Your Sentences aren't short enough (here's how to fix them)

My Sentence Course: thejohnfox.com/writing-course...
Or get all 10 of my courses with Bookfox Academy: thejohnfox.com/writing-courses/
Need help with publicity? thejohnfox.com/publicity/
Publishing options with Bookfox Press: thejohnfox.com/bookfox-press-...
Buy my book for writers: amzn.to/3U5ul14
Subscribe to my email newsletters: thejohnfox.com/subscribe/

[@asquirrelplays]

"It is done" - could mean anything from the pizza in the oven getting fully cooked to a critical world defining moment in religious history. I'm a fan of short sentences.

[@Bookfox]

Yes, good insight -- lots of room for different interpretations of short sentences. Another good point in their favor.

[@canaisyoung3601]

Tone and context are your friends.

[@ximenalindsey5075]

Whew. I was scared. I thought this was going to be about JUST writing short sentences, similar to the media equivalent of the seven-second sound bite. Thankfully, it's more of a "variety is the spice of life" approach to the power of the short sentence. Thanks, Bookfox! I find your videos most helpful.

[@patriciasalem3606]

Me too. I have to use that dreadful Hemingway app for some of my writing clients. It will not let you have a list of items separated by commas or what it terms "complex" sentences. This includes sentences that start with a qualifier or that have two long sections joined by a conjunction. Otherwise it highlights them in red as "extremely difficult to read" (really????), and my clients make me edit them. Everything has to be seventh-grade level or lower. I feel like this is making ALL my writing dumber. And Hemingway, as terse as he was, is probably rolling in his grave.

[@patrickcoan3139]

Thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU, for coming out and affirming that long sentences are valid sentences. I get dinged for 35 word sentences all the time and try and keep 'er cool. The greats have rhythm, and momentum. Let's talk about semicolons next!

[@rockbandny]

I like in macbeth, how rosse says the ground was feverous and did shake and all the stuff about the sky and the chimwnys and macbeth says twas a rough night. Also I have this character Dana and hes Texan, from a small town, and he is surrounded by showing off, "educated" "sophisticated" people who just brag a lot and he'll often say, "ain't that somethin'". But in like an almost derogatory way hidden behind politeness

[@diminaband]

I am loving your videos, just discovered you. But gotta tell ya, the sub transition “wooshes” are killing my speakers in the car 😂

[@georgiafrancis9059]

In one of Terry McMilian's novels, the first page and part of pg 2 was ONE long first sentence.... took me by surprise......the sentence was portraying her "thought" process...very ineresting.

[@ArtemHahauz-nm7bk]

Yes, I absolutely agree with you that short sentences can sometimes be much stronger than long ones. Here's an example from the short story ("The Treasure" by "Summerset M."): "Richard Harringer was a happy man." This sentence is not only short, but it is also adds a punch. Summerset adds even more strength to this sentence by repeating it a few times (each time with a slightly different emotion). Thank you for this video! Best regards from an Ukrainian. Polishing sentences and improving the flow lies after actually writing everything.😊

[@robmaxwell3076]

Thanks for covering topics that get less exposure elsewhere. I just subscribed.

[@Bookfox]

Thanks for the sub!

[@jeyhey5320]

Your 89 long sentence is actually two sentences. There is a full stop before „Under“.

[@WankiTank]

Was just looking for this!

[@felixallsopp1133]

as is the one after: 'remote. For'

[@georgiafrancis9059]

the shortest sentence in any of the books I've read has to be ONE word like OH, or OW, or FUCK, or CRAP......like that

[@darkengine5931]

