Style! and How It Relates to That Last Thing I Wrote

[nayad]

In the comments after my last post, On Writing Long When Attempting to Write Short, rachel_swirsky wrote:

Posting generic grumble/grump about how "too much description" and "too much wordiness" are often dependent on style and aesthetic, and while it's good that some people are (edited) Carver and Hemingway, one is glad that some people are Flannery O'Conner,

Comments

[rachel_swirsky]

Thank you for indulging my grumble/grump. ;-)

wordiness

[anonymous]

Flannery O'Connor's fiction is not what I would call wordy. It is descriptive and this is what makes it so vivid and memorable. But there is always movement, life, action. The story is always moving forward and gaining momentum. If you go over one of her great stories line by line it is clear that every word counts. A less talented writer might have taken twice the number of pages to say as much. And I think this was the original point you were making, that writers ought to say what they want to say with precisely the right words.

[randyrussell]

I like yout idea of the sentences fitting together. I think of it this way: one sentence should anticipate the sentence to follow. And the next sentence should respond (in some way) to the sentence before it. Until you are ready to surprise the reader.

Really clever writers can have sentences appear that respond to a sentence a little further back in the copy (first sentences of paragraphs sometimes to do this very effectively -- as do last sentences of a paragraph when you need to pick up a thread from a a little was back in the sentence tapestry).

A reader won't notice the anticipate/response pattern of sentences. They'll be reading for the story and your sentences will move them through it almost seamlessly... but they will notice (they may not know why) when you stop doing it and that's when you kick in the surprise element.