Starting sentences with 'then'

[Mouse]

Yeah I do tend to do that to define characters anyway, give them a word they have a habit of saying or something!

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Verily the angel Peter did miss the traditional add on to

And lo! there was a wailing

"Thar' she blows"

oft heard on "I'm sorry I'll read that again" - Angus Prune.

 

[ctg]

Why is that every year winter comes as a surprise to the British people? And why is that every single year there's a "Big Freeze" headlining the papers? Aren't you getting tired of everything being run so inefficiently? Then again, I shouldn't be so surprised, because this is a 'mildly' tempered nation, and we are on bring on the global warming cycle. </sarcasm>

See, it's not so difficult to run narrative by using AND and THEN words at the beginning of the sentence. There's nothing wrong on using them. Just be sure, like the others say that you don't overuse them.

 

[Sapheron]

Yeah, winter in Britain is hideously inconvenient. If someone smells bad weather everything shuts down. Hopefully it won't do so this week, or I won't be able to get to university in time for my exams...

To remain a little on topic, as I said before (I think), I quite like 'then' at the beginning of a sentence in certain circumstances but will enforce, yet again, that it should not be used quickly in succession.

 

[dreamhunter]

Would be a tough call ... if you're telling a story orally ... to a group of kids ... like Homer, Odysseus or Merlin ... if you can't use 'and', 'then', 'and then' or 'suddenly' ...

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

In school, I used to always get marked down for starting sentences with ands and buts.

In school they are teaching you to write essays and the like, not fiction. When you start writing fiction, you have to unlearn a lot. (This is assuming that you ever learned it in the first place.) For me, the hardest rule to unlearn was the one that said paragraphs have at least two sentences. This led to a lot of unnecessary sentences, until I finally found the courage to cast that rule aside.

I start many a sentence with "and." Sometimes because it helps to sustain a thought, but sometimes to introduce a new one, simply because it introduces a not-so-modern feel to my writing (which is appropriate to the subject matter) without having to throw in a lot of archaic words like "forsooth" and "verily," which always sound silly.

 

[Peter Graham]

You've got it bad up there, then, Peter?

Indeed! Caer Graham has been pretty much cut off for the best part of three weeks.

But the Southron folk did eschew the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over the failing of the gritting, at least until the hearing, but did instead consult their lawyers...

And they didst say unto their lawyers, "I'm not in it for the money, it's a matter of principle. For verily Daisy and Poppi hath not been able to attend their 'Business Mandarin For Toddlers' course for two whole days, which may affect their career and networking opportunities for the future. And Lo! It is a disgrace that whilst we are doing everything possible to minimise our personal exposure to tax so that we have more cash to go wakeboarding in Polynesia or to take Daisy and Poppi to see Father Christmas at the real North Pole, the Council appears to have run out of money for salt."

Regards,

Peter

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Thenceforthwithhereafter such deprivations should be worth a pretty penny or two if afterwithall you can attract the services of a passing bloodsucker who will grasp the nettle and prevail upon the public purse in compensatory extractions therefrom.

Andfuthermoreandtoward that end I wish you well

 

[Interference]

If you're falling into a given sentence structure by habit it might be as well to look at why that's happening. With the right reasons, any sentence can begin in any way that pleases you and supports your style. Then why worry? Because someone pointed it out, so quite possibly it isn't the word that they spotted so much as the repetition of sentence structure that followed it.

 

[Mouse]

Ok, this is how I've been using it:

“You carry on with Squirrel,” said Sorrel, “I’ll get him to move.”
“Right,” said Fagan, about to turn away. Then he stopped and looked at Sorrel. “Can you hear that?” he asked.
“Hear what?” asked Sorrel, still trying to get Enapay moving.

Which I've changed to:

"You carry on with Squirrel," said Sorrel, "I'll get him to move."
"Right," said Fagan. He was about to turn away when he stopped and looked at Sorrel. "Can you hear that?" he asked.