I seem to love both reading and writing long-winded sentences, with Nicholson Baker being my favorite author in terms of prose style. Yet I have difficulty pinpointing exactly why. Might it have something to do with rhythmic feet and meter, as taught in poetry? An excerpt from _The Mezzanine_ : >> At some earlier point in the morning, my left shoe had become untied, and as I had sat at my desk working on a memo, my foot had sensed its potential freedom and slipped out of the sauna of black cordovan to soothe itself with rhythmic movements over an area of wall-to-wall carpeting under my desk, which, unlike the tamped-down areas of public traffic, was still almost as soft and fibrous as it had been when first installed. Somehow his writing reads so effortlessly to my eyes, despite being extremely long-winded ("at some earler point" vs. simply "earlier", "had sat" vs. "sat", "had been" vs. "was", etc.) and drifting in thought. I can't place my finger on why. As another example, I find, "The old knife was chipped," rather jarring, staccato, and difficult to read. Yet, "The tarnished knife was dull and chipped," is actually easier for me to read and it seems to flow more smoothly. It also seems more suspenseful to me with a softer cadence at the end. The former one seems to have a stronger and finalizing cadence to it: "The old knife was chipped. [The end]." If anyone has any insight into why I find such things easier to read, I would love to hear it!

[@antanowrites]

I wish I had time to follow all your tips in my writing lol

[@mizutori2057]

Interesting video. In the passage you show at 1:15 there are two sentences before "They rode on," and two sentences after it. Not one as you state. You can still make the same point of sentence length variance by saying that the two sentences before and after "They rode on," are fairly lengthy. At 3:08 the passage shown is five sentences (not six as stated) and has the following sentence lengths: 54 words, 46 words, 12 words, 12 words, and 5 words. Your point still stands that it is a "funnel" shape.

[@squashfan9526]

I noticed these points too. Isn't it odd and very careless to have not noticed there are two sentences before and two sentences after "They rode on"?

[@Bookfox]

You're totally right. I copy pasted from a longer section rather than from the shorter section that I should have used. At 3:08 I think I just misspoke.

[@oldguyinstanton]

Excellent advice.

[@marikothecheetah9342]

Knew all of the quotes, but not the last one. Powerful, though. Call me Ishmael is THE short sentence of literature. :P Short sentences are great to sum up, to make that sudden u-turn or, diverge from the story. But, unfortunately, nowadays it's the lack of longer sentences that is more common than those short ones. :/

[@lizgonzalez491]

Awesome video!

[@stevensandersauthor]

Excellent.

[@thatfamily2917]

Does anyone else think he talks really fast? I keep having to slow his videos down to get everything, haha. But also, everything he's saying is really good, so that's still a point in favor

[@Exayevie]

Im a simple aspiring writer. I see Cormac McCarthy, I click.

[@shawn4990]

Great video. So helpful. Thanks! (lol.... three sentences there... couldn't help myself :)

[@Bookfox]

Ha ha, glad it helped!

[@WillN2Go1]

Great video. When you begin to think like a writer and your stories become more complex, it's easy to fall into writing longer and longer sentences. We read our long sentences and they seem just right But that's just us. What are other people thinking? I've been reading original sources from the 17th Century. 100 word sentence/paragraphs. Nearly impossible to read. I used to joke that as WWII started there was a dangerous shortage of semicolons in England; Virginia Woolf had used up the supply. Come up with your own inane, nerdy, joke on why periods were in short supply in the 17th c. Jane Austen ends a chapter with a long one sentence paragraph. A woman is summarizing events. She begins in one place, goes all the way over to something else and then turns around and goes all the way past the first place. It all makes sense, but it is insane. I'm sure Jane and her sister giggled about it for days.

[@patriciasalem3606]

I generally agree. But I also think if you compose long sentences carefully -- in the right order and with clever use of punctuation and parentheses -- you can get away with them more. Long sentences have to fit your natural voice too. They work well, I find, with someone who is snarky or indicting social conventions. Also, someone who is romantic and can carry off poetic descriptions of places. Long sentences need to sound like someone telling a great story or reading a poem, not like academic language.

[@WankiTank]

good lord, I miss 30 seconds ago when I didn't know about that short story.

