LA Evans

How is Writing Like Composing?

Reading @PetDuck’s thoughtful paragraph comments in FALKLANDER (yes, I’m still thinking about them), made me think of how writing a story is like writing a piece of music.

There are different movements in a symphony. The “theme” can change completely in different movements. The melody changes. The tempo changes. The music speeds up and slows down. There are crescendos, ritardandos, pianissimos, etc. The composer literally tells the person playing the music to play louder, or slower, or quieter. The composer is telling the musician how to interpret their work correctly.

I picture a very frazzled and frustrated Beethoven screaming at his student for not interpreting the dynamics of Beethoven’s composition correctly.

How do we as writers convey to our readers how a sentence is meant to be interpreted? We have literary tools like italics, bolding, CAPS, and underlining. These measures accentuate a certain word or phrase that we think is important.

We also have commas, colons, semicolons, and parenthesis. I personally am not a big semicolon user. I know how to use a semicolon. I can use a semicolon correctly. However, I generally choose not to. This is going to sound 100% unhinged, but I think the semicolon is a bit snotty. Who really uses a semicolon? Where do we see semicolons? Textbooks and technical writing that’s where. I don’t want to write a manual. I want my writing to be enjoyable.

Cue the run-on sentence! Yes! I’m still defending my run-on sentence use!

When the sentence runs on, without any interruption, the reader can speed through it with the writer.

For example:

He chased her with a bloody axe as she ran screaming into the woods like the devil himself was chasing her.

Now:

He chased her with a bloody axe. She ran screaming into the woods. It was as if the devil himself was chasing her.

Personally, I like the first version better. My eyes are running through the sentence with her. My reading actually speeds up as the character runs. As a writer, that was my intent for my reader. I wanted the reader to speed up their reading to “run” with my heroine.

The second version is more impactful. I stop at the end of each phrase to take it in before moving on. This “stop” is a miniscule, nanosecond stop, but a stop nonetheless. I believe there is a place for that type of phrasing as well. Just not here. At least in not in my humble opinion.

You, my lovely reader, may feel differently. You, my lovely writer, may feel differently too. You may prefer the impact of the period. You are not wrong.

For me, the run-on is my version of an allegro. I’m no Beethoven, but I understand the instinct to help those who consume our work to interpret what we are trying to convey to them.

Hopefully my readers understand what I’m trying to convey, how I want them to feel reading my work, and what my characters feel at that moment. Hopefully my readers also interpret what I write in ways I can’t comprehend and never conceived. That's the beauty of art in its many forms.

Please comment below and tell me writers, how do you convey your feelings, and your characters’ feelings, to your readers?

Readers, please comment below and tell me if a certain writing style makes you feel a certain way.

If you’re up to date in The Dark Scot Book 2, then you’ve had your first glimpse of Alex’s point of view. This was largely an experiment on my part thanks to those of you who cast a vote. I hope you enjoyed the experience, and I look forward to repeating it 😉

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The Case for the Run-on Sentence

I’ve recently had some wonderful and much appreciated paragraph feedback from @PetDuck on FALKLANDER. First off, I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you took the time to leave me notes in the form of paragraph feedback! Your thoughtfulness and time warms my little heart!

That being said, some of the feedback was regarding my use of run-on sentences. Listen, I am 100% guilty of overusing run-on sentences. If I take the time for some introspection, my use of run-on sentences most likely comes from the way I talk. I talk fast. I talk really fast if I’m excited. I talk so fast, that I need to make myself stop and take breaths between sentences, and to let someone else get a word in edgewise. That idiosyncrasy of mine bleeds into my writing often, and definitely in places it doesn’t belong.

However, I would make the case that there are instances where run-on sentences are appropriate.

Case in point: in FALKLANDER, when Marion has just been transported through time and space into 17th century Scotland. Marion is traumatized,threatened by men wielding broadswords chasing her, and then watches her savior engage in a very vicious and bloody battle. In this situation, Marion would be “excited.” She’d be terrified actually. In her terrified state, she’s not going to stop to punctuate her sentences properly. The lady has a PhD in Physics, so she’s definitely capable of speaking and writing in grammatically correct sentences. At that moment in time though, she is not going to bother with all that.

