On writing

[wiseheart]

I think I just had a revelation recently.

When I started writing in English, about a decade and a half ago, when the Tolkien fandom was on its film-induced boost, I used to hear people complaining about run-in sentences left, right and center. That made me very nervous; firstly because I tend to build long, complicated sentences (which is an infestation from German literary language, I think), and secondly because I used to be even more insecure about my English than I'm now.

However, recently I read a lot of fanfic in the Sherlock fandom, and I think I finally begin to understand what all those people meant all those years ago. There are interesting stories that I actually like, but they make me incredibly tired after a couple of chapters, because the author writes in a hectic manner that make it hard to make out the individual sentences.

Considering that these authors are usually native English speakers, I think I'm not doing all that bad, in comparison.

Comments

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :) It took me a long while until I dared to believe that long sentences aren't necessarily a bad thing - as long as there's a coherent concept that the reader can follow. Not always an easy thing in German literary language, and since I started writing in German much earlier than in English, I needed time to adapt. Still, I for my part like long sentences sometimes. *g*