Sandy Writes - In Defence of Short sentences

When I began to write I immediately noticed a major difference between the style that came naturally to me and the works of fiction I loved to read. My sentences were usually quite short. I was appalled that I couldn't get this simple thing right. I tried hard to improve - to model my writing on the work of authors I admired. But it just wouldn't happen.

When my first book was accepted for publication I thought perhaps it didn't really matter. But some months later, when I took my own book from my library shelf to read, I was disappointed all over again. It didn't read like a real book. It was full of short sentences.

In time, I've grown comfortable with those short sentences. I can still build beautiful images or fast action. It's all about how I string them together and I love writing them.

One of the websites I like to visit is Maria Popova's Brain Pickings. Today I discovered in her review of Several Short Sentences About Writing, these words of wisdom from another short sentence defender:

You can say smart, interesting, complicated things using short sentences.
How long is a good idea?
Does it become less good if it’s expressed in two sentences instead of one?
[…]
Writing short sentences will help you write strong, balanced sentences of any length. Strong, lengthy sentences are really just strong, short sentences joined in various ways.

E.B White was also a defender of short sentences. Another Brain Pickings post on that here.

And a final comment from Several Short Sentences about Writing by Verilyn Klinkenborg: The only link between you and the reader is the sentence you’re making.

The length of the sentence really doesn't matter after all.