[@_Codemaster_]

The funnel thing. I stumbled into this without noticing it at first: I wrote the "broad" chase of the hero vaulting over obstacles, bolting upstairs, while the enemy lay in pursuit. As I felt the enemy come closer, my sentences "narrowed". Until one word. Bang! I wonder. Can this tool become cliché, when overused or read too often?

[@gonzoteacher]

What are your thoughts on the use of intentionally incomplete sentences for effect? Thanks for the vid and the channel!

[@vcb2553]

89 words? I get anxiety to rephrase when a paragraph hits 20 words

[@Exayevie]

Hot take: “Call me Ishmael” is the worst opening line in literary history. I am consistently baffled whenever it comes up as noteworthy.

[@Leitis_Fella]

"Call me Ishmael, BITCH!" - Ross Scott, Freeman's Mind

[@PetrMores-hn9nz]

Respectfully, I do think it's excellent. It establishes the fact that the narrator of the book is not its central character, just an observer. It sounds like, "I can be anyone and you can call me anything, but somehow I prefer to be called by a name of an illegitimate son of a repudiated mother." That whole opening chapter is exquisite.

[@Exayevie]

@@PetrMores-hn9nz It doesn't do any of that - it just says the name of the character. If you want to talk about how the opening PASSAGE justifies the otherwise absurd opening line, we can have that conversation. But no one ever does. They just say that three words telling you what to call the narrator are some stroke of genius.

[@PetrMores-hn9nz]

@@Exayevie Well of course that it (and its brilliance) exists in the (and thanks to) the context, if that's what you're saying. But even if you tear it out of the context completely, it still manages to convey those things I mentioned, which is not bad for mere three words.

[@tristanbeukers419]

1:16 I’m not trying to be clever, I feel a little weird asking this: Isn’t the sentence before “They rode on.” FIFTY ONE (not eightynine) words? It starts with a capital “Under” in the 3rd line. You say it’s an 89 word sentence but isn’t that 2 sentences? It happens again after “They rode on.” The text following has a period. Doesn’t that make 2 sentences? Is a sentence not necessarily marked by a period?

[@Bookfox]

Sorry, I made a mistake on that. You're correct. There are two sentences before and two sentences after -- I copy-pasted a longer section than intended. But the point still holds.

[@tristanbeukers419]

@@Bookfox Yes I agree on your point! It was an honest question (wasn’t trying to catch you out or invalidate your point). Another great video, thanks for what you do!

[@dinodan7770]

Is the first line "Call me Ishmael" from Ben Hur?

[@Bookfox]

No, that's from Moby Dick.

[@Bobs_H]

I mostly read novels and treatises from the 1800s. If you know, you know. 😂

[@greatcoldemptiness]

Based. That era was the peak of literature. Just about everything postwar is barely worth the paper it's printed on, aside from Pynchon, Delilo, DWF, Gaddis etc. We need to return to the literary maximalism of the Victorian era, where novels weren't shitty screenplays

[@tomlewis4748]

Sorry, my sentences average 8-9 words, according to Scrivener. Is that short enough? Prob'ly. Plenty of longer ones, plenty of variety, My first lines in novels average 5-6, but my sentences mostly average short bc 68% of what I write is dialogue. And I sometimes use single word sentences. Yes. Raymond Chandler gave me license to write short, clipped sentences. And I like to end scenes with single-paragraph short sentences. For example-'It didn't.' I also recommend no sentences over 65 words. Most people read at 250 words per minute. Short-term memory, the amount of time you can hold any thought in your head before it evaporates, is 30 seconds. That shortens to 15 seconds when there is new info coming in to interrupt that. Like when reading. (speed reading is a myth-comprehension is a factor of electrical impulses and chemical reactions in the brain, and there is no way to change the speed of electricity or brain chemistry, so even if your IQ is 161, dopey, over there, with half that IQ, can read at exactly the same speed. Speed reading means one thing-words are ignored, meaning reduced comprehension is the only result. I took speed reading in HS, and after, I read the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi at 1200 wpm. Three days later, I couldn't remember a single one of those words.) So a sentence over 63 words long means your reader is trying to parse something based on those words, some of which they already no longer have in their short-term memory by the time they get to the end of that sentence. Comprehension then plummets off the cliff. Make it bite-sized, dammit, not Quarter-Pounder With Cheese-sized. Of course that did not stop Faulkner, who has a 103-word sentence on page two (and three) of The Reivers (which gave him the first second Pulitzer any writer ever had) and a 130-word sentence on page four (and five), with four sets of nested parentheses. It was my favorite movie, but the novel? Page four is where I stopped reading. BTW, tie your hands behind your back? You likely couldn't utter a single word. 🤗