Going deeper down this rabbit hole, the “writer” of FALKLANDER, Professor Appollonia Serefina O'Connor-James-Smith (“PASO”), isn’t a great writer. She thinks she is. She’s quite haughty and aloof. PASO thinks that because she’s a Professor, that makes her better than her readers. Keep in mind PASO isn’t meant to be a great writer. FALKLANDER is a tongue-in-cheek work on my part. It’s not meant to be the great manifesto that PASO thinks it is. Therefore, some of the writing is not meant to be perfect.

That does not mean that I want my readers to be distracted by grammatical errors. Errors pull the reader out of the story and back into real life. That is not my goal at all.

As an aside, PASO couldn’t care less. Ya know – in case you were wondering what her thoughts were on it!

Keep the feedback coming! I hope it’s obvious from this wall post that I take it seriously. I think about it. I consider it. I reach deep into myself to ask myself why I wrote what I wrote and how I wrote it.

Do you use run-on sentences when you write? Do you mind run-on sentences when you read? Comment and let me know!

If you were wondering if I would post a picture of Alex, you can wonder no longer!

Here is my version of Alex when I first started writing him in May of 2025.

If this isn’t how you pictured him, that’s okay. In fact, that’s even better. Just because this is what I envisioned doesn’t make it right and anything else wrong.

But if you read The Dark Scot, and you wondered what I thought Alex looked like - this is it.

By Book 2 he looks quite different. But we’ll get to that later 😉

It’s Jo!

Ta Da!

I wasn’t going to do this because I really want my readers to envision their own Jo, but I thought it’d be fun to give a little insight into my Jo.

At least she was my Jo at the beginning of THE DARK SCOT.

This is Jo in Edinburgh airport. The magical place where the food is excellent and the company even better - especially if you’re there with a bunch of Scots in plaids on their way to the European Football Championship.

Right now Jo isn’t quite so fresh faced.

But I won’t spoil my own writing to tell everyone where I’ve left her.

I will say she is in good hands as she awaits the next Chapter in her story.

Which I haven’t written yet. I need to get back to work!

If you’ve read Chapter 1 of THE DARK SCOT BOOK 2 (TDS 2) you may be asking yourself, why is this Chapter so short?

Well do I have a story for you!

I knew the first chapter of TDS 2 was going to be hard to write. I knew I would have to mine my own feelings of pain and rejection so I could give those to Jo. And I knew the process was gonna suck.

Who wants to relive the pain and rejection of being dumped? Or the pain of a relationship ending? Or the pain of realizing you care for someone more than they care for you? I could go on.

I feel so far away from all of that now, since I’ve been with my husband for almost 20 years. I didn’t want to go back mentally to my dating years.

So - like any rational girl, I put it off! And I put it off, and I put it off. Until I found myself at JFK with my flight delayed sitting at the bar, having probably one too many cocktails since no one was serving food - and I decided now was the time. Serendipity had found me, and who was I to deny it?

I boarded my delayed flight, I sat down, put my AirPods in, and I began to write.

And I cried. And I cried. And I cried.

I saw the quizzical faces of the lovely flight attendants as they gave my husband a handful of little bottles of gin instead of the one he had ordered. I reached up with my hands covered in my very large hoodie and wiped my face periodically taking deep breaths.

I conjured all those sad feelings and memories and I wrote them down as quickly as my drunk little fingers could type.

It’s only 384 words, but they are probably the hardest 384 words I have ever written.

Even now, reading, “Why wasn’t I enough?” makes me teary eyed.

For the record, the words, “you are a gem” are real. A good friend of mine told me that after I was ghosted.

It was all real. It was all sad. It was all me. I don’t use AI to write. I’m sure it would be less awkward than ugly crying on the red eye flight - but where’s the humanity in that?

Hopefully someone else reads chapter 1 and also cries remembering a time when they were hurt and vulnerable. And I hope the next chapters give them hope and resolve.

One of my favorite books is Jane Eyre. I often think of the word Jane puts on her childhood friend Helen’s gravestone. Resurgam. It means “I shall rise again.” Maybe that will be the title for Book 2? Who knows.

What I do know is that the hurt, the rejected, the lonely, the broken, the downcast, the disbelievers in their own worth can rise again.

I did. Jo will. You can too. I hope that’s a takeaway from Book 2.

That, and I hope one day to thank that seriously confused, but nonetheless very kind, flight crew.