The dogs I bring home to you are the marked ones, the ones who have said their last prayers, the ones who go wild, wild, wild and dig up my roses, lustful for all invisible smells, the ones who were not taught not to sit, stay or come, but to dig, dig, dig like insatiable babies we never made, bursting from prison like an exodus of damaged stars.
Beautiful! The passionate energy propels this sentence and I'm glued to it to the end. You reframe the rejected dogs and make them shine, make them beloved and loved. What a transformative experience for the reader to see these dogs in this light. We see their personality, "said their last prayers," and their dogginess, "wild, wild, wild and dig up my roses, lustful for all invisible smells." And here, what gentleness and wisdom the narrator brings to the page. The dogs are who they are. They are not humans and being in the world is different and the narrator respects that. Like Kerouac's sentence, the repetition of words seems to bind them together so "wild" becomes bound to "dig" for me. And then the end, we get a clue to the subterranean--so gently invoked here with "dig like insatiable babies we never made." So a moment of regret or loss, but we're right back on the ecstatic train with the end, "bursting from prison like an exodus of damaged stars." A beautiful image at the end!
I have a fear of overly colorful sunsets, sunsets that overly spill brazen colors into nearby clouds, sunsets that are innocent, sunsets that are ignorant, goody-two-shoes sunsets, but still darken, darken, darken into night like a heavy velvet curtain closing like a slithering snake.
I love how you flip this on its head--how many times this image is invoked to create a good/beautiful emotion. Not in this sentence! "Goody-two-shoes sunsets" is fantastic--a different register coming in! You create a rhythm with anaphora, "sunsets that" done twice and then drop that rhythm. This is great--it is much more in line with the human voice that develops a rhythm and veers away from it. The end suggests that the fear has to do with the loss of the overly colorful sunsets. There's a promise in those saturated colors but the narrator knows they will not last. Great images at the end!
I adore this sentence. The breathless rush of energy blows me away and I can't quite capture it in mine.
My friends were the weird ones, the ones who didn’t try to hide they were weird, weird in their wants, weird in their interests, weird in their passions for doing stuff others considered strange, the ones who wore headbands or capes or knee-high moccasins and still played Dungeon and Dragons and never hid or asked for forgiveness, but shone, shone, shone, like some special bright pebbles you plucked from the gray gravels and beige stones rolling back and forth in the surf.
Wow! Fantastic! A love letter, a love sentence to the "weird ones." The specific details help me picture them--"headbands or capes or knee-high moccasins and still played Dungeon and Dragons..." I love the contrast of the "special bright pebbles" versus the "gray gravels and beige stones rolling back and forth in the surf." The whole sentence flips how most people view those who don't abide by the society rules/customs. And that is what great fiction can do--provide a different way to look at the world. A kind of blow to the brain to wake it up again.
I always wanted to be one, one who flies, one who soars, one who lives for the sky, ecstatically soaring and free, until, seeing, hearing, I dive to the surface then plunge, down, down, down, to catch my prey — like an osprey opens its beak in the deep like a fish among fish — to catch the thought, the sentence, the story.
Wow! Amazing! What first catches my ear/eye is that the narrator doesn't want to be "the one," but "one." That small change makes this sentence really interesting because it's new. I love the plunge downward and the echo of "down, down, down," which is unexpected. And then the beautiful image of the osprey. I'm on a mission to promote/help writers merge the human and the other-than-human stories and here you do it with that image. From that image, which is animal and instinct the sentence provides a contrast at the end with sentence and the story, which are more abstract and mind-based. Lovely!
These people they did nothing, nothing when friends were bullied, nothing when neighbors were raided, nothing when books were burned and teachers beaten, weightless and inconsequential, nothing which for the moment promises safety, but inch by inch by inch turns to something like maggots of graveyards like ghosts nibbling on souls.
The energy of this sentence is rage and outrage at the acts of omission. And so you've chosen absolutely the right word to repeat, which is "nothing." Five times we hear that word and woven in between this word that creates heightened emotion AND an anchor to travel through this longish sentence. I love "inch by inch by inch" which captures the incremental in prose and then that powerful, overwhelming in the best way image at the end. I hear all the "g" sounds (plosives), too-"like maggots of graveyards like ghosts nibbling on souls."
