Up from the skeleton stone walls, up from the rotting floor boards and the solid hand-hewn beams of oak of the pre-war cotton factory, dusk came.
“Blood-Burning Moon,” by Jean Toomer, from the collection Cane
So much beauty and music in this sentence. Before we look at its flesh and bones (it’s alive, yes) take a moment and read it out loud. The sound and rhythm, the long phrases that build to the short, pared down, almost Platonistic final beat of the base clause.
Sentence variety—sentences that vary their length—create interesting rhythms and sounds for the ear. Toomer’s sentence shows you that phrase variety can do something similar. Something artistically beautiful and powerful emerges from contrast. I think contrast is fundamental at every level: character development (positive and negative traits and qualities), plot (joy and sorrow), and sentences. It creates a sense of the wide spectrum of life.
The first phrase is eight syllables long and contains one image, “the skeleton stone walls.” The second phrase explodes to 25 syllables with three images. This second phrase is like a crescendo, a climax with so much pulsing, ringing out, with the explosion of adjectives, “rotting,” “floor,” “solid,” “hand-hewn,” “oak,” “pre-war,” “cotton.” Both phrases are comprised primarily of one-syllable words. Only two words, “skeleton” and “factory” are three syllables.
All of which strips away to the bare base clause, “dusk came.”
Toomer uses anaphora for the first two phrases, repeating “up from,” creating rhythm and also an anchor or handrail to guide the reader along this left-branching sentence. With this long sentence, he can add more style:
Alliteration: skeleton/stone, hand-hewn
Assonance: floor/boards, beams/pre, stone/oak, rotting/solid/cotton
Heavy stresses: stone walls, floor boards, hand-hewn beams, dusk came
In terms of diction, his use of “up from” is original and interesting. As I read it, dusk isn’t descending, it’s rising from the ground.
Your Turn:
We’re going to work from the end to the beginning:
1. Start with a two-word base clause, like Toomer’s “dusk came.”
2. Go back to the beginning of the sentence, write a shortish phrase and include one image. Can you add alliteration via your adjectives?
3. Now add a second long phrase, repeating the first word of the first phrase. Include three images, elongating the phrase through adjectives. Can you use primarily one-syllable words? Can you add alliteration? Assonance? Double-heavy stresses?
Tell me how it goes!
What else do you see?
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:
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Upcoming Class:
I’ll be teaching “Plot 101: Design the Story You Want to Tell,” at the Writing Salon in San Francisco. The focus is on the causation plot, which is the most popular in Western literature. Three weeks, Mondays, in-person, 6:30-9:00 beginning September 11.
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Down from the limestone walls of the inner chamber, limestone walls which had not glimpsed the sun for millions of years, down through the upper flood-carved tunnels plumbing this Ozark mountain with a vascular system rivaling that of any living being, down from the lightning-riddled, thunder-beaten skies, the water came.
It took me a while to puzzle through this one because I kept wanting to add more actions (with additional verbs that grew to additional phrases needing commas - which I loved but didn't hold true to the syntax here) as opposed to recognizing that this sentence is actually one of scene description. Once I recognized the nouns were all a part of the "scene": walls; boards; beams; factory, and the adjectives alone were used to stretch the sentence, I was able to tackle it. I do love reading everyone's base clauses here, anchoring each of the sentences...and I've a new appreciation for the left branching sentence.
Here's mine (after hours, yes, hours of playing with this, trying to get all the bits in: alliteration, assonance, heavy stresses):
Beneath a deepening dark, beneath weighty wishes and breathy memories the feathery blue duvet and the sharp pointed tin-light stars, sleep arrived.