by Steven Goldsberry. I will post a review on it later, but right now I would like to address his 45th rule: Be Brief. Goldsberry quotes Hemmingway, who said that his editor for the Kansas City Star gave him the following set of rules: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative." Goldsberry amended part of the phrase to be "Use shorter sentences." There, he says that he means it in the sense that writers should cut unnecessary words.
I think that also probably means to not pack so much into one sentence. Of course, that means that one must be sure to not creating choppy sentences that are repetitive. After reading over some of my previous posts, I think I might be guilty of that. However, my focus now is creating brief sentences, not avoiding them.
So, two tasks: 1. Cut superfluous language; 2. Don' pack too much into one sentence.
I am going to have to work on that. I read over some of what I have written for my book, and I did both of those things several times. Of course, I was just rushing to get what was in my head onto the page, so I did not pay much attention to sentence structure (or word choice. Forgive the sample sentence below. I was planning on going back and changing or even eliminating the descriptive words. Honest).
Here is a sentence I wrote for my book that needs some paring down:
"The pipe corridors that ran along side the main gallery of the indoor market were a good hiding place from which to conduct his business, but they often restricted him to the wrong side of the long, worn, brick hall while his target wandered off to new stores and stands selling trinkets or food."
That is way too long. First, to separate all of that into more than one sentence:
"The pipe corridors that ran along the main gallery of the indoor market were a good hiding place from which to conduct his business. Unfortunately, they often restricted him to the wrong side of the long, worn, brick hall while his target wandered off to new stores and stands selling trinkets or food."
I can hardly express how sorry I am that you had to read that horrible, horrible paragraph. I promise I'll fix it.
Moving on. This is an introduction to the chapter and to the setting, so I need to keep a lot of the adjectives somehow. I can probably lose the "main" from "main gallery." I think in the sense I am using it, it does not really matter. However, the other adjectives need to be worked in better in describing the setting. I need to show and not tell. In the next attempt, I include some facts and sentences from other parts of the chapter. I provided some short explanations in parentheses. Here goes attempt number two:
"Liam [main character] peered through the pipes and up the brick corridor. Seeing his mark walk across the hall to yet another trinket shop, he swore. "Samil's Bane!"[just go with it] The pipe passages that ran along the gallery of the indoor market were a good hiding place from which to conduct his business without unwanted attention. Unfortunately, Liam sometimes got stuck behind the pipes while his mark wandered off to the other side of the expansive hall.
If Liam lost this chance, it would be the third this morning, and he would not get any more until next month. He was running out of time. The Septarians [aristocratic class] would only stay in the King's Center for a little while, and they only came in the first place for the sake of tradition. Who could blame them? People with so much wealth could only be expected to put up with uneven bricks and peeling paint for so long."
Better? I think it's better. Well, I hope it is, anyway. Any comments would be appreciated.
Now, I just have to write the rest of my book-- almost all of it-- and then edit every single description to be more like the one above. Gee. I'll be done in no time. Hopefully, now that I am conscious of it though, I will just write the first draft with better, shorter, and more descriptive sentences.
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