The Sentence

The sentences that compose novels aren’t analogous to the ingredients in cupcakes.  Because some wonderful sentences say very little. Others convey a great deal despite cliché, repetition, clumsiness, or worse. The good news? While there’s no manual for acquiring voice and vision, everyone can improve at syntax. And probably everyone should. Who wants to bake cupcakes with inferior ingredients?  Or write a novel deadened with a lousy sentence here or there?

Folks agree more about quality in cupcakes than sentences. Genre, reading rate, tolerance for ambiguity, enthusiasm about complexity, ear for rhythm, and other factors all contribute. And novelists won’t improve syntax by saying, “Well, it sounds okay to me.” A writer’s tolerance for “okay” is often greater than a reader’s. Put yourself in the ear of someone who didn’t write the sentence.

Listen. Really listen. Without rationalizing or shrugging off. That’s the first step toward prose like Neil Gaiman’s description of Fat Charlie seeking a more accurate name:

He would introduce himself as Charles or, in his early twenties, Chaz, or, in writing, as C. Nancy, but it was no use: the name would creep in, infiltrating the new part of his life just as cockroaches invade the cracks and the world behind the fridge in a new kitchen, and like it or not—and he didn’t—he would be Fat Charlie again. — Anansi Boys,

Sentences needn’t be long or complex to resonate. In Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier uses the external world to capture the internal:  “The memory passed on as the light from the window rose toward day.” Tracy Chevalier’s creates character in The Lady and the Unicorn with “Jean Le Viste’s jaw is like a hatchet, his eyes like knife blades.”

Which elements do all these sentences share in common?

Rhythm.

Create sound patterns without relying on passive voice or words that fail to supply both meaning and sound. Read authors you love aloud. Read your own work aloud.

Economy.

            If it’s not adding, it’s subtracting. Make every word work.

Verbs.

            One good verb can replace a chain of adjectives and adverbs. Energize.

In the end, though, the sentence is as elusive as Amy Tan’s description of love in The Hundred Secret Senses

It floods the cells that transmit worry and better sense, drowns them with biochemical bliss. You can know all these things about love, yet it remains irresistible, as beguiling as the floating arms of long sleep.

A lovely sentence floods the senses, too, by wedding content to presentation. What makes some sentences “irresistible”? That’s beguilingly unknowable. But the mystery of sentence beauty isn’t permission to disregard it. Keep chasing the solution to that mystery. By revising.

Tip: Make your sentences as “beguiling” as possible. All of your sentences.

Sentence Sense

When you think of it, a novel is just one sentence after another until The End. So every sentence needs lots of attention. But there’s so much to sort through. You know the drill:

• Be concise.
• Be parallel.
• Be rhythmic.
• Be varied.

Yet these sometimes conflict. Add extra words for rhythm or parallelism—and you’re inefficient. Perhaps you wish that sentences functioned more like math. Aside from a few mysteries like infinity and negative numbers,  2 + 2 will always yield the same satisfying result. What to do if sentences are your tools?

Tip: Accept that rules relating to language usually have exceptions. Context is king.

Neighboring sentences exert tremendous impact. For example, a long sentence might be glorious on its own, but odious if it’s the fourth lengthy one in a row. Despite context and exceptions, some rules apply. Usually.

~ Too much grammar can hurt.

How many characters can credibly say “It is I?”

~ Too little grammar can hurt.

After completing the aerobics session, a tiny waist is assured. Eek.

~ Connect cleverly.

The word “and” suggests that everything is equal and that nothing ever causes anything else and that nothing depends on anything else. And that’s not true.

Reserve “and” for equal items or moments:”She loved her brother and her sister equally.”

When there’s disparity, use words that capture progression or inequality: “She checked her watch, then gulped her coffee.”  Or “Because he loved her beyond anything, he let her pilfer small change without confronting her.”

~ Beware doubling up.

Do you really need to say that “Ann glowered and made a fist”? Writers offer two gestures from habit plus a sneaking suspicion that neither gesture is quite right.

~ Emphasize.

A long sentence in a series of short ones will accomplish that. So will the reverse.

~ Train your ear.

