The long and short of it
Ihave been told that my writing style tends to be “verbose.”
Some find my long sentences where the subject and predicate and direct objects are separated by participial phrases that sometimes lose their connection in the telling, if the reader’s interest in its conclusion has not by then already fled. (Does that illustrate what they mean?)
In conversations, however, I tend to be snappy and those also with extended vocabularies to come up with a word like “verbose,” though not necessarily the same persons characterize my spoken observations as repartees or punch lines, as I more often deflate and derail than hold forth with long narratives.
Maybe it is my admiration for Dickens and his patented circumlocutions that make me wander off and find my way back sometimes not always successfully to my original point. Just to give you a flavor of Dickens — I quote the opening chapter of “Marley’s Ghost” in Christmas Carol — “If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot, say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance, literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.” This is an aside on the sudden ghostly appearance of Ebenezer Scrooge’s partner, the late Marley who was “dead as a door knob.” Is that verbose? The other extreme is Hemingway, known for his short sentences which can be difficult to carry off without sounding choppy. Biographers explain this style as a result of his being a war correspondent used to telegraphic reports from the front lines which are charged by the word. Take a look at his short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”: “Wilson looked at him now coolly. He had not expected this. I rather liked him. But how is one to know about an American?”
Dickens has 66 words in one sentence. Hemingway has 25 spread out in four sentences. You do the math.
But does the length of a sentences matter? Magazine and newspaper editors, I am told, like the text to breathe and short sentences provide enough spatial oxygen for this, especially with those boxed verbatim quotes floating in a sea of text or maybe a photo of a medieval castle behind a group picture of celebrities on a trip taking twothirds of a page with text merely providing the framing.
In the short attention span of the new content culture promoted by text-talk and tweets that allow dropping vowels and sometimes even consonants, long convoluted sentences that perambulate too merrily fail to pull along the easily distracted reader.
But in kitchen knives as in the personal essay, the length of the sentence depends on the material to be sliced, diced, or cubed. Long knives, almost bayonets, may be appropriate for complex profiles, especially when one tries to avoid giving offense to a powerful and vindictive personality —“he becomes abusive only when he has finished a bottle of the house red but otherwise he writes haikus to refresh his soul.”
Short sentences work best with reportage: The drug pusher had his hands up. But it was too late. He was resisting arrest. Shot, he was just a statistic in the drug war.
The length of a sentence is determined by the body it is supposed to hide or reveal. I am told by my editor that if one is to avoid jumping to a skip page, he must limit himself to 800 words. I stick to an average of 700 just to be sure. This allows some space for an excerpt in a side bar.
I am resigned to accusations of verbosity due to my being enthralled by Dickens as well as Tolstoy — how can you have short sentences when you have 800 characters in War and Peace?
There is a story needing to be told which one fervently hopes is worth the telling whether in long or short sentences or a combination of both, hoping only that the reader’s fascination lingers even into some distant future when it may surface like a suddenly discovered paisley shirt that has come back in vogue... for one more costume party.
Short sentences work best with reportage: The drug pusher had his hands up. But it was too late. He was resisting arrest. Shot, he was just a statistic in the drug war.