[@lottoguy6457]

If you want to sell your book don’t write like McCarthy.

[@greatcoldemptiness]

I REALLY hate this modern obsession with minimalism. It's killing literature and empowering bad attention spans formed as a result of short form video content. We need to return to literary maximalism, when novels weren't trying to be glorified screenplays or trying to be turned into one as fast as humanly possible. We need more Prousts and less Orwells.

[@Bookfox]

I think we need both Proust and Orwell. I like a variety of styles (yes, even the practitioners of long sentences as well - I’ll have a video about that soon).

[@Exayevie]

I literally almost quit writing in college when every writing article you could find was basically saying that if you like compound sentences you better not even bother to try for publication. So I agree! That said, minimalism is clearly not at all what this video is advocating. Perhaps watch first and comment second 🤷‍♀️

[@jeyhey5320]

„when novels weren‘t trying to be glorified screenplays”. This is exactly my impression, most of the people here on YT conflate the two and seem to view novels uniquely as a mean for a future movie. Also the hubris is astonishing, Cervantes is read since almost 500 years and has stood the test of time. Who are these people to tell us, that modern novels work differently, that “archaic” elements should be avoided? Who will remember these novels written according to the rules and advices of these gurus? Nobody.

[@greatcoldemptiness]

@@jeyhey5320 Hard agree. Literature is being run by people who only get into the art-form because they think it has the easiest barrier of entry and they see it as a stepping stone or necessary evil to writing for tv shows or movies. Pulp writers like Stephen King, Brandon Sanderson and all these guys continue to preach this awful modern minimalism that is destroying the attention spans, critical thinking skills and genuine appreciation for difficult topics to be explored. Everything is sanitized. Everything is done for mass market appeal for a quick buck. And you mentioned hubris, which is honestly the worst part about it. These people revel at the thought of literature "evolving" past timeless works of art like Tolstoy, Dickens, Proust, Dante etc. I wouldn't mind it nearly as much if these KZbinrs prefaced every video with a blurb about the advice being good if you want to write "for the market" instead of it being viewed as a universal and then paraded around the corpses of artists aforementioned. It's not any better in literary fiction either, just a wholly different animal. You have MFA grads that are so afraid of vulnerability that their work embodies a bastardized understanding of Realism through an overly neurotic, hysterical naturalism. Seriously, every modern book is a meditation on ennui written in this vaguely minimalist impressionism that, thanks to the Beat poets, concerns itself so heavily with these unrelated, one-liners to snap one's fingers to that it instills a level of rage in me that I feel ill almost instantly. There is no progression of literature. It's a dead art form, thanks to visual media. Tolstoy is rolling in his grave. Bloom was so correct on so many different levels. A real shame that lay people think they know better

[@obilbok]

Are you testing the attention of your viewers by showing two sentences while saying there's only one ? (two before and two after "They rode on.") What's the point of telling something wrong to illustrate a valid point ?

[@Bookfox]

Oh man, this was an honest mistake. I think I grabbed the text from a longer section than I meant to. It's too bad -- the same point would have been made by using just the sentence before and after.

[@obilbok]

@@Bookfox Thank you for your answer ! Apparently you're better with words than with numbers, I know the feeling... 🙂