Busty Sentence Structure

[AMoveableBeast]

Hemingway can keep his, hard, lean, athletic prose. I like my sentences like I like my women: full, meaty, unapologetically voluptuous. The sparseness presented by the avante-garde of the 1920's was a bold switch from the overly emotional, description larded norm at the turn of the century, but it has become an anthem of conformity over the years. Big emotions don't come from big words, but neither does skinny communication have a corner on control.

Who doesn't love the playfulness of English? We are the proud owners of the most superfluously jiggly language in the history of the world. It's ripe with humor and bursting with an overabundance of meaning. Why are we so intent on starving it down to some manageable size, some trimmed down anorexic version of its true, overflowing obscenity? We raised this girl right, fed her from every source imaginable. Then Shakespeare, being the stone-cold, pimp/poet he was, took all that glorious corpulence of vocabulary and codified it in the sexiest, most confusing-ass way imaginable. Then he sent it out into the world in a pair of high heels, wearing the skimpiest set of rules possible and told it, "Be nice to the gentlemen, English, and they'll be nice to you."

Quit fighting that shit. Unleash those beautiful, bouncing adverbs. Let it rhyme. Mix those metaphors and let those participles dangle. Get nasty with it. Have fun.

To paraphrase the early 90's bard Anthony Ray, better known by his pen name, Sir Mix-A-Lot, "My anaconda don't want none unless you got puns , hun."

 

[49greg]

I know what you're saying, but reading some of the stories from the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteens can be a slog. H. Rider Haggard has some some good adventure plots but he goes on and on and on. And on. A month or two ago I started "Fugitive Anne" by Rosa Praed and it too was filled with adjectives and word after word after detailed description after word. On and On. I finally put it aside for the time being. Although I do remember reading H G Wells when I was in school and liking some of his things.

The embarrassing thing is, I tend to go on and on and on myself.

There needs to be a happy medium somewhere.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

There needs to be a happy medium somewhere.

I don't know that there does. Surely the world is big enough for all different styles of storytelling. And, as some very successful, incredibly long series can attest to, there is certainly a market for the overly wordy. Likewise, there is still an audience for the minimalist. It's the assumption that the second way of writing is somehow more correct that bugs me.

 

[sr71plt]

I just chalk my first drafts up to being Germanic and start looking where I can split the sentences--often to no avail.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I'm reading THE GLORY AND THE DREAM by William Manchester. Manchesters books read like historical novels, and they aren't larded with sentimentality. One brief scene says more about FDR than a biography: After the inauguration Jimmy Roosevelt lifted his father into his arms and put him in bed, and as he tucked FDR in the old man said, "Jimmy? Fire is the only thing I feared until today." What you afraid of now, Pa?" "I'm afraid I can't fix this nation."

 

[AMoveableBeast]

I'm reading THE GLORY AND THE DREAM by William Manchester. Manchesters books read like historical novels, and they aren't larded with sentimentality. One brief scene says more about FDR than a biography: After the inauguration Jimmy Roosevelt lifted his father into his arms and put him in bed, and as he tucked FDR in the old man said, "Jimmy? Fire is the only thing I feared until today." What you afraid of now, Pa?" "I'm afraid I can't fix this nation."

A good line. Later, he would add the whole "fear itself" thing to that list.

 

[twilight_song]

Beast, your opening post has to be one of the most delightful descriptors of the English language that I have ever encountered. I lol'd. Hard.

And now I want to go write verbose, grandiloquent stories...

 

[SikFuk]

The problem arises when the words get in the way of the story.

 

[sr71plt]

Or are off on a tangent from the story.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

Beast, your opening post has to be one of the most delightful descriptors of the English language that I have ever encountered. I lol'd. Hard.

And now I want to go write verbose, grandiloquent stories...

Then my purpose was doubly served.

 

[Mara12]

Manchester's great

I'm reading THE GLORY AND THE DREAM by William Manchester. Manchesters books read like historical novels, and they aren't larded with sentimentality. One brief scene says more about FDR than a biography: After the inauguration Jimmy Roosevelt lifted his father into his arms and put him in bed, and as he tucked FDR in the old man said, "Jimmy? Fire is the only thing I feared until today." What you afraid of now, Pa?" "I'm afraid I can't fix this nation."

I thought his "A World Lit Only by Fire" was one of the best written about the middle ages.

 

[FragileUnbroken]

Hemingway can keep his, hard, lean, athletic prose. I like my sentences like I like my women: full, meaty, unapologetically voluptuous. The sparseness presented by the avante-garde of the 1920's was a bold switch from the overly emotional, description larded norm at the turn of the century, but it has become an anthem of conformity over the years. Big emotions don't come from big words, but neither does skinny communication have a corner on control.