I'm going to keep this one strategy in my mind: "When writing a sentence like this, the question for the writer is, what words do you want emblazoned on the reader’s brain?"
Just dropping in to say I finished your beautiful book, dripping with wet and glorious sentences that rose and fell in moving ways from beginning to end, and while a book can be a doorstop, or a book can be what you add to your shelf like a notch on your belt saying you did that one, this book (your book) will be underlined and dog-eared for all it teaches me about sentences, sentences that pushed me to keep reading late into the night, several nights, and fostered vivid dreams that stayed with me upon waking.
They carry the flame, the flame you first see as a spark, the flame ready to flare, the flame eager to burst into a brightness that will fill the room, fill the city, fill the world and those who carry the flame shine on the drab, the dull, the dreary, illuminate them to diamond glitter and prompt shards of light and hope and purpose to erupt in radiant arcs.
I love the contrast between those who carry the flame and those who are drab, dull, and dreary. Yet the binary breaks down because the flame carriers illuminate the drab and turn them into something other--diamond glitter and "prompt shards of light and hope and purpose to erupt in radiant arcs." What was in opposition is no longer by the end of the sentence. It feels right to elaborate on those who carry the flame, so the anaphora emphasizes the right word, "the flame," because the flame shines all the way to the end of this sentence. The second anaphora, "fill," also is spot-on. You create a movement here of grand expansion with the light moving from room to city to the world.
Thanks, Nina. I’m always uncertain doing these exercises but love working at them and eventually decide you have to go with your instinct. I’m invariably encouraged by your feedback. You have the knack of seeing the positives in all the responses. Thanks again.
Ok, this one was hard Nina, but I couldn’t get away from it. My stubborn brain wouldn’t let it go, and so after a day or so of turning it over in my head. This is the sentence I came up with. Not entirely sure I hit all the requirements, but I swung for the fences regardless 😆
During the only moment we were ever free, free was the air we breathed, free was the molecular strains of oxygens pulled as an afterthought when caught laughing at a dirty joke, free was running, cursing, swinging our legs over the woodchip filled playground of a faded elementary school, free was us as freewheeling marmosets unknowing and unknown in a southern NH town, free was too young to know about society’s cruel math, free was us being too young to know how small differences added up to a singular loneliness.
Beautiful! The repetition of "free" is a song or a love story about that feeling and also the time when the narrator felt most free. I love the string of—-ing words, "running, cursing, swinging," which creates a wonderful rhythm. And you give us grounded details with "woodchip-filled playground of a faded elementary school." You use polyptoton with "unknowing" and "unknown" words from the same root to create a great echo. In the end, we learn how freedom has been destroyed--through knowing about society's cruel math, and how small differences added up, and that powerful "singular loneliness."
I'm coming out with a new edition soon, but I have some copies of the old version. Please email me and we can figure it out. My email: ninaschuyler@gmail.com
This is a brilliant article thank you Nina for putting so much effort into it. Shows a lot of research and thought went into it to illustrate how we too can write stunning sentences if we put in the same effort and care as you and Jack Kerouac. I plan on incorporating the 10 syllable pentameter line in my new novel, about a mexican boy kidnapped at the US/Mexican border and meeting his American father for the first time. A story about an eleven-year-old who must decide for himself who he is and wants to become.
Kerouac changed my life, literally. At 22 (2005) I read On the Road and I sold everything and hitchhiked around America. Incredible book. I also learned over time, reading biographies on Kerouac, how much of a disaster he was: Brutal alcoholic, filled with Catholic guilt and self-loathing. Died at 47 in 1969 when his liver exploded. Terrible. He wasn't really the strongest writer, but he was a visionary and he caught an underground mood and started a movement unintentionally. All the Beats did, but Kerouac was The One. (Even though he hated being called King of the Beats.)
