Back in my sophomore year of high school (13 years ago), I was getting taught how to recongnize, reconstruct, and eliminate a run-on sentence. One example I was given was (I think) a sentence from William Faulkner’s Absolam! Absolam! The sentence went on for a page and a half.
A page. And a half.
One sentence. A page and a half.
Obviously, when it comes to writing, there are times when one follows the rules and other times you bend, or outright break, the rules. The sentence fragments above are examples of that.
This leads me to a lot of costernation when a lot of people comment that my stories have run-ons.
PEOPLE, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY AND GOOD, STOP ABUSING THE DEFINITION OF A “RUN-ON SENTENCE”.
A run-on sentence is a sentence which has more than one independent clause. In more simplistic terms, it is a sentence that has more than one part which can stand on its own. For example:
He tried to start the car, the engine turned over then sputtered out.
If you can take the first portion of that sentence, then change that comma to a period and capitalize appropriately, you’d have two separate thoughts, two separate sentences. It will no longer be a run-on.
He tried to start the car. The engine turned over then sputtered out.
Separating the sentence into two isn't the only available option; the thoughts can be interconnected by changing it a little, while keeping it from being a run-on. For example:
He tried to start the car, but the engine turned over then sputtered out.
If you add a conjunction like “and”, “but”, “so”, et cetera to “smooth it out”, it no longer is a run-on, just a more complex sentence. Because of the nature and structure of English, there is no actual limit to how long you can make a sentence. There are several tricks you can use to make the sentence longer but still keep it grammatically sound. For example:
He tried to start the car, panic gripping his throat, stomach clenching and legs shaking as he fruitlessly rotated the key in the ignition between his thumb and forefinger, over and over again, imploring the solenoid to kick in, demanding the electric starter motor to spin the inert flywheel, begging the fuel injectors to spit their gasoline and the spark plugs to ignite flammable vapor, but the engine only turned over then sputtered out.
As far as I can tell, this 75-word sentence is all correctly punctuated. It’s not a run-on, just very long (and somewhat bumpy).
I’m not too sure why people look at very long sentences and just assume “run-on”. My best guess is that because I have not mastered writing enough to make a sentence “flow” well, no matter the length, people start reading a long sentence, get distracted, lose concentration, and cry “Run-on! This is a run-on!”
It’s very annoying.
This is a recurring problem with intuitive/stream of consciousness writers like myself: we tend to start a sentence and just keep going with the thought until we find a satisfying enough conclusion to end it. I’m not too sure how the structure-heavy writers construct a sentence; all I know is to write how my thoughts think and try to follow where it leads.
Reviewing a sentence afterwards also ups my word count in a sentence, as I think about more details and to try to be as clear as possible in my thought. This leads me to write sentences which sometimes seem disjointed somewhere in the middle, as going back and picking up the rhthym of the thought breaks the already established pattern within the construct, and makes editing to maintain the same voice and style difficult.
The good news is that I’m in good company when it comes to long elocutions; WB Yeats, James Joyce, William Faulkner, and even a 13-year-old George R R Martin were known to wax loquatious in their writing. Great writing, then, doesn’t need to be constrained by its structual length, but by the poetry in its construction and the purpose it serves within the larger story. My hope is that one day I can write sentences so well that people won’t notice their length—until they realize they have to take a breath.
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