Sybal Janssen asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

There are four writers that I reread and reread because their use of language sparkles for me in a special way. Those four are yourself, Patrick O'Brian, Terry Pratchett, and Vladimir Nabokov. In general would you say that your sentences just flow while you are engaged with the imagination, or do you spend a lot of time reworking your sentences to strike the exact note? LOL probably a question with no answer.

Lois McMaster Bujold Well, that's some fine and varied company!

How much I work on my sentences consciously at the micro-level varies. Some scenes just flow out, others have to be squeezed. I spend a lot more time these days (because I have more time, and working paperless makes it easier) combing through my paragraphs winkling out small glitches like word-echoes or less-than-ideal sentence construction or syntax, or improving word-choices. (Sometimes, I get it right the first time :-) Sometimes I have to use bracketing fire to get my range.)

But mostly I'm just recording the movie in my head, "I write what I see", well, with added sensory data to the visual when I think of it. No movie, no words, though, as there is nothing yet to describe. So my writing sessions tend to come in little bursts of ideation, captured in notes, as I work out the progress of each scene (or half-scene.)

My more detailed creation tends to come in scene-chunks, that being about all my brain can handle at one time. Paragraphs are interesting in their own right, structurally and otherwise, and can be almost like little prose-poems. Big blocks of text or just three words, or one, depending on the work they're being called on to do. Every paragraph should move forward internally, placing the reader at a slightly different place at the end than they were at the beginning. (Or sometimes a very different place, see, three words.)

Ta, L.

flag