New Author's Challenge

[Kelliezgirl]

The longest grammatically correct sentence in English is found in Jonathan Coe’s novel “The Rotters’ Club,” which spans a staggering 13,955 words in a single sentence.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rotters'_Club_(novel)


What's your longest grammatically correct sentence?

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

The longest grammatically correct sentence in English is found in Jonathan Coe’s novel “The Rotters’ Club,” which spans a staggering 13,955 words in a single sentence.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rotters'_Club_(novel)


What's your longest grammatically correct sentence?

About six words...

 

[yowser]

One of my (execrable) 750 word efforts consisted of only three sentences. The first sentence was around a hundred words, the last was 15. Second sentence clocked in at 620 words. Not sure I will ever top that.

Research involved reading a number of medieval curses. Those ancient monks and bishops sure could get wordy when they were worked up over something.

 

[StillStunned]

It's probably buried somewhere in Into The Night.

Or maybe it's one of my more elaborate orgasms.

 

[Voboy]

Not even sure how I'd go about searching for that in my stuff?

I tend to get fast-paced when describing orgasms, which leads to run-ons and an overreliance on semicolons. So it's probably one of those sequences.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I've learned to embrace the semi-colon.

 

[StillStunned]

It's probably buried somewhere in Into The Night.

251 words:

How long’s it been, three years since you ran the Night like you owned it, just you and Kitty casin’ the City, followin’ the leads, trackin’ who’s a player, who’s an operator, who’s a name, sellin’ the know for timebanks, gettin’ the feel, makin’ the deal and keepin’ it real, until that one time, you and Kitty and everythin’ that went wrong, and you can still that one scream, that endless scream that echoes in your ears like the hiss of the rain, that endless scream that choked off, and that was much worse because that meant somethin’ and you didn’t dare to look but you had to, had to look into those blank eyes that looked back inside you, and you knew it was your fault, knew the risk was too much but you took it anyway and Kitty paid the price and now Kitty was gone and the Magic Rat was gone too, the person you were, gone all those long years ago, nothin’ left now ’cept a silent dockworker takin’ hell from the boss man until you can escape into the Night for a few hours, pretend like it’s still the same, sniff at the wonder without ever tastin’ it anymore, not really, just watchin’ the Night like a movieholo, always changin’ and never changin’, an addict afraid to touch, an outsider never breakin’ on through to the inside, not anymore because the inside ain’t nothin’ without Kitty, without the Magic Rat and what you used to do…

 

[SimonDoom]

I have no idea, and I'm not sure how I would try to look it up and find out.

It's probably not that long. I tend to avoid run-on sentences.

 

[lovecraft68]

According to many readers I haven't written one yet

 

[THBGato]

The longest grammatically correct sentence in English is found in Jonathan Coe’s novel “The Rotters’ Club,” which spans a staggering 13,955 words in a single sentence.

That's extraordinarily long.

Short sentences and paragraphs are quite the modern trend. If you read much 19th century prose there are monstruous long sentences to be found. From 'Bleak house':

Well may the court be dim, with wasting candles here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it would never get out; well may the stained-glass windows lose their colour and admit no light of day into the place; well may the uninitiated from the streets, who peep in through the glass panes in the door, be deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect and by the drawl, languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the Lord High Chancellor looks into the lantern that has no light in it and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank!

Another 'favourite' of mine is Kipling's poem "If", which is a single sentence. As it is also a first conditional, that means (grammatically speaking) that his unborn child would have to meet every single one of those conditions to "be a man". Talk about putting pressure on your kids.

No idea which of my sentences is longest. Probably something in a day-job report with multiple sub-clauses and semi-colons and brackets splayed around like the massacre of the emojis (Marlowe's lost play, had he been born in 1984).

 

[Kumquatqueen]

For fans of the quiz show Only Connect, Victoria Coren Mitchell has been reading from Milton's Paradise Lost at the end of every episode. It took to episode 5 of the current series to get to the first full stop.

I don't think I've got any particularly long sentences - intend to split sentences in editing.

