On Information Overload

[miyako73]

Do you think a paragraph in fiction should have limited events, images, characters, information, conflict, etc. for it to be very clear? Do you think the paragraph below is too much? Thank you again.


Everyone thought the death of Uncle Bernard, my mother’s only brother, who drank paint thinner and suffocated himself with a plastic grocery bag, had something to do with my grandmother’s penance. Hers was almost as intense as that of the lifelong flagellant in our town who, during Holy Week, would whip his back with knotted cords spiked with barbs and blades and walk barefoot under the oppressive heat of the sun that dried the clotting blood on his back all to atone for his sin, for killing his pregnant wife. Like that flagellant, Grandma Adela could not forgive herself. She had hoped her endless praying could cleanse her guilt and her son’s transgressions. My uncle dated someone his mother vehemently opposed as if the world would end had he continued seeing him. I could not really put all the blame on her. The word for what he had with him that could not speak for itself had not yet existed in our language.

[Charles Darnay]

The paragraph itself is not overloaded with too much information, but your first two sentences are. The first one in particular. You try to cram way to much exposition in order to get it out the way, and it reads very clumsily. After the third sentence there is a drastic improvement.

If a detail is not important enough that you have to make it sub-subordinate clause, then it might be worth cutting. If you cannot do this, then you have to rearrange your sentence structures.

A paragraph could have a variety of events, images, characters &c. but a sentence typically should not.

[hillwalker]

^^ agreed.
I'm assuming your first two sentences were an exercise in showing us how it should not be done.

H

[Burl Bird]

Turn the first sentence in its own paragraph! Make two, three sentences out of it. Maybe even create a whole introductory chapter out of it - I would enjoy reading about Uncle Bernard's bad suicide idea! ;)

And the second sentence... I had to re-read it twice. So - break it in two. Whenever you have an urge to put the dreaded "THAT" in a sentence - refrain yourself.

[miyako73]

It seems long sentences are my current problem. Do you think it's okay to have long sentences in a novel?

example:

She had always been good even to strangers. She fed and invited them to stay when they had nowhere to go. She had extra rooms built adjacent to her big stone house just for them. “Strangers can be angels, you know,” Lola Azon would say every time she told anyone who would listen how, during the war, a masked stranger riding a horse with nothing but his latigo, a long braided whip made of leather, saved her mother from the drunk Japanese who raped women on the spot and slashed them to death with their katanas and how a blind stranger found and dug out a giant yam that saved her family from hunger. I could understand why she had a soft heart for strangers.

[Charles Darnay]

First it would have to be "...told anyone who would listen to how..."
Second, there are some comma problems in your long sentence.
Third, this is no reason why the final clause of the long sentence: "and how a blind stranger found and dug out a giant yam that saved her family from hunger." should not be reworked and be its own sentence.

Long sentences are fine, but the action in them has to be unified, focused on one single person/thing/event. Once you shift time or place - as the last clause does - you should really have a new sentence.

[miyako73]

Lola Azon would say every time she told anyone (who would listen) how, during the war, a masked... Is "to" optional?

[AuntShecky]

Long sentences are fine; otherwise we wouldn't be reading Henry James. Whether short and staccato or long and meandering, the thing to remember about sentences is that each sentence is a single statement with one central idea. Hence, rather than cramming the sentence about Uncle Bernard with lots of tenuous appositive descriptions, the complete description could be encompassed into a group of sentences, i.e., a paragraph.

[Charles Darnay]

Lola Azon would say every time she told anyone (who would listen) how, during the war, a masked... Is "to" optional?

If you have the brackets, you don't need the preposition. Your initial example didn't make sense.

[hillwalker]

Lola Azon would say every time she told anyone (who would listen) how, during the war, a masked... Is "to" optional?

It doesn't make sense if you put in 'to' unless you meant (who would listen to her) - but you're using 'say', 'told' and 'listened' when one is superfluous surely.

Lola Azon would tell anyone who listened how, during the war, a masked.... says the same more concisely does it not?

H

[WolfLarsen]

The thread opener wrote:

[QUOTE=Everyone thought the death of Uncle Bernard, my mother’s only brother, who drank paint thinner and suffocated himself with a plastic grocery bag, had something to do with my grandmother’s penance. Hers was almost as intense as that of the lifelong flagellant in our town who, during Holy Week, would whip his back with knotted cords spiked with barbs and blades and walk barefoot under the oppressive heat of the sun that dried the clotting blood on his back all to atone for his sin, for killing his pregnant wife. Like that flagellant, Grandma Adela could not forgive herself. She had hoped her endless praying could cleanse her guilt and her son’s transgressions. My uncle dated someone his mother vehemently opposed as if the world would end had he continued seeing him. I could not really put all the blame on her. The word for what he had with him that could not speak for itself had not yet existed in our language. [/QUOTE]

This is great writing! I love it! It's not traditional. Traditional is usually boring!

Throw sensory overload at the reader as if he's walking down a Manhattan street – or better yet a street in a major city in India! Live the page to the fullest!