Who doesn't love the playfulness of English? We are the proud owners of the most superfluously jiggly language in the history of the world. It's ripe with humor and bursting with an overabundance of meaning. Why are we so intent on starving it down to some manageable size, some trimmed down anorexic version of its true, overflowing obscenity? We raised this girl right, fed her from every source imaginable. Then Shakespeare, being the stone-cold, pimp/poet he was, took all that glorious corpulence of vocabulary and codified it in the sexiest, most confusing-ass way imaginable. Then he sent it out into the world in a pair of high heels, wearing the skimpiest set of rules possible and told it, "Be nice to the gentlemen, English, and they'll be nice to you."

Quit fighting that shit. Unleash those beautiful, bouncing adverbs. Let it rhyme. Mix those metaphors and let those participles dangle. Get nasty with it. Have fun.

To paraphrase the early 90's bard Anthony Ray, better known by his pen name, Sir Mix-A-Lot, "My anaconda don't want none unless you got puns , hun."

Nicely put. Very nicely put.

 

[robertreams]

Yes! Give us rich glorious spices for our meat and vegetables: golden saffron, pungent Greek oregano, and coriander and scarlet paprika; delightful concoctions to tease our palates and liberate our senses.

But please don't tell us that we can't go ahead and write sentences that have lots of words in them and say that we are writing that way because we are trying to write about a character who talks that way and doesn't necessarily talk in good English like all you grammar Nazis.

There once was a poet from Japan
Whose poetry never would scan
When asked why that was
He said it's because
I always try to get absolutely as many words into the last line as I possibly can.

 

[robertreams]

We should have a worst written contest on Literotica. How about a thread with the worst similes and metaphors. She was so embarrassed her face was red as a baboon's ass.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

Nicely put. Very nicely put.

Thank you. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

 

[Hypoxia]

We should have a worst written contest on Literotica. How about a thread with the worst similes and metaphors. She was so embarrassed her face was red as a baboon's ass.

Be careful what you wish for.

Also, there''s a lot of prize material in the Bulwer-Lytton competitions. Read the DARK AND STORMY NIGHT book series.

 

[BurningMonkey]

I just recently started re-reading Tolkein for the umpty-umpth time.

I remember devouring the books so often as a teen that the bindings fell apart. But this time...?
I found myself about midway through the first book thinking, "This guy could use a blue pencil."

Maybe my tastes have changed, or maybe I was so enamored of the subject matter that I ignored the style, but when the style gets in the way of the story--well, that's a problem for me.

One of the authors I've really enjoyed lately is Steven Erikson (fantasy), and the reason is precisely as Beast says: The man can write, with flowery descriptions that run on for paragraphs and evocative language that's both subtle and flowing. And his writing never intrudes into the storyline; rather it embellishes and enhances it beyond a mere tale.

I love words, and I love using adjectives, adverbs, and the proper utilization of the semi-colon to string multiple thoughts together. But it has to be done well, or the whole thing falls apart.

 

[sr71plt]

Maybe the moral to that one was that you should have stopped reading them while they were still a good memory for the phase you were in when you read them for the story alone.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

I have come to that same exact conclusion on Tolkien, BurningMonkey, and it pains me as greatly as the scar from any Mordor-forged dagger. I obsessed over those books as a child. I wonder now, how, between the sword fights and the magic, I missed the ever present dryness of the presentation. While gifted with an admirable imagination and an unrivaled attention to detail, Tolkien has, at times, the delivery of a lobotomized high school history teacher fighting a sinus infection.

 

[MrFoxwood]

When my wife (who is Dutch but with flawless English) helps me edit she is forever trying to butcher my sentences. Now I get on her wick by sharing those that are particularly verbose from whatever it is I happen to be reading. I've recently been explaining 'ghoti' to her and frankly I think she's starting to suspect that the driving force behind the English language is an attempt to confound the foreigner.

Ours is a marvellous language and I take great joy in exploring it. The opening chapter of Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson is a good source of comparative notes between English and other languages.

 

[Mara12]

shivers

@AMB

" the delivery of a lobotomized high school history teacher fighting a sinus infection."

I <I>love</I> that! Had a geography teacher like that once....

 

[AMoveableBeast]

@AMB

" the delivery of a lobotomized high school history teacher fighting a sinus infection."

I <I>love</I> that! Had a geography teacher like that once....

I think they get them from an agency, or something.

 

[DesEsseintes]

Whenever I long for a superb simile, I reach for my Wodehouse.

A few favourites here:

He had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life’s gas-pipe with a lighted candle.

She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say when.

As for Gussie Fink-Nottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming him on sight.

She looked at me like someone who has just solved the crossword puzzle with a shrewd “Emu” in the top right hand corner.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

Whenever I long for a superb simile, I reach for my Wodehouse.

A few favourites here:

He had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life’s gas-pipe with a lighted candle.

She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say when.

As for Gussie Fink-Nottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming him on sight.

She looked at me like someone who has just solved the crossword puzzle with a shrewd “Emu” in the top right hand corner.

All of those are fun. I am especially fond of the second.

 

[Mara12]

Love the Wodehouse quotes also. I'd like to perform the third on a choice colleague.