Notice sentences you love—or don’t. What turns you on—or off? What better way to sensitize yourself to the sound of the sentences that compose your novel? Sentences are the engine that transports the plot. Give them the attention they deserve.

Time, Tides—and Writers

Waves and tides ebb and flow, occasionally punctuated by unpredictable upheavals, as anyone knows from standing in the surf or gliding across it.

Tip: Pleasure comes from both patterns and unexpected disruption of them.

Most writers discover the rhythms of language one at a time. The most obvious one escalates from conflict to climax. But like those varieties of ocean waves, novels offer many interacting rhythms.

~ The protagonist’s journey

Christopher Vogler famously argued that the rhythm of all fiction, from screenplay to novel, comes from a hero reluctantly agreeing to confront a troubled world and change it. Ideally, this rhythm climaxes with self-knowledge for the hero and justice for the world.

~ An arc for each sub-plot.

The best novels intersect several interconnected journeys. For each of these, relief disappears over and over until the final pages offer resolution—or failure.

~ Scene versus sequel or summary.

Regardless of what you call whatever’s out of scene, every novel has a basic rhythm of drama, condensation, drama, condensation. The trick is creating seamless flow.

~ Rhythm within the sentence, paragraph, scene.

Humans appreciate three-part structure: issue, development, resolution. Happily, you can employ this to revise fiction at every level.

That’s lots of patterns. Now what?

·         * Notice. Just considering the relationships between patterns helps you see your manuscript more clearly, so you can revise it more effectively.

·         * Vary. You want tension on every page, yes. But do you want all tension all the time? No.

·        *  Accentuate. The fun of patterns is enjoying relief until—whoosh—a monster wave changes the landscape. That gets everyone’s attention. Use emphasis to reveal significance.

·         * Surprise. The reader didn’t see that breaker coming any more than the character did. Astonishment is among fiction’s greatest joys. But not by cheating. Every gigantic groundswell must feel probable. In fiction that means you provided a clear yet subtle hint a while back.

Pattern-recognition originally helped the earliest humans distinguish tall grass from predator, something to eat from something to avoid. In fiction, pattern and disruption control everything from aesthetics to momentum, tension, and empathy. Use the rhythms of your fiction to make waves.

Beauty and the Written Word

People rarely compare novels or the sentences composing them to sonnets or cathedrals, to sculpture or symphonies. Yet the artistry is parallel—meticulous engineering that results in capacity to mesmerize. Great plots amaze: A woman proves her loyalty by each night unraveling the tapestry she’ll reweave the next day; a man dooms ship and crew because he confuses the death of a white whale with justice; a boy travels down the Mississippi fleeing “sivilization” and finds it in a runaway’s heart, or a girl discovers how many kinds of mockingbirds exist and why they deserve protection.

What makes these plots gorgeous? For a start, each says something not just important, but profoundly so—about who people are and who they might become. Each plot synthesizes behavior and thought, proving its hypothesis with events both probable and essential—each incident leading inevitably to the climax. That has the haunting power of a symphony, no?

Novels depend on plot. But the best novels contain sentences rivaling the magnificence of scenario, scene, or theme. Here’s a tiny sample.

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”  -- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“All he knew, really, was digging.  He dug to eat, to breathe, to live and sleep.  He dug because the earth was there beneath his feet, and men paid him to move it.  He dug because it was a sacrament, because it was honorable and holy.” -- T. Coraghessan Boyle, “The Underground Gardens”

“The aspects of his life not related to grilling now seemed like mere blips of extraneity between the poundingly recurrent moments when he ignited the mesquite and paced the deck, avoiding smoke. Shutting his eyes, he saw twisted boogers of browning meats on a grille of chrome and hellish coals. The eternal broiling, broiling of the damned.” --Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

How do you start producing increasingly beautiful sentences?

• Know what you want to say—something original. Important. Yours alone.
• Listen for rhythm—in everything you read or hear. It begins with noticing.
• Explore all five senses, and “explore” never means the first thing that leaps to mind.
• Replace vague, distancing constructions like “There were” and “It is.” Tighten up. Get close.
• Take risks. But take them thoughtfully.
• Never rationalize the weaknesses you pretend not to notice in your prose. Ever.

 Tip: Aspire to beauty. You’ll never let your readers down.