How to write badly well

[erratio]

Amused me enough to link :)

http://writebadlywell.blogspot.com/

An excerpt:

Learn about syllepsis, then refuse to stop employing it

 

Joe Stockley was in an expensive sports car and deep trouble. This time, he had really let his mouth and his exotic foreign lover run away with him and it was getting beyond a joke and his immediate circle of friends in the form of rumours and speculation.

As he ran a red light, the conversation back in his mind and away from his troubles, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of rising panic and the soft matte finish of his hand-stitched leather steering wheel. Angelica had been absolutely right and his wife for fifteen years, so why was he running scared, these kind of risks and this deadly gauntlet of illicit entanglements?

Comments

[lotusvine.livejournal.com]

Me is not understanding this 'syllepsis'...

[erratio.livejournal.com]

Hmm.. the best way I can think of to describe it is to say that it involves re-using the first part of the sentence multiple times. So "Joe Stockley was in.." applies to both "an expensive sports car" and "deep trouble".

It's one of those writing techniques that's extremely difficult to use without either trying to be funny or sounding like a pretentious git.