A Dash of Style (3 page)

Winter is cold. Not summer. Summer is when I find the bottles. And rocks. Rocks are like bottles.

Compare this to the viewpoint of another character, Jeff Gruber:

Twelve miles from Cloten on my way back from Duluth I stopped my car at a wayside rest on top of the bluffs above the river and looked down at the valley.

The drastic difference in sentence length helps establish the two different viewpoints.

• Intention. In the hands of a master, long sentences can reflect the very purpose and intention of the work. Consider this example from Faulkner's
Absalom, Absalom!
which is also the opening sentence of the novel:

From a little after two o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that—a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them.

This single sentence lets us know we will be embarking on a read unlike any other, one that defies all rules. Faulkner doesn't let up, maintaining the style throughout the text. Considered one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, this is truly a work synonymous with its placement of the period. In the hands of a lesser writer, it would be a disaster (and I wouldn't recommend it), yet Faulkner pulls it off. The style becomes one and the same with its characters, locale, time period: a heavy world, like the sentences, suffocating to enter and suffocating
to
survive.

Let's look at another Faulkner example, this one from his short story "That Evening Sun":

Monday is no different from any other weekday in Jefferson now. The streets are paved now, and the telephone and electric companies are cutting down more and more of the shade trees—the water oaks, the maples and locusts and elms—to make room for iron poles bearing clusters of bloated and ghostly and bloodless grapes, and we have a city laundry which makes the rounds on Monday morning, gathering the bundles of clothes into bright-colored, specially-made motor cars: the soiled wearing of a whole week now flees apparitionlike behind alert and irritable electric horns, with a long diminishing noise of rubber and asphalt like tearing silk, and even the Negro women who still take in white people's washing after the old custom, fetch and deliver it in automobiles.

In the second, incredibly long, sentence, Faulkner encapsulates all of Monday, makes us experience the routine of the entire day. He also uses the excuse of describing a Monday to actually describe an entire town, the changes it's undergoing, the habits of its people, and even the race relations. Note also the tremendous contrast in length between the first and second sentence, which proves that Faulkner has deliberately chosen to lengthen this particular sentence.

The main point is that there must be a reason for such usage. It cannot be done haphazardly, or merely for the sake of being stylistic. If you do employ it, your chances of success are greater if you limit it to a short stretch—for example, for a minor character. Most writers grasp this, and will not craft overly long sentences. What the everyday writer can take away from this is to become aware of the subtle effect of a sentence that goes slightly too long, and the cumulative effect this will have on the work. Most of the time the question the writer needs to ask himself is: Is this sentence one thought too long? Can this one sentence be broken down into two? (Just as you must ask if two shorter sentences can be combined.) Are there multiple ideas—particularly powerful ideas —in one sentence? Is there a risk of something getting lost in its length? Is it worth the risk? Is the period too powerful of a divider? Should you instead resort to lesser dividers, such as the colon or semicolon? (We will explore these in later chapters.)

THE DANGER OF UNDERUSE

If reading a series of too-short sentences is like traveling in choppy waters, then reading a series of too-long sentences is like riding a wave that rolls and rolls but never, satisfyingly, crashes. Most readers feel as if they're gasping for breath when reading long sentences; they have a harder time following the idea and are more likely to put a book down sooner.

Nobody wants to read a sentence like this, one that never ends, that goes on and on without giving the reader a rest between thoughts or ideas or a chance to catch his breath and go onto the next sentence which could seem like a distant goal by the time this sentence is through.

There are many reasons a writer might fall into the trap of crafting too-long sentences:

• On the simplest level, the writer may not know how to end a sentence, may not have properly grasped that a sentence serves primarily to put forth a single idea. Too-long sentences are often the result of a writer trying to cram too many ideas into a single sentence.

• A writer might craft too-long sentences out of a fear of letting a sentence conclude, an insecurity that the sentence is not complete enough in its own right, that the idea put forth is not satisfying enough. This writer wants to cover his bases with multiple ideas, so that no one can accuse him of being insubstantial.

•Academics and scholars tend to use long sentences, as they are used to reading longer sentences themselves. They are able to retain many concepts in one sitting, to hang on to a concept while

it twists and turns through many other concepts; their mistake is assuming that a lay reader can do the same (or even wants to). This is rarely the case.

• Sometimes too-long sentences are employed simply for effect, by young writers experimenting with the form, for example, trying to mimic Faulkner. In such a case, they mistake style for being stylistic, and call attention to the writing instead of the content.

• Too-long sentences might be created out of a desire to sound more sophisticated. Some writers fear crafting shorter sentences will make their text read childlike, so they overcompensate, increasing sentence length until they end up doing stylistic damage in the reverse direction.

Regardless of your motive, you must realize that nothing is gained by lengthening a sentence just for the sake of it—on the contrary, you lose. Less is more. Years ago, readers had a greater attention span and a greater capacity to easily ride the twists and turns of a long sentence. Today, less so. The modern-day reader does not want to exercise his brain through a paragraph-long sentence, and the ideas put forth in such a sentence will likely be lost. Writing is about simplicity and clarity, and the best way to achieve this is to allow each thought its own sentence.

