: Re: Very long sentences: personal style or just bad writing? I'm writing a story targeted towards children in which the protagonist is a young girl. I find that in writing her dialog and the narrative,

@Hamaas631

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I am not a native speaker and I have trouble with long sentences.

A long sentence is tiring to the eye and requires more concentration. Long is bad; you need to come up for air.

Sometimes, a longer sentence may be needed to break the pattern of medium and short sentences, but even then a long sentence should not be longer than about 50 words.

Some academic writers using long sentences are tolerable because it is the subject matter and not the style that is important, but for creative writing, to me, it is a definite no-no.

Yes, some authors get away with them, so it may be in part subjective.

I agree that the “and & and” model works for some over-excited children, in some circumstances, but I think that most children will tend to speak in short bursts of short sentences and fragments.

There are some related Q in Writer's SE like seeking a humorous example of long winded paragraph one sentence long
, and What's the difference between purple prose and vividly descriptive writing?

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