Author
LATRAME
@latrame
A long sentence moves forward, piles up, refuses to stop, stacking commas the way you stack the thoughts of a sleepless night, until it finally falls.
A short sentence hits. Then stops.
A chase written in long sentences runs out of breath before the reader does. A grief scene chopped into short ones reads like a telegram. But flip it at the right moment : one endless sentence in the middle of a chase, and time hangs : the character sees everything, too much, at once. A three-word sentence in the middle of a grief that kept stretching, and that's the sob finally coming out.
An exercise, if you want one : reread the last page you wrote looking only at sentence length. Not the words. Just the lengths. We're curious what you'll find.
A short sentence hits. Then stops.
A chase written in long sentences runs out of breath before the reader does. A grief scene chopped into short ones reads like a telegram. But flip it at the right moment : one endless sentence in the middle of a chase, and time hangs : the character sees everything, too much, at once. A three-word sentence in the middle of a grief that kept stretching, and that's the sob finally coming out.
An exercise, if you want one : reread the last page you wrote looking only at sentence length. Not the words. Just the lengths. We're curious what you'll find.