 

[Boneman]

Hee hee, I had to laugh at my own writing as I'm doing it! This is what I just wrote:

by me
Her voice died away and he became aware that the Klaxon had ceased. Then he heard more shooting and he swung his feet over the bed, and grabbed his pants.
[/QUOTE)

I'm trying to use 'then' as a word meaning of 'following on'. So I guess I could write:
Her voice died away and he became aware that the Klaxon had ceased. There was a moment of silence, then he heard more shooting and he swung his feet over the bed, and grabbed his pants.
But does it matter in this case? This, then, is the case where the meaning of the word 'then' is correctly used at the start of a sentence?

But it shows you how pervasive the Chrons become, if it intrudes into my consciousness as I'm writing. There's no hope for any of us!!

 

[Ursa major]

Or you could try this "then-less" version (based on your first example):

Her voice died away and he became aware that the Klaxon had ceased. At the sound of more shooting, he swung his feet over the bed and grabbed his pants.

 

[The Judge]

Mouse, the first version wasn't bad, but the second was much better in my view. So yes, if you can improve each one like that, go for it.

Boneman, the first version of yours wasn't bad, but you haven't altered the structure with the amended version, as Mouse has done, only started the second sentence with the dreaded 'There was' which should be avoided if at all possible. Do you want that brief moment of silence made explicit? If not, Ursa's version is a good one to follow. If so, go with your second, but because I can't help myself...

Her voice died away and he became aware [that] delete as unnecessary the ?wailing of the Klaxon small 'k' unless it's a trademarked name or something had [ceased] stopped (is he the kind of man to use 'ceased'?). [There was a] A moment of silence, then he heard more shooting. He [and he] swung his feet over the bed[,] and grabbed his pants. Shorter sentences = more energy

J

 

[Mouse]

Mouse, the first version wasn't bad, but the second was much better in my view. So yes, if you can improve each one like that, go for it.

Brilliant, thanks.

 

[Interference]

I concur with the Judgement

 

[Mouse]

I'm reading Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book at the mo and he starts quite a few sentences with 'then.' Course, cos I've just been through and de-thenned my work, they jump out at me!

 

[The Judge]

I know what you mean. In one of Miss Snark's blogs she inveighs against using 'that' (eg in "She knew that he was wrong" you should usually delete it and have "She knew he was wrong"). I steadfastly went through de-thatting. Reading a novel recently, what did I find but thats all over the place!

NB Just as Boneman discovered, after you'd started this thread I started seeing thens all over my own work and I'm fighting like mad to de-then it. So thanks for posting originally!

 

[Mouse]

Heh heh! No probs! I'm now going to go looking for thats...

 

[Ursa major]

As the narraror is either a unnamed "character" in its own right or what the POV character of the moment might write (though possibly less informally than they'd use whan talking to, say, friends), shouldn't the decision to use "that" or "then" have some connection to the personality of said character.

Even when my narrator was constant (i.e. was not based on the POV of the moment), I tended to use "that" in the prose where it aided clarity. Now, some narration has it and some doesn't, in the same way I vary use of contractions and abbreviations. (I try to maintain consistency within a narrative POV, in the same way I try to keep to the knowledge and vocabulary of each POV.)

I know that this does open the door for a complete collapse in standards of grammar, etc, when dealing with pig-ignorant (or worse) POVs, but there is always a price to pay when trying to be a little less mundane.

 

[The Judge]

I think it's like everything, Ursa. It's a question of thinking about what you've written and why, and not doing things on auto-pilot. Or at least, not keeping on auto-pilot when you're revising/editing.

Sometimes 'that' is necessary for clarity, sometimes it's very useful for dialogue or close POV narration, but a lot of time in my writing it was simply extraneous filler and one of those words I didn't actually read - my eyes skimmed over it. So I've found it a very helpful exercise to go through looking for 'that' and 'then' and 'there was' and getting rid of as many as I could.

It's an interesting point about what happens when you have an illiterate character's POV. It's always struck me as odd that we write with more basic words, and in looser grammar, but we still punctuate perfectly! Perhaps we ought to follow Terry Pratchett's lead with his greengrocers** -- when they speak, the apostrophe goes all over the place.

** or as they would write it, greengrocer's...