I can't wait to read this essay! I live in the Bay Area and the Kerouac myth and legend is strong. You walk through North Beach and can feel the ghost of Kerouac and the rest of the gang.
Thank you! Debrina Kwan has been on my mind, so...
The woman slept, slept slumped, slept soundly, slept snoring, a woman exhausted by the alertness required for street-smart safety, an indigent woman whose caravan was this train car, her bedroll this worn seat, slept unwakeable but alive, breathing, breathing, breathing like a hundred and ten year old tortoise emerging from the melting frozen mud, like glacial melt just before it is dumped, glistening, to form a landscape susceptible to the sun.
[Note that unwakeable isn't a word but neither is unwakably!]
The repetition of the woman sleeping with the descriptions creates a sense of a very deep sleep. The next move is to tell the reader more about her life and the reason for the deep sleep: "exhausted by the alertness required for street-smart safety." Because of this, I now worry for her safety. She is not alert, and she is in public, so what might happen? The sentence moves on from this, and we hear her breathing (3 times), and we fall back into that sleep, not alert. Then, the stunning, surprising images comparing her to a 110-year-old tortoise and a glacial melt. Those connections make me understand her inherent wisdom and how life itself is chipping away at her.
I just realized I only read the top half of this article, stopping at the audio - my brain has been bamboozled after a lonng day! I will come back with a proper response! (And I wondered why Substack estimated a 5 minute read lol)
Rescue Dogs Before I Leave You
The dogs I bring home to you are the marked ones, the ones who have said their last prayers, the ones who go wild, wild, wild and dig up my roses, lustful for all invisible smells, the ones who were not taught not to sit, stay or come, but to dig, dig, dig like insatiable babies we never made, bursting from prison like an exodus of damaged stars.
Beautiful! The passionate energy propels this sentence and I'm glued to it to the end. You reframe the rejected dogs and make them shine, make them beloved and loved. What a transformative experience for the reader to see these dogs in this light. We see their personality, "said their last prayers," and their dogginess, "wild, wild, wild and dig up my roses, lustful for all invisible smells." And here, what gentleness and wisdom the narrator brings to the page. The dogs are who they are. They are not humans and being in the world is different and the narrator respects that. Like Kerouac's sentence, the repetition of words seems to bind them together so "wild" becomes bound to "dig" for me. And then the end, we get a clue to the subterranean--so gently invoked here with "dig like insatiable babies we never made." So a moment of regret or loss, but we're right back on the ecstatic train with the end, "bursting from prison like an exodus of damaged stars." A beautiful image at the end!
Thank you so much Nina!
I have a fear of overly colorful sunsets, sunsets that overly spill brazen colors into nearby clouds, sunsets that are innocent, sunsets that are ignorant, goody-two-shoes sunsets, but still darken, darken, darken into night like a heavy velvet curtain closing like a slithering snake.
I love how you flip this on its head--how many times this image is invoked to create a good/beautiful emotion. Not in this sentence! "Goody-two-shoes sunsets" is fantastic--a different register coming in! You create a rhythm with anaphora, "sunsets that" done twice and then drop that rhythm. This is great--it is much more in line with the human voice that develops a rhythm and veers away from it. The end suggests that the fear has to do with the loss of the overly colorful sunsets. There's a promise in those saturated colors but the narrator knows they will not last. Great images at the end!
Powerful ending!
I like your similes, well done!
I adore this sentence. The breathless rush of energy blows me away and I can't quite capture it in mine.
My friends were the weird ones, the ones who didn’t try to hide they were weird, weird in their wants, weird in their interests, weird in their passions for doing stuff others considered strange, the ones who wore headbands or capes or knee-high moccasins and still played Dungeon and Dragons and never hid or asked for forgiveness, but shone, shone, shone, like some special bright pebbles you plucked from the gray gravels and beige stones rolling back and forth in the surf.
Wow! Fantastic! A love letter, a love sentence to the "weird ones." The specific details help me picture them--"headbands or capes or knee-high moccasins and still played Dungeon and Dragons..." I love the contrast of the "special bright pebbles" versus the "gray gravels and beige stones rolling back and forth in the surf." The whole sentence flips how most people view those who don't abide by the society rules/customs. And that is what great fiction can do--provide a different way to look at the world. A kind of blow to the brain to wake it up again.
