Writing short, sharp, staccato sentences

i was hooked by the Time Traveller's Wife on the first and second page. It starts with about three staccato sentences, in Clare's pov, and then longer ones. By the time we get to Henry's pov, about 200 words later, we're into a great big doozy of a sentence.

Again, this is all horses for courses. If you like sharp sentences, a staccato opening will work. If you don't, it won't. Until someone creates an identikit reader profile, there is no magic formula. Write the opening that works for you. Write it in your voice, and your style. Get some feedback and hone it - but don't change that darn voice. Forcing yourself into writing contortions that aren't you simply won't work. Ever.
 
There is one type of sentence pacing change I really do like. Stories that are split between multiple viewpoints.

If you have two characters that act and think in different ways, I am happy with a reasonable difference in their sentence structure. There are still limits for me mind, but I do appreciate this form of nuance. It gives a strong indication to the reader of their different identities.
 
For me the sound of the sentence is important, and so a mix of meter and length is really important to my tastes. I think Raymond Chandler is supreme at this; not only does his meter flow nicely, but there are nice musical turns of phrasing that make it a nice read, too.

(Funnily enough I was reading one of the ASOIAF books over the shoulder of someone on the train the other day and was surprised at how accessible it was. I always imagined his work to be long winded and possibly Dickensian. I don't know how much of my reaction was informed by watching the shows (and therefore knowing the characters) but I even had a brief consideration of actually reading one some day!)

When you get a lot of pages that are just walls of text you get fatigued, and we're encouraged to try and split with other things like dialogue. It's the same for sentences, too, I think.

pH
 
This is a great thread. Thanks, Brian.

I don't agree that the introductory paragraphs of KillIng Floor are crisply written. The author seems to have broken up long sentences by replacing commas with full stops.

Out of interest, I looked up David Weber's Off Armageddon Reef, which I pounced on when I discovered it in Borders, back when there was a Borders.

http://www.amazon.com/Off-Armageddon-Reef-Safehold-Novel-ebook/dp/B00AZRP45O/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1438375375&sr=1-1&keywords=off+armageddon+reef&refinements=p_n_feature_browse-bin:618073011

My first response on re-reading those first paragraphs was ouch. I'm writing a short story which starts with a very similar scene, and my effort is pitiful in comparison with Weber's.

IMO, one of the reasons that the first paragraphs of Off Armageddon Reef work well at conveying urgency is that Weber juxtaposes snappy dialogue with longer sentences. These longer sentences describe the action backgrounding the dialogue, and they flow well, making them easy to read.

Out of interest, take a look at the first paragraphs of Nellie Bly's Around the World in Seventy Two Days. The opening seems so crisply modern to me that I have trouble believing it was written in 1890, but as far as I can ascertain, it was.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1511738227/?tag=brite-21

There is some delightful Victorian circumlocution, a little further in, when she describes her sea-sickness:
"...gave vent to my feelings"
"a little unbridling of pent-up emotion".
 
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Am I the only one who finds reading short staccato sentences with lots of full stops is actually slower than having them joined together with commas and semis?

I suspect this comes down to how people interpret punctuation? Because clearly we do so differently, I think.
 
KyleAW said:
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!
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And yet these and short sentences are not mutually exclusive. A long, flabby description of items in a room could be written in sentence fragments.

The door creaked open and I entered the room. Musty smell. Green carpet, full of holes. Chintz curtains. Blinds at half-mast. Dead flowers in a cracked vase. Victrola on a table by the window. Stack of records next to it. Ashes in the fireplace. Photos on the mantlepiece. Family members?

Is this more interesting and less distracting because the sentences are short? Or more like a list and therefore even more boring?
 
Warren_Paul said:
Am I the only one who finds reading short staccato sentences with lots of full stops is actually slower than having them joined together with commas and semis?

I suspect this comes down to how people interpret punctuation? Because clearly we do so differently, I think.
Click to expand...

I read a full stop as signalling a pause or even a change in topic.
 
Warren_Paul said:
Am I the only one who finds reading short staccato sentences with lots of full stops is actually slower than having them joined together with commas and semis?

I suspect this comes down to how people interpret punctuation? Because clearly we do so differently, I think.
Click to expand...

But short sentences aren't exclusively used to create speed. I use them when my character is panicked or for if someone is stealthily taking stock of their surroundings. Words are so more than their meaning and I think sentences are more than their sum parts, too. It depends on the mood you're trying to create.

pH
 
Phyrebrat said:
It depends on the mood you're trying to create.
pH
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I agree.

Short sentences with different but linked ideas can help convey urgency or panic:
My stomach churned. I couldn't see him. I didn't know where to look next. It was getting dark.

However...
IMO, it is pointless to create short sentences by cutting up longer sentences with random full-stops:
I was walking. In the sunlight. Listening to the birds. The breeze was blowing. Gently. Lifting my hair.

Despite writing sentences broken into fragments (but NOT those above), Lee Child is obviously doing something right. He has a huge readership and I enjoyed reading the sample of Killing Floor.
 
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That something "right" might not be his short sentences. His stories might be popular in spite of them. Or that may be one of the things most of his readers especially like. Or they may not care one way or the other. My guess is the latter. Great popularity usually occurs when people like an author's stories. The vast majority of readers don't pay much attention to style unless they hate it.
 
I wonder if the distinctively staccato sentences act like a brand-mark. From the first paragraph, the fan can see that he's reading another Lee Child novel.

As (I believe) each Lee Child novel is a stand-alone story, branding might be an important incentive for the reader to pick up the next book.
 
I was thinking about this last night. First, I didn't mean to rubbish the idea in my last post. Short sentences are a weapon in the writer's arsenal, but they don't have to be used, that's all. Secondly, what I do like to see in the beginning of a book is clarity in the writing, which is why the Janny Wurts example earlier on doesn't work for me (the what of what did what?). In a scene like the one that Teresa wrote above, I wouldn't mind full sentences or even fairly long ones, provided that they didn't do much except describe in simple terms what was happening. Then, when details do occur, they seem more striking. So personally I would rewrite Teresa's example as this:

The door creaked open and I entered the room. It was like breaking into a sealed tomb. The air was still and musty-smelling. The green carpet was riddled with holes. The blinds dangled at half-mast like weary eyelids. I stood in the middle of the room, taking in the dead flowers in a cracked vase, the victrola on a table by the window, the pile of dusty records. Ashes spilled out of the fireplace. Above them, on the mantlepiece, stood a row of old photographs. I peered at them and got my first good look at the Jones family.

This is longer and leaves out a couple of details (and I'm not saying that it's especially good, either). But it adds more atmosphere and gives the narrator more of a sense of doing things and being there. The point is that there's not much there which isn't a simple description.
 
Ray McCarthy said:
Is it important to solving the mystery of what happened to the Jones?
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Depending on the context it might be very important. If it isn't, then the short sentences in my example are no more relevant than the long ones and at least Toby's version is more interesting to read.

The trick with descriptions is to make them do more than one thing. Toby's conveys information that might be important (like the fact that the Joneses have obviously been gone for a while) and creates an atmosphere. Depending on the context it might also be offering subtle clues to the mystery. The example I gave only did one thing and didn't do it well.
 
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