Monday, July 26, 2010

I have a novelist friend who will not move on to the next sentence until he has the sentence he's working on right. He's a much more successful novelist than I. Maybe I could learn something on my next novel by trying out the technique. My argument against his method is that sentence 2's design will be determined by sentence 1 and 3. Every sentence is surrounded on both sides, except the first and last sentence of each chapter. My friend however needs to do only a couple of revisions, where I find myself doing ten or twelve. Any thoughts about the making of sentences in a novel, or in prose? I think if I were to dawdle in the first draft over each sentence, I'd lose emotional flow, and perhaps forget what the next sentence, in rough draft, is supposed to be.