I always wanted to be one, one who flies, one who soars, one who lives for the sky, ecstatically soaring and free, until, seeing, hearing, I dive to the surface then plunge, down, down, down, to catch my prey — like an osprey opens its beak in the deep like a fish among fish — to catch the thought, the sentence, the story.
Wow! Amazing! What first catches my ear/eye is that the narrator doesn't want to be "the one," but "one." That small change makes this sentence really interesting because it's new. I love the plunge downward and the echo of "down, down, down," which is unexpected. And then the beautiful image of the osprey. I'm on a mission to promote/help writers merge the human and the other-than-human stories and here you do it with that image. From that image, which is animal and instinct the sentence provides a contrast at the end with sentence and the story, which are more abstract and mind-based. Lovely!
Thanks so much, Nina. I started with 'the one' not knowing where I was going, then dropped 'the' and it all flowed. Thanks for the exercise.
What a beautiful metaphor for a writer's freeing and victorious moment!
Thanks, Xiaoyan.
These people they did nothing, nothing when friends were bullied, nothing when neighbors were raided, nothing when books were burned and teachers beaten, weightless and inconsequential, nothing which for the moment promises safety, but inch by inch by inch turns to something like maggots of graveyards like ghosts nibbling on souls.
The energy of this sentence is rage and outrage at the acts of omission. And so you've chosen absolutely the right word to repeat, which is "nothing." Five times we hear that word and woven in between this word that creates heightened emotion AND an anchor to travel through this longish sentence. I love "inch by inch by inch" which captures the incremental in prose and then that powerful, overwhelming in the best way image at the end. I hear all the "g" sounds (plosives), too-"like maggots of graveyards like ghosts nibbling on souls."
Thank you, Nina. I'm glad it worked as I had a bit of a struggle with the word "nothing" as a subject.
I'm going to keep this one strategy in my mind: "When writing a sentence like this, the question for the writer is, what words do you want emblazoned on the reader’s brain?"
Just dropping in to say I finished your beautiful book, dripping with wet and glorious sentences that rose and fell in moving ways from beginning to end, and while a book can be a doorstop, or a book can be what you add to your shelf like a notch on your belt saying you did that one, this book (your book) will be underlined and dog-eared for all it teaches me about sentences, sentences that pushed me to keep reading late into the night, several nights, and fostered vivid dreams that stayed with me upon waking.
Emma,
Thank you so much! What a lovely gift you've given me with these words.
Nina
They carry the flame, the flame you first see as a spark, the flame ready to flare, the flame eager to burst into a brightness that will fill the room, fill the city, fill the world and those who carry the flame shine on the drab, the dull, the dreary, illuminate them to diamond glitter and prompt shards of light and hope and purpose to erupt in radiant arcs.
I love the contrast between those who carry the flame and those who are drab, dull, and dreary. Yet the binary breaks down because the flame carriers illuminate the drab and turn them into something other--diamond glitter and "prompt shards of light and hope and purpose to erupt in radiant arcs." What was in opposition is no longer by the end of the sentence. It feels right to elaborate on those who carry the flame, so the anaphora emphasizes the right word, "the flame," because the flame shines all the way to the end of this sentence. The second anaphora, "fill," also is spot-on. You create a movement here of grand expansion with the light moving from room to city to the world.
Thanks, Nina. I’m always uncertain doing these exercises but love working at them and eventually decide you have to go with your instinct. I’m invariably encouraged by your feedback. You have the knack of seeing the positives in all the responses. Thanks again.