 

[lovecraft68]

Another 'favourite' of mine is Kipling's poem "If", which is a single sentence. As it is also a first conditional, that means (grammatically speaking) that his unborn child would have to meet every single one of those conditions to "be a man". Talk about putting pressure on your kids.

Long time ago my foster father told me that a big part of being a man is never worrying about what being a "man" is.

Over time I adopted that thinking into my often said mantra that anyone who tells you they're an alpha just confessed they're a beta.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Long time ago my foster father told me that a big part of being a man is never worrying about what being a "man" is.

Over time I adopted that thinking into my often said mantra that anyone who tells you they're an alpha just confessed they're a beta.

In fairness, I just ran through the poem and it's mostly excellent advice regardless of gender. I don't agree about gambling everything on one toss and our current monarch shows the lie that kings are more virtuous than crowds, but it's hardly what you might call toxic masculinity.

One does wonder if Kipling had an equivalent unpublished poem for his daughters...

 

[Kelliezgirl]

In fairness, I just ran through the poem and it's mostly excellent advice regardless of gender. I don't agree about gambling everything on one toss and our current monarch shows the lie that kings are more virtuous than crowds, but it's hardly what you might call toxic masculinity.

One does wonder if Kipling had an equivalent unpublished poem for his daughters...

I suspect he would have seen that bit of advice to have been the responsibility of her mother.
These days it's a bit of a Hobson's choice.
Give your daughter advice on being a woman and get bashed for mansplaining.
Don't give her any advice and get accused of being sexist since you obviously didn't care enough to give her advice.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Maybe 50 words in a single paragraph because the narrator decided to go off on a tangent or a rant? I don't know. I know my longest sentences are always because of that, and I leave them there because it gives voice to the narrating character. I always try to cut as many words as I can in editing, so long sentences are both painful to my eyes, and make my ADHD want to whack every word with a baseball, including the author who wrote them.

 

[SmilingLez]

I prefer short (staccato) hard-hitting sentences. So my longest sentence, if I take into consideration everything that I've ever written, would be this sentence; even though I could go on and on and on ad nauseam, long sentences are not my cup of tea.

 

[THBGato]

In fairness, I just ran through the poem and it's mostly excellent advice regardless of gender. I don't agree about gambling everything on one toss and our current monarch shows the lie that kings are more virtuous than crowds, but it's hardly what you might call toxic masculinity.

It's very much of its time. I have no objection to it context, but I hate when it is presented uncritically to modern readers (which will be often as it is on the GCSE syllabus). Less for what's there, more for what's not - there's nothing about being a good son, a good partner, a good friend, a good father. Nothing about having emotions at all, only surpressing them. Like I said, of its time.

Even Kipling seemed to disavow that duty-at-all-costs attitude later in life:
"If they ask you why we died
Tell them, 'because our fathers lied'".

 

[lovecraft68]

In fairness, I just ran through the poem and it's mostly excellent advice regardless of gender. I don't agree about gambling everything on one toss and our current monarch shows the lie that kings are more virtuous than crowds, but it's hardly what you might call toxic masculinity.

One does wonder if Kipling had an equivalent unpublished poem for his daughters...

I wasn't speaking necessarily on the poem itself, just general rule of thumb. I've noticed that the type of male who is constantly talking about what a 'man' he is, is often a smoke blowing jack ass. The type to think getting into fights, how many women you can screw, and how bad ass you think you are, is part of being the 'man"

The advice I've given to some of the young men I've worked with in the big brother program is to do the best you can every day and if you can look at yourself in the mirror at night and say, yes, I did my best today, then you're good and that isn't limited to gender, that's just as a person in general and I think that's where things often fall short. Men and women have differences, but we're all people living in the same world.

There also needs to be personal accountability. The nights you look in the mirror and can say, "I fell short today. I fucked up" then make it a point to be better tomorrow.

I've had a few of those falling short days of late, not happy about it, but it has nothing to do with being or not being a 'man' but a human being.