Paragraphs
Already at nine? I see VIII, but I don’t see VII. Anyway…
I’m reading Book V of Matter Destructor. It has very (very, very) short paragraphs. For example:
When Hunter said it, the noise didn’t just dip.
It died.
Like someone had cut a cord.
Heads snapped toward him in a wave, and for a heartbeat the only sound was the distant creak of the wall patrols and the soft crackle of a cookfire trying to pretend it wasn’t listening.
No one answered. Not because they didn’t have words. Because they knew who he was.
Hunter didn’t rant. Didn’t negotiate. Didn’t posture. He just… did things. Brutal things. Effective things. And the people who’d been here long enough had learned that arguing with him was like arguing with a falling rock.
Pointless.
I’m OK with the overly short sentence and paragraph structure when things are in motion. Fight scenes are a good example. Using it everywhere reduces the effect, I think. This is near the end of the book (the start of Chapter 179 – but it’s the continuous chapter numbering scheme; that’s 179 of the series, not the book).
It’s getting annoying to read. Has the whole series been this way and I’ve just not noticed?
Digression: I just downloaded book one. The PC Kindle Reader will not open a second instance and I can’t have two books open at once in a single instance. That’s really annoying – although I admit that it has taken several years for me to notice this.
Book I is not as bad (although someone seems to have highlighted the entire thing, which is annoying; I can’t turn it off, which is far more annoying). The paragraph structure is more nominal with the short ones being driven by dialog. Skipping ahead to page 200 (at which point everything is still highlighted), the overly short paragraph style has asserted itself. I guess I just didn’t notice.
I’m not emulating this style. I’ve decided I don’t like it.
The “Hunter didn’t rant” paragraph has seven periods, but only three (being generous) sentences. I’d use semicolons; that’s what they’re for:
Hunter didn’t rant; didn’t negotiate; didn’t posture. He just… did things. Brutal things. Effective things. The people who’d been here long enough had learned that arguing with him was like arguing with a falling rock – pointless.
The “Brutal things. Effective things.” with periods works as emphasis. The leading “And” is just gratuitous and can be ditched. The downside of using dashes is that one never knows if they will be rendered as minus signs, en-dashes, or em-dashes. Proofreading that is painful.
I’ll chalk this up to “personal style”. Mine includes (possibly excessive) semicolons. His includes periods for emphasis (too many, imho) and gratuitous paragraph breaks.
BTW: This series is light on the RPG. It’s definitely there, but the machinations of other entities is more relevant to the story than the system is. That’s not a complaint, just an observation.
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