Ok, this one was hard Nina, but I couldn’t get away from it. My stubborn brain wouldn’t let it go, and so after a day or so of turning it over in my head. This is the sentence I came up with. Not entirely sure I hit all the requirements, but I swung for the fences regardless 😆
During the only moment we were ever free, free was the air we breathed, free was the molecular strains of oxygens pulled as an afterthought when caught laughing at a dirty joke, free was running, cursing, swinging our legs over the woodchip filled playground of a faded elementary school, free was us as freewheeling marmosets unknowing and unknown in a southern NH town, free was too young to know about society’s cruel math, free was us being too young to know how small differences added up to a singular loneliness.
Beautiful! The repetition of "free" is a song or a love story about that feeling and also the time when the narrator felt most free. I love the string of—-ing words, "running, cursing, swinging," which creates a wonderful rhythm. And you give us grounded details with "woodchip-filled playground of a faded elementary school." You use polyptoton with "unknowing" and "unknown" words from the same root to create a great echo. In the end, we learn how freedom has been destroyed--through knowing about society's cruel math, and how small differences added up, and that powerful "singular loneliness."
Ahh love Kerouac and thanks for adding the technical analysis for me now to appreciate his writing Nina ❤️
Quick question: Where can I order or buy "How to Write Stunning Sentences". It appears to be out of stock at Fiction Advocate? Thank you 🙏
I'm coming out with a new edition soon, but I have some copies of the old version. Please email me and we can figure it out. My email: ninaschuyler@gmail.com
Thank you thank you 🙏
This is a great article. Thank you, Nina.
This is a brilliant article thank you Nina for putting so much effort into it. Shows a lot of research and thought went into it to illustrate how we too can write stunning sentences if we put in the same effort and care as you and Jack Kerouac. I plan on incorporating the 10 syllable pentameter line in my new novel, about a mexican boy kidnapped at the US/Mexican border and meeting his American father for the first time. A story about an eleven-year-old who must decide for himself who he is and wants to become.
Thank you! Your novel sounds fantastic!
Kerouac changed my life, literally. At 22 (2005) I read On the Road and I sold everything and hitchhiked around America. Incredible book. I also learned over time, reading biographies on Kerouac, how much of a disaster he was: Brutal alcoholic, filled with Catholic guilt and self-loathing. Died at 47 in 1969 when his liver exploded. Terrible. He wasn't really the strongest writer, but he was a visionary and he caught an underground mood and started a movement unintentionally. All the Beats did, but Kerouac was The One. (Even though he hated being called King of the Beats.)
Here's my very honest, nuanced Kerouac essay: https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/the-case-for-jack-kerouac
~
Michael Mohr
"Sincere American Writing"
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Michael,
I can't wait to read this essay! I live in the Bay Area and the Kerouac myth and legend is strong. You walk through North Beach and can feel the ghost of Kerouac and the rest of the gang.
Nina
Thank you! Debrina Kwan has been on my mind, so...
The woman slept, slept slumped, slept soundly, slept snoring, a woman exhausted by the alertness required for street-smart safety, an indigent woman whose caravan was this train car, her bedroll this worn seat, slept unwakeable but alive, breathing, breathing, breathing like a hundred and ten year old tortoise emerging from the melting frozen mud, like glacial melt just before it is dumped, glistening, to form a landscape susceptible to the sun.
[Note that unwakeable isn't a word but neither is unwakably!]
The repetition of the woman sleeping with the descriptions creates a sense of a very deep sleep. The next move is to tell the reader more about her life and the reason for the deep sleep: "exhausted by the alertness required for street-smart safety." Because of this, I now worry for her safety. She is not alert, and she is in public, so what might happen? The sentence moves on from this, and we hear her breathing (3 times), and we fall back into that sleep, not alert. Then, the stunning, surprising images comparing her to a 110-year-old tortoise and a glacial melt. Those connections make me understand her inherent wisdom and how life itself is chipping away at her.
What a fantastic piece! I love the observation about the capacity of human breath and exuberance.
I love how the comma falls out at the end and there’s this rush of energy.
Wow!!
I just realized I only read the top half of this article, stopping at the audio - my brain has been bamboozled after a lonng day! I will come back with a proper response! (And I wondered why Substack estimated a 5 minute read lol)
Oh - reading the comments- is the challenge then to craft a sentence back?
Yes, if you'd like!