"There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough."

—William Zinsser

CONTEXT

One of the biggest mistakes a writer can make is evaluating a sentence in its own right, instead of in context with the sentences around it. In the midst of a series of long sentences, a short sentence can be needed, whether for impact, for variety, or to make a thought stand out. Likewise, in the midst of a paragraph of short sentences, a long sentence can be needed, whether to add variety, fluidity, or to trim the edges off a childlike feel. Conversely, sometimes a shorter (or longer) sentence is needed precisely because it is surrounded by shorter (or longer) sentences, in order to maintain consistency. You set the bar when you dictate the style, and you must be prepared to offer at least a modicum of uniformity—or to break it with good intention. A long sentence subconsciously suggests a long one will follow; if a short sentence follows, it will be in the spotlight. Sometimes this is preferable, if you want to emphasize a point. But it must be deliberate. Ultimately, you must remember that a sentence is only short or long in context. In the world of Camus'
The Stranger,
an eight-word sentence can be long; in the world of Faulkner's
Absalom, Absalom!
a one-hundred-word sentence can be short.

Alternately, writers can get blinded by context. One can get caught up in the context of a paragraph or scene and not stop to consider if that sentence stands well on its own. Sentences help each other hide: one can get away with a short sentence amid a cluster of short sentences. Don't allow yourself to get blinded by your own momentum; just as you must evaluate each sentence in context, so must you put a magnifying glass to each sentence in its own right.

This is a conundrum for the writer. On the one hand, you must establish a certain style and maintain it, which means that if writing long sentences you must continue to write long sentences, and if writing short sentences you must continue to write short sentences;

on the other hand, long sentence after long sentence (or short sentence after short sentence) quickly becomes staid, lifeless. Stylistic variety is not only wanted, but needed, for all of the reasons outlined above. Such variety, though, doesn't give you an excuse to avoid establishing an overall style, such as Camus did for
The Stranger
or Faulkner did for
Absalom, Absalom!
You must find a way to establish your style, but then break it when need be, offering constant variety to keep the prose lively and unexpected. It is a delicate balance, and one you must perpetually struggle with.

Consider the following example from James Joyce's short story "Araby":

When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eatern our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street, light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas.

Look at what Joyce does here for stylstic variety. His first five sentences are short, and his sixth sentence is, in comparison, incredibly long, nearly five times longer than the sentences that preceded it. In the hands of a master like Joyce, this is not accidental. The sixth sentence talks about the time they spent playing, and its length conveys the feeling of their getting lost in play, of their play stretching forever. Indeed, the final sentence confirms this, informing us that it is dark by the time they finished. By varying his sentence length here, he is able to subtly compare and contrast these images, to build up to an important image, and then come back down from it. For Joyce, stylistic context is paramount.

You must also consider the placement of a punctuation mark in context with other punctuation marks around it. Period placement takes on a whole new meaning when commas, semicolons, colons, and dashes (to be discussed in later chapters) are nearby. These friends of the period can rescue it, can serve as rest stops along the way. By allowing the reader a chance to rest, a semicolon, for example, can take the pressure off a period, make it no longer feel like a distant objective on the horizon. Consider Elizabeth Barrett Browning's
Sonnets from the Portuguese,
"Sonnet 22":

When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire At either curved point—what bitter wrong Can the earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented? Think.

The contrast of that final sentence is amazing, especially following on the heels of such a long and stylistically varied sentence. The period hammers home the thought, forces the reader to stop and truly think.

In the hands of a master like Shakespeare, the context of period placement and sentence length takes on layers of meanings — indeed, is taken to a whole new level. Let's look, for instance, at
Macbeth.
In a portion of Macbeth's soliloquy at the end of act 1, he debates with himself over whether he should murder his king:

He's here in double trust: First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murtherer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongu'd, against The deep damnation of his taking-off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, hors'd Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind.

As Macbeth takes a journey, so does his speech and its punctuation. Note the increasingly long sentences as Macbeth delves deeper into the horror and chaos of the contemplated deed. The first complete sentence is nearly five lines. The next sentence is over nine lines. And if, for the purpose of analyzing this speech, we consider the semicolons and colons to serve the same purpose as periods (which they could, depending on the actor), then we see even more clearly the escalation of sentence length. While Macbeth begins with a simple five-word phrase ("He's here in double trust"), he culminates with a thirty-six-word sentence (ending with ". . . drown the wind"). The sentence length mimics the chaotic mind of a would-be murderer. As a result of the period placement alone, you can feel Macbeth's momentum build, with the longest sentence bringing us to the very heart of murder. Indeed, that long sentence is the turning point. When it's over, Macbeth comes to the conclusion that he has "no spur / To prick the sides of my intent. . . ." He's realized it would be wrong to kill his king. And that final sentence wouldn't be "long" if a shorter sentence hadn't preceded it.