Sentence fragments and how we read (and write)

[HareBrain]

I re-read this morning something I posted last night, and got a surprise.

The way Renault "explains" the minotaur, labyrinth etc is very good, and detracts nothing from the myth. Because its characters have a genuinely different outlook from ours, it works as fantasy even though nothing happens that requires a fantastical explanation.

I've become so used to people writing in choppy sentence fragments (or at least Steven Erikson doing so) that I assumed the "Because" was a continuation of the previous sentence, rather than the beginning of the next -- which of course completely changed its meaning, resulted in nonsense, and meant I had to backtrack and adjust my reading to make sense of it.

I'd be interested to know how many people, reading the above, would do the same, and how that might compare to a few years ago?

It's been interesting, and annoying, to note how Steven Erikson's style has changed over the five books of his that I've read. With the first in the series, Gardens of the Moon, I was impressed by the fact that pretty much all of his (non-dialogue) sentences were actual sentences, whereas now, by the fifth book, I'd guess that almost half the prose isn't formed of true sentences at all. I don't know if that's because the technique has become generally much more common since he started writing, or he received some spurious advice about it being more pacey, or because he had to write at a much faster rate and such niceties fell by the wayside. But it occurs to me that the very fact that I was impressed by his proper sentences in the first book, rather than just taking it for granted, shows how prevalent the technique has become.

If the technique does take over, it will (as in my example above) actually limit the ways in which we can express ourselves, because we will become less able to predict how the average reader will parse a sentence, to the point that only the most basic structures will survive. That can't be a good thing, can it?

 

[Gonk the Insane]

I'd guess that almost half the prose isn't formed of true sentences at all

Maybe he. Got a bit. Lazy.

I've certainly noticed that style used by Erikson in other (relatively recent) Fantasy novels, particularly those with a darker edge. Without looking back at the novels, it's something I'd expect to find in Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, though I'm sure there are others. It puts me in mind of noir, that kind of punchy, spare prose.

I guess I've been encountering it quite a lot, too, because I had the same initial assumption when starting the "Because" sentence. For me, the comma changed the meaning: "different outlook from ours," - that was the point where the meaning changed and I realised it wasn't a continuation of the previous sentence. I hadn't realised until you pointed it out (great example!) how thoroughly this choppy style has permeated recent works though.

If the technique does take over,

I hope it doesn't now you've pointed out the implications, but my gut feeling is that this might be a passing phase, one that spikes in popularity before waning again. The style has its place, but I don't think it can be adapted to every novel, and there are plenty of authors who just couldn't write in such a way without alienating their audience. Take someone like Peter F. Hamilton - if he started culling prose like that he'd end up with a novel 6 pages long instead of 600!

Even if this style does become popular in the long-term, there are still SFF authors who write long, beautiful prose and will continue to do so regardless of the shifting landscape around them. So, that's good, right?

 

[The Judge]

Well, I read it right the first time, and again just now reading it here. In fact, I had to read your above post twice to work out how to read it wrongly.

I'd not specifically noticed sentence fragments increasing in volume, though I've not been reading a lot of -- or, indeed, any -- Erikson recently, and I've been giving the grimdarkers a miss, too, as I can't get on with them, plus I'm mixing my SFF reading up with older non-SFF stuff which tends to use a more correct form of English. Since I write fragments a lot myself, though, I'd perhaps not pick up on it anyway.

If there is a trend, I wonder if it's because of the current penchant for close POV in SFF, which leads to the narrative being written in the POV character's voice, and therefore in a more elliptical style. I never saw The Wire, but I recall reading that when it started it was seen as revolutionary that the characters were given dialogue which was close to how people would speak in real life with words missed and elided. That sloppiness of language has come into dialogue in novels, so as to get close to realism, and from there it's slipped into the narrative. Perhaps.

But yes, it is a shame if any particular style becomes so dominant that it pushes out other, usually more considered or elegant, styles.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Without looking back at the novels, it's something I'd expect to find in Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, though I'm sure there are others.

Joe Abercrombie is a great example of a writer whose narrative voice is closely tied in with the POV character voice. However, it's not something I find commonly used with books written in third person.

 

[Ursa major]

I wonder if it's because of the current penchant for close POV in SFF, which leads to the narrative being written in the POV character's voice

I think it's (mostly) this: the (literary) third person narrator has, in close third person narratives, been replaced by what amounts to the PoV character's (PoV characters') thoughts**. Now I'm sure there are some people out there who think in longer sentences -- and when one is writing, oe can produce such sentences without thinking them up all in one go -- but how many of them are also the PoV characters in SFF (or other) novels? Not many, I would have thought, and often they're not in a position to think this way, assailed as they (often) are by what's happening around them.


** - Just because the author doesn't type ..., thought <PoV character X>... or put direct thoughts in italics (and/or the present tense), doesn't mean that we aren't reading the PoV character's thoughts***.

*** - There was a recent edition of In Our Time about Emma, in which one of the invited experts explained**** how radical Jane Austen was in using this sort of technique. I think he wanted to make sure the listener knew about this as it isn't what is usually said (outside academia, I assume) about Austen's writing.

**** - At least, this was what I thought he was talking about.

 

[lynnfredricks]

If the technique does take over, it will (as in my example above) actually limit the ways in which we can express ourselves, because we will become less able to predict how the average reader will parse a sentence, to the point that only the most basic structures will survive. That can't be a good thing, can it?

I take the style you are referring to as a colloquial style meant to emulate dialog. Or the lazy way that people let words dribble out their fingers on forums like they would if they are were actually talking, and punctuating their sentences with emoticons ;-)

This is entirely acceptable so long as the context allows it; it is entirely unacceptable if the context does not. If I received a document in English in this style, and it was a serious academic paper or a business document, red ink would flow much as it would if the document was packed with faulty logic.

 

[Ursa major]

*** - There was a recent edition of In Our Time about Emma, in which one of the invited experts explained**** how radical Jane Austen was in using this sort of technique. I think he wanted to make sure the listener knew about this as it isn't what is usually said (outside academia, I assume) about Austen's writing.

And there's more about this in today's Grauniad, in an article written by one of the contributors to that In Our Time episode, Professor John Mullan, who writes here:

The narrative was radically experimental because it was designed to share her delusions. The novel bent narration through the distorting lens of its protagonist’s mind. Though little noticed by most of the pioneers of fiction for the next century and more, it belongs with the great experimental novels of Flaubert or Joyce or Woolf.

The article mentions Henry James's view of Austen, included in the following paragraph.

Austen left behind no artistic manifesto, no account of her narrative methods beyond a few playful remarks in letters to her niece, Anna. This has made it easy for novelists and critics to follow Henry James’s idea of her as “instinctive and charming”. “For signal examples of what composition, distribution, arrangement can do, of how they intensify the life of a work of art, we have to go elsewhere.” She hardly knew what she was doing, so, implicitly, the innovative novelist like James has nothing to learn from her.

I find this rather ironic. I first read a description of the technique of third person narrative as the PoV character's thoughts (note, in the main narrative rather than just in separately identified thoughts) in a book by David Lodge (Consciousness and the Novel), which used examples written by Henry James. And yet James didn't, by the look of it, realise from where this technique may** have sprung.


** - Or may not: I didn't study English beyond O level, so am naturally ignorant about this sort of thing.