Speeding across the Bonneville Salt Flats, Jack played car golf, weaving in and out of the lanes trying to roll the Ping-Pong ball in the passenger seat well into the Styrofoam coffee cup that was on its side after spilling out most of the coffee. Jack was good at this.
“Sportsman,” by Amy Hempel, from The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Jack’s wife has left him, and since they live in California, he can’t drive west, so he drives east. This is signature Hempel—that irony. This sentence is in the second paragraph of this short story, and Jack is on his way east, on the Bonneville Salt Flats, playing a game of car golf.
The sentence is a kind of simulation of the car golf game. I feel like I’m in that car, and it’s weaving in and out, trying to get that ball to roll in the cup. This is syntactic symbolism, with the syntax mimicking the content. Whenever I can, I use it because then I’m speaking to the reader’s body, and that’s an undeniable reality.
The simulation is created, in part, by the diction, “weaving in and out of the lanes.” She could have written “weaving,” and left it at that, but “in and out of the lanes” creates more movement at the content level and the rhythm level. (In and out of the lanes—heavy stresses in bold) The simulation is also a result of the length of the sentence and the precise description.
After the base clause, “Jack played car golf,” what follows are phrases and clauses that refer back to car golf, describing the game in elaborate detail. While the sentence opens with an adjectival phrase, it becomes a cumulative sentence: It moves forward with precise details and spirals back to the base clause to describe car golf.
--weaving in and out of the lanes
--trying to roll the Ping-Pong ball
--in the passenger seat well
--into the Styrofoam coffee cup
--that was on its side
--after spilling out most of the coffee.
By eliminating the comma between “lanes” and “trying,” Hempel creates speed and a sense that this game, and not driving, is Jack’s primary focus. It becomes our main focus, too, as if we’re playing it because the precise description of the game makes us focus on the game.
Prepositions are often overlooked, but here, look at how much energy and action they add to the sentence: “in the passenger seat well,” “into the Styrofoam coffee cup.” And with the dependent clause, “after spilling out most of the coffee,” “spilling” infuses the sentence with more energy. We aren’t watching the road; we’re watching that ball, trying to get it into the cup.
Let me say something about subtext, the text that isn’t on the page, but suggested by concrete details. With the phrase “weaving in and out of the lanes” and the absurd game being played at high speed, there is a sense that Jack, untethered from his marriage, is now weaving all over the place.
I included the final short sentence to show the musicality of sentence length variation.
Your Turn
Open with a phrase that establishes the setting and maybe creates a sense of danger.
Now comes your base clause, the subject and verb predicate. Include in the base clause a statement of a process. In Hempel’s sentence, the statement is “car golf.”
Add at least three phrases or clauses describing the process in detail. Make sure each new detail adds something rather than repeats what’s already been stated.
How did it go?
What else do you see?
(Thank you, dear subscriber, for sending me this sentence!)
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.
Preorder My Award-Winning Short Story Collection:
I’m so happy that my short story collection, In This Ravishing World, will be published in July 2024. The collection won the W.S. Porter Prize for Short Story Collections and The Prism Prize for Climate Literature.
Here’s what the Judge for The Prism Prize for Climate Literature said about the collection:
“Three pages into reading this fascinating book, I knew it was the clear winner of the third annual Prism Prize for Climate Literature that I sponsor through Homebound Publications. Not only does it cover every facet of the climate issue and the ongoing efforts at dealing with or denying/undermining what needs to be done, Nature’s presence embraces the entire narrative and lends a sense of enchantment. Rivetted, I could barely put it down for the three days it took to read the compelling stories of a diverse cast of characters: there is someone in these pages for every reader to relate to.”—Gail Collins-Ranadive, author of Dinosaur Dreaming, Our Climate Moment.
I’d really appreciate it if you preorder the book. Here’s the link:
Afterword
I’m excited about this upcoming reading! The San Mateo County Libraries purchased over 150 copies of my novel and distributed them for free to patrons prior to this reading. There will be time for questions. I hope you can attend—online! Jan 23, Tuesday, 6:30 p.m. PST. Please register for free here:
The Newsletter:
Finally, if this newsletter is valuable to you, consider becoming a Patreon supporter for as little as $5 per month. Here are the instructions on how to do that:
Thank you!
Very interesting! Here's my try:
Bumping along Dragon Scale Lane, I rode my brother’s rickety bike, jolting up and down with each cobblestone cluster gripping plastic handlebars slippery with my sweat wishing I were in the gliding Benz wishing it still belonged to us. What else could go wrong?
It’s Saturday and another Stunning Sentence! Here’s my try at the challenge prompt:
Deep in the dark forest on a moonless night, Jackie cast a spell, drawing strange shapes in the air while whispering unspeakable syllables in a language never meant for humans and which could only be found in crumbling grimoires written in the shadows of blood-stained ziggurats.