After rain, or when snowfalls thaw, the streets, unnamed, unshaded, unpaved, turn from the thickest dust into the direst mud.
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
Capote’s sentence reminds me that style can generate so much beyond a physical description of the setting. Capote situates the reader in Holcomb, Kansas, a lonesome, sleepy area that Kansans call “out there” before trouble hits.
This sentence has a stuttering, jittery feeling because of the many—six--commas separating the short phrases or single words. There’s also a sense of foreboding. How does he do this?
Capote uses a left-branching sentence to delay the subject “streets.” Despite its sameness—people work, hunt, watch TV, attend school, choir, 4-H Club, there is variability via the weather (and very soon more variability).
The sentence then becomes a mid-branching sentence with the subject, “streets,” separated from the verb, “turn.” What interrupts is an appositive—which renames, adds information, details, texture, or opinion. Here, it adds texture and details in the form of a series: three adjectives that describe the street with the repeating “un”: “unnamed, unshaded, unpaved.” The “un” is a negation, which is significant because this sleepy town in the middle of nowhere will have its tranquility erased, an echo of the “un,” and the townspeople who live without fear will view each other as strangers.
After the verb, Capote uses antithesis to great effect. Due to the rain or snow thaw, the streets turn from the thickest dust into the direst mud. The adjectives suggest the extreme, which is about to happen when four gunshots ring out and six people are killed. In a Hegelian way, this sleepy town contains within it its opposite: violence.
There’s also the pattern, which is pleasing to the ear, of heavier and softer stresses: THICK-est DUST/DIR-est/MUD.
Do you hear the music? The assonance with falls/thaw; the long “a” sound in unnamed/unshaded/unpaved. And the alliteration with dust/direst and the “d” is echoed in the last word “mud.”
Your Turn:
Open with short phrases that delay your subject.
Add your subject. Now, use an appositive to further describe the subject. Can you use series—three adjectives? Can you repeat the prefix?
Now comes your verb. Add antithesis, exaggerating the oppositional nature with adjectives, as Capote did with “thickest” and “direst.” Can you add a pattern of stresses?
Try it!
How did it go?
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. I’ve watched my writing and my students’ writing blossom with this practice of paying close attention to the sentence.
Please visit my website to find all of my books: ninaschuyler.com (including “How to Write Stunning Sentences” and “Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal).
My New Novel:
Afterword is available now! If your book club chooses my book to read, I can Zoom in and talk to the group. I’ve met with many book clubs, and it’s really fun! If you’ve read my novel please consider posting a review on Amazon or Goodreads or social media.
Thank you!
Order links:
bookshop
Amazon
Clash Books
Upcoming Classes:
On October 24, 10:00 am PST, I’ll be talking about the “Braided Plot Structure,” for the online conference, “Escape the Plot Forest” run by Daniel David Wallace. My talk is one of many lectures. It runs from October 21-25 with 38 speakers, free if you attend the event live.
Here is the link:
I’m excited to teach a class for Zyzzyva on November 4th, 11:00-2:00 PST, on Zoom, “The Past is Always Happening: On Writing about Time.”
Time is a container for every story. Yet too often we focus intently on the event that upended the ordinary world, minimizing or ignoring the past. Writing advice often reinforces this, sometimes turning it into a rule. If this theory of time turns rigid, your story may be stripped of complicated motivations and depth. Characters are, after all, amalgamations of all that has happened to them, all that has been inherited, including the familial, cultural, and historical. Moreover, the past can be as dynamic, lively, and intense as the present. In this class, we’ll look at excerpts from short stories and novels that welcome the past. We’ll consider pieces that dedicate entire sections to the past as well as stories that let the past sprinkle in like breadcrumbs. We’ll examine the effect of these approaches on character and story. Generative writing exercises will let you explore different strategies to usher in the past, improving your understanding of time in narration.
To register:
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Loved reading this book though it is chilling.
I couldn’t follow the pattern blow for blow, but I might try again!
After a close brush with lips, followed by a sweaty, fleshy, overheated and over-extended exclamation point of thrashing about Nicole, now an innately immutable disconsolate question mark, quickly precipitates from a liquid state of flow out to her more normal position of solid despair.