Fragments versus flow

[Coragem]

Hi there:

Always learning, always learning … Until this year, really, I was opting for longer, more flowing sentences. Since then I've read a few things (e.g., Joe Abercrombie) where single sentences are essentially broken up to make many fragmentary sentences.

Obviously, breaking things up like this can make things easier for the reader.

Below is a paragraph where (in the first version) I have incorporated a fragment ("Slipped into her jacket"), even though I could theoretically make it one LONG sentence (2nd version).

Another option would be to break things up with full stops and add a pronoun or pronouns ("She slipped", "She took"), which I try to avoid if I can just for the sake of brevity / economy.

What do people think? Any advice on usage (or non-usage) of fragments?

Coragem

Calmly now, secretaries and PAs coming and, at the end of the working day, mostly going around her, not wishing to draw their attention, she briefly withdrew into the office. Slipped into her jacket. Took several moments to free and tidy her hair before, more or less satisfied, she re-emerged and made for the stairwell mid-way down the long corridor, equidistant between her office and the President’s, still tugging at the jacket’s hem and sleeves as she went.

Calmly now, secretaries and PAs coming and, at the end of the working day, mostly going around her, not wishing to draw their attention, she briefly withdrew into the office, slipped into her jacket, took several moments to free and tidy her hair before, more or less satisfied, she re-emerged and made for the stairwell mid-way down the long corridor, equidistant between her office and the President’s, still tugging at the jacket’s hem and sleeves as she went.

 

[The Judge]

For me the problem with the first para is that there's an inconsistency of voice between the long convoluted sentences and the "Slipped into her jacket" without the pronoun. Short abrupt sentences themselves aren't the problem, since you need to vary the pace, but there's a great difference between that and ungrammatical fragments. The latter have their place, but for me their place isn't here combined with this style.

As for the second para it's needlessly one sentence. There's no reason you can't break it at least once to make it more readable eg at "... office. She slipped..." For my taste, I'd change the wording and punctuation to:

Calmly now, secretaries and PAs coming and -- at the end of the working day -- mostly going around her, not wishing to draw their attention,** she briefly withdrew into the office where she slipped into her jacket and took several moments to free [?] and tidy her hair. More or less satisfied, she re-emerged and made for the stairwell mid-way down the long corridor, equidistant between her office and the President’s, still tugging at the jacket’s hem and sleeves as she went.

Re the coming and going, as a phrase it doesn't mean literally coming in and going out, it means just people all over the place. Trying to use it literally by adding the "mostly" and the bit in parentheses makes it unwieldy, I think.

** I'm really not sure about this. If you take out the subclauses about the secretaries it reads "Calmly now... not wishing to draw their attention..." which to me is odd, to say the least.

 

[Kaldaur]

To echo what the judge said, I don't think the exclusion of pronouns is what sometimes makes fragments effective. It's more about variation of pace, but what I saw above was fragments separated by commas, thus making the sentence(s) one long stream of thought. There's still little room for the reader to breathe.

 

[The Judge]

Another thought. One of the reasons that, for me, that the fragment didn't work is that it's isolated. If you had written something like:

Calmly now, secretaries and PAs coming and, at the end of the working day, mostly going around her, not wishing to draw their attention, she briefly withdrew into the office. Slipped into her jacket. Freed her hair. Tidied it.

More or less satisfied, she re-emerged and made for the stairwell mid-way down the long corridor, equidistant between her office and the President’s, still tugging at the jacket’s hem and sleeves as she went.

I'm still not ecstatic over the way it clashes with the convoluted style you want for her, but at least it's given a better rhythm to the piece. And as you can see I've separated the next line into a separate paragraph -- to my mind this allows the truncated sentences to give impact. Leaving them in the middle of the para suffocates them.

 

[James Coote]

I can imagine this being used in conversation when listing items or getting to the point:

"Slipped in the bath. Banged his head. Never woke up from the coma"

"His hair is a mess. Brain like a sieve. Can't take orders"
"Yeah, but he's your only hope now"

Then again, you could just replace the full stops with commas, and the only thing that would look odd is the lack of an and or but

 

[Brian G Turner]

Obviously, breaking things up like this can make things easier for the reader.

I'm minded of a scene in Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine Mosaic, where a character was trying to rest, and the sentences became shorter the more sleepy he became.

To myself, this suggested that sentence structure can be used according to the POV character, and also the mood, for best effect.

As Abercrombie tends towards a character voice rather than disembodied narrative, I've so far consider his stye to be an extension of that.

 

[Coragem]

I'm minded of a scene in Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine Mosaic, where a character was trying to rest, and the sentences became shorter the more sleepy he became.

Thanks everyone. I've read all these responses carefully and they're spot on.

Kay is interesting, I think. He often uses long (very, very long) sentences, but I noticed that in his Sarantine Mosaic he begins using fragments and short, high-impact sentences much more than in previous works.

I think the key point with fragments / very short sentences is to use them when they are really indicated and effective. E.g., when one or a few words are important, and carry more weight and power when isolated.

When I began this thread I think I'd forgotten that, and I wasn't seeing woods for trees, so to speak. I was feeling tempted to use a fragment just because it seemed convenient; because I was struggling to express myself otherwise – so not for the right reasons.

We live, we learn … we re-learn!

Coragem.

 

[Dozmonic]

I remember a study on ADHD I read once where they noticed that people without ADHD will usually take a short breath after a full stop, before reading a new sentence. With several short sentences they may read a couple without stopping for a breath, but when they do stop it's at the end of a sentence, before a new one. People with ADHD don't time their breaths like that, taking a breath midsentence meant that they lost their focus, especially if they subvocalised what they read in their head. Fargmented sentences are great for flow and style, but they should only be used where the story pacing really calls for it. If the sentence is too long, people start to skip it, trying to find the relevant information before heading to the next sentence and that next vital breath.

 

[Vertigo]

Read this last night which put me in mind of your question Coragem:

He liked to come home at night and walk for blocks and blocks without seeing anyone. He liked the color of the streetlamps and the light that spilled over the fronts of the houses. The shadows that moved as he moved. The ashen, sooty dawns. The men of few words who gathered in the pub, where he became a regular. The pain, or the memory of pain, that here was literally sucked away by something nameless until only a void was left.

In this case I like the sandwiching of the two short fragments between two pairs of longer sentences of which all but the last one were made up of two short clauses and that last one seems to wrap it up.

 

[Tecdavid]

I think flowing sentences work well for some passages, but perhaps not so well for others. A paragraph that describes setting/location, for example, might read smoother if its sentences are indeed longer, poetic, and 'artistic'.
A time when shorter, abrupt sentences could work is in a scene where a character might be frightened of something, and is looking around anxiously:
"She stopped in her tracks. All was silent, save the chill, chime-like dripping of dew from beyond the tunnel. It was dark, so very dark. She could hardly see the clouds of her own hesitant breath before her. She could see nothing, but he could see her. He was there."

I personally think there are times where one style works better than another, so perhaps practicing both would be wise.