded description.
I myself would describe a face like e.g.:

his face looked like it was drawn by a five year old using wet crayola.Unfinished,crude,all strange angles,yet full of character

 

[Dan Jones]

• There is a limit to how loud an orchestra can play: once every player on the stage is giving it their all, that's it. To have a passage that forms the culminating climax of a piece requires that the rest of it -- even the lesser climaxes -- have to be played with less intensity and less volume (particularly when compared with what has come immediately before).

• One of the most arresting sounds one can experience at an orchestral concert is a sudden and total silence after a very loud passage. Obviously, this is a harder effect to achieve with prose than with music, but I mention it because it shows that the power of contrast is one of difference, and so not necessarily dependent on throwing everything, up to and including the kitchen sink, into something.

That's it. Nobody wants monotony. Writing anything of substance surely has to include light and shade to make it interesting, and that's with respect to both pace and content.

The Lee Child example seemed quite extreme. Some of it sounded like a shopping list. I think I'd struggle being with that narrator for an entire book. But, if this style was contrasted with narrator voices, then it might work quite well. I understand that's his character; jerky, on edge, ready to pounce at any moment... and it sells by the bucketload, so... I suppose in the end it's like what HB said: diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks.