Between the steaming water and pink dye, his feet and legs, up to the knees where his trousers were rolled, looked permanently scalded.
“Chopin in Winter,” by Stuart Dybek, from the collection, The Coast of Chicago
We are still in the world of suspense.
As you’ve probably gathered by now, suspense at the sentence level involves delay. Which is exactly how suspense is created in the genre of mystery—who is the murderer? And also literature—will the character change or understand or see her way through the confusion?
At the sentence level, we learned in previous posts that a long subject can delay the verb predicate and result in suspense.
And modifying information at the beginning of a sentence can postpone the base clause and create suspense.
Dybek’s sentence is an example of another way to generate suspense.
Before we get to the making of this sentence, I want to say I’ve read “Chopin in Winter” countless times, and it still moves me in that indescribable way of rearranging everything inside so that the world, when I look up from the story, is more mysterious and beautiful and connected in profound ways. Piano music from the upstairs apartment drifts in and out of the story, vibrating the walls, the ceiling, the silverware, and the narrator’s teeth and bones. If you haven’t read it, it might be time; it will do no harm. Promise.
The Making
When I take apart a sentence, the first thing I do is find the base clause (also called the independent clause or kernel).
What’s the base clause in this sentence? “his feet and legs looked permanently scalded.”
But Dybek separated the subject--his feet and legs--from the verb predicate--looked permanently scalded. We first encounter the subject and are left hanging because he added modifying information --up to the knees where his trousers were rolled--before we get to the verb predicate.
This is called a mid-branching sentence: Dybek’s sentence is interrupted mid-stream by the inserted modifying information, which postpones the conclusion of the sentence.
Not only does the mid-branching sentence create suspense, but also compression. When the reader finishes the sentence, she rushes back to the subject and knits it to the verb predicate, bringing coherence to the entire sentence. As Professor of English, Virginia Tuft, says the effect is to compress the sentence from both ends, creating a useful tightening and a highly controlled, logical, and organized style.
Though I think you can disrupt that sense of control and logic if the interruption is a parenthetical. Instead, you capture the character’s inner voice.
For instance, “As she often says to herself—though never aloud, for she knows how unpleasant it would sound—why shouldn’t she look out for herself.” Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs.
What about the stuff at the beginning of Dybek’s sentence?
Dybek also includes modifying information at the start of the sentence, “Between the steaming water and pink dye.” So the sentence is also left-branching, which creates even more suspense because it postpones the subject.
A wonderful poet who brings his sensibilities to fiction, Dybek also uses balance (pairing) with “steaming water and pink dye” and “feet and legs.”
Do you hear the assonance: between/steaming/feet/knees? And then with water/scalded?
Finally, when I think about this sentence, I remember the pink dye. Why? Well, it’s the only color that is mentioned. But also the words, “pink dye” are two hard stresses. Stress is the degree of emphasis on a vowel, and hard stressed words are said louder, with more force and that makes you slow down. Which means you pay attention to the pink dye.
Try a mid-branching sentence. Let me know how it goes.
Feel free to share the Stunning Sentence newsletter.
Only me here this time? Oh well, here are my two attempts at mid-branching sentences.
1. As she waited at the station for the train to pull in, her resolve, bolstered by spikes of pain from more recent bruises, but weakened by the knowledge that where she was headed there would be no-one to help her, was only just alive.
2. From the front gate to the neatly tiled porch, his garden, trimmed and shaped in accordance with some hard geometry he found pleasing, told the story of his life.