If you want to vary your sentence length for interest and colour in your flash fictions, read what David Swann has to say about writing long sentences and the example of a long sentence from the story called ‘Sentence’ in his first prize-winning Novella in Flash, Season of Bright Sorrow available from Ad Hoc Fiction and Amazon. We love the triple meaning of the title ‘Sentence’ in this story. There is literally a long sentence, the character Lana is ‘sentenced’ to live in a dilapidated boarding house and her father is serving a sentence in prison.
David says:
The first part of the flash ‘Sentence’ copied below from page 83 of my novella in flash Season of Bright Sorrow is written as one continuous sentence. I enjoy these experiments because they shake me out of old habits, and I like seeing where the sentence carries me. I think there are also long-term benefits, e.g. the elastification of one’s syntax. Usually this device works best when the lone sentence has a character and/or narrative purpose, and isn’t simply showing off! Here, I was trying to give a sense of mounting panic in Lana, so that the form and content were working together. My friend Greg Challis once wrote a hilarious long-sentence flash that was powered by the pomposity of the treasurer of a working man’s club who was offering increasingly ridiculous explanations for some missing funds.
Sentence
Yawning and rubbing her eyes, Lana stumbled towards the shower, worried as usual that she’d breathe in spores from the bathroom’s fetid air, worried that the spider may have been forced by some obstacle to hang even closer than usual to the mirror where she brushed her hair and that it would get tangled up with the brush and wriggle into her ear, as a kid at school had claimed was possible, not that you could trus the squirts in her class, most of them as bad as Archie, the stuff they came out with: wild boasts and bare-faced lies – for instance, loads more mad stories spouted by the lad who’d invented that nonsense about spiders wriggling into your brain, the same lad who’d claimed that no piece of chewing gum was ever digested by your body, so that all the chewing gum you ever swallowed would still be in your stomach when you died, and if the morticians cut you open with a knife, they’d find it all rolled up together, an entire history of your horrible habits compressed into a solid pink boulder, like the gum they’d discovered inside the life prisoner after he’d snuffed it in his cell of scurvy or something like that, what with the lack of vitamins in him, on account of scoffing junk like chewing gum for twenty years, which, of course, Lana should know all about, her being the daughter of a bloke who was serving a life sentence for…
For Tips on writing long sentences, read this at Copybot
How To Write A Brilliant Long Sentence
The digital age has changed the way we read. We skim copy for important bits of information that cater specifically to our need to know. Being concise and grammatically nuanced, as well as quick and relevant is a challenge.
Another writing tip from David Swann coming next week!
we can add it in.
Dave Swann had lots of interesting things to say at the launch of 
Thank you to everyone from around the world who supported all our flash fiction ventures in 2021. We so appreciate all your support. This year we ran the three Bath Flash Fiction Awards, receiving 3947 entries in total from 64 different countries; the novella-in-flash award which over 100 writers entered and since March this year, have sponsored eight monthly on-line flash fiction festival days with fabulous workshops, talks, readings and mini-contests. 
We’re thrilled that Ad Hoc Fiction has now published Snow Crow 
We’d love to see pictures from the contributors when the anthologies arrive in their location. Either posed with snow, or crows or anything else! Here Jude’s copy is perched on a hedge with a crow (or maybe its cousin, a raven) looking down.
Come to the launch party, hosted by Ad Hoc Fiction director, Jude Higgins on Wednesday 22nd December, 7.30pm – 9.30 pm on Zoom for four of the novellas-in-flash published from our 2021 Award! Published today (9th December 2021), in a beautiful line up, One For the River by Tom 0’Brien a runner up in the Award; and two short-listed novellas, The Listening Project by Ali McGrane and Kipris by Michelle Christophorou. We’ll also be officially launching Small Things by Hannah Sutherland, highly commended in the 2021 Award and published in October. 
These are four brilliant novellas in flash, all very different and at the launch the authors will tell us more about them and each read three short pieces from the books.There will be break out chats and a book giveaways at the end of the evening. Hope you can come! Email jude {at} adhocfiction {dot} com for a link. All welcome. In the meantime, have a look at our 2021 judge,
The striking cover image was also designed by Sam and shows a prison notebook. Sam and Dave have supplied a ‘Property of the prison’ stamp for us to use to make the book unique before it is posted off to purchasers. Season of Bright Sorrow will also be available on Amazon worldwide at publication, but you won’t get an individualised stamp there!
