Balmoral Private Hotel was the last house on an undistinguished twentieth-century terrace at the unfashionable end of the long promenade. The summer lights were still strung between the Victorian lamp posts, but they had been turned off and now swung in uneven loops like a tawdry necklace which might scatter its blackened beads at the first strong wind. The season was officially over.
Devices and Desires by P.D. James
Over the years, students and subscribers have asked me whether style has any place in genre fiction. P.D. James, with her novel Devices and Desires, gives us the definitive answer: Yes! Absolutely! Her detective novel repeatedly shows that a good story and stylish sentences are very happy companions.
In her first sentence, James uses balance, the pairing of two things with the “un” adjectives: “undistinguished” and “unfashionable.” The prefix “un” means a negation or reversal. With this, James establishes a drab setting, and from that comes a gloomy mood. Mood is shown through the setting and atmosphere, giving the reader an overall feeling. Tone, on the other hand, is the attitude of the character or narrator toward the topic and is conveyed through dialogue, word choice, and syntax.
Within the balance, there is variety. “Undistinguished” has four syllables and “unfashionable” five, and the difference wakes the ear. Both phrases have 12 syllables, but the second phrase, “unfashionable end of the promenade,” consists of primarily one-syllable words, while the first phrase, “undistinguished twentieth-century terrace,” is mostly polysyllabic words so there is a different rhythm.
The second sentence opens with the subject, “The summer lights,” and this image dramatically changes the mood. The “un” is gone, and there is light, and the “s” of “summer” rings loud, stretching out with the alliteration of “still strung.” James prepares us for the next shift in mood with the word “strung.” (This word prepares us for the simile). The conjunction “but” turns the sentence in this new direction--as this conjunction always does--and the lights go out. The simile ushers in a beautiful image, comparing the lights—which are not shining—to “a tawdry necklace which might scatter its blackened beads at the first strong wind.”
Adjectives are “coloring words,” writes Virginia Tufte in Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, and here they color and change the mood again to something creepy and suspenseful. “Tawdry” means cheap or gaudy in appearance or quality and also morally sordid, base, or distasteful. “Blackened beads” emphasizes the lack of light and the negation of color. James alliterates the “b,” which is a plosive, introducing a harsher sound. More plosives come in with the “k” and “d” sounds. The beads might scatter hauls in the associations of things falling and breaking. The end of this sentence clusters three heavier stresses, “first strong wind,” slowing down the sentence and making us feel the heavy blasts of wind.
In contrast to the previous two sentences, the third one is short, rendering a completely different rhythm, which makes for more music for the ear.
Your Turn
Use a right-branching sentence, opening with the subject and verb. James used the linking verb “was,” and adds more description about the subject, the “Balmoral Private Hotel.” With this additional description, use two words with the same prefix. Here’s a link to prefixes.
Your second sentence is also right branching and invites a contrast in mood to the first sentence. If the first sentence feels negative, menacing, the second one will be brighter.
Add the conjunction “but” and return to the mood of the first sentence and include a simile. Can you use adjectives that add more to the mood?
Add a third short sentence.
How did it go?
What else do you see?
About Devices and Desires: Commander Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard has just published a new book of poems and has taken a brief respite from publicity on the remote Larksoken headland on the Norfolk coast in a converted windmill left to him by his aunt. But he cannot so easily escape murder. A psychotic strangler of young women is at large in Norfolk, and getting nearer to Larksoken with every killing. And when Dalgliesh discovers the murdered body of the Acting Administrative Officer on the beach, he finds himself caught up in the passions and dangerous secrets of the headland community and in one of the most baffling murder cases of his career.
Swimming in Style! Something New!
For paid subscribers, each month we will gather on Zoom for 90 minutes and write stunning sentences. I’ll analyze the style techniques of the stunning sentences, and then you’ll write one of your own. Last month, we covered five sentences, and at the end, everyone chose the one that excited them the most and kept going with whatever had emerged on the page.
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About Me:
I’ve taught “Style in Fiction,” “Word for Word” and “Cultivating Your Prose” at the University of San Francisco and Stanford Continuing Studies since 2007.
Please visit my website to find all my books: ninaschuyler.com, including my novel Afterword, How to Write Stunning Sentences, and Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal.
In This Ravishing World:
I’m so happy that my short story collection, In This Ravishing World, will be published on July 2, 2024. The collection won the W.S. Porter Prize for Short Story Collections and The Prism Prize for Climate Literature.
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I always love to read your choices trying to predict what you may be unpacking. Only to find out that I notice maybe 3 out of 10 of those things. What a fun sentence you chose there.
I love the relationship of the established mood to the title--each is better/more fun with the other.