This is beautiful, with the rhythm of the --ing (present participials) sounds echoing and ringing out. I love the way it expands with the "soul in the spirit of its tune," transcending the concrete, physical reality.
Just found your Substack, and so happy I did. Thought I'd start from the beginning, and see how I go. I just love the idea of this - I do believe that beautiful, striking sentences are the heartbeat of good writing. So here's my first attempt. I've got two sentences, not one. I could have used a dash perhaps? Hmm. Now I'm not sure.
It was a purple flower, the deepest of purples, a purple that spoke of sultry nights in romantic places, and he’d have admired her dress, how its purple resonated with her eyes, as he held her close to gaze into their depths. But this was just a small boy, and he’d found the flower, and wasn’t it pretty?
The boy agonised for days but in time he gave the woman a flower, rarely found in the city of lights. He quietly stood outside deluxe abodes, their peripheries outlined by timeless peepal trees, towering coconut palm trees and thriving bougainvillaea bushes, foraging fallen foliage for that distinct delicate snowy and turmeric chameli, its fragrancy on warm summers sealed in his memory.
By adding these specific sensory details, I become immersed, as the boy is, in this world, standing outside the deluxe abodes. I love that scent comes in, and the clustering of alliteration. Lovely!
The boy gave the woman a flower, a dried rose. Caressing its blunted thorns, brittle petals and battered leaves, she almost cried, imagining him safeguarding this shrivelled bloom between the pages of his treasured love poems that he transcribed by hand.
Oh, this is beautiful! I love the surprise that the flower is a dried rose. It's unexpected, and my mind starts trying to interpret--why dried? Does the boy dislike her? Then we see she's caressing it. Now I have to rethink my interpretation. If she's caressing it, she sees this dried rose as a kind and loving gesture. We get the modifiers with the repetition of "b" blunted/brittle/battered. She imagines him--and now I understand why the rose is dried. It's been tucked in the pages of his love poems. You built to this last moment beautifully!
Playing with the same rhythm... this is what I came up with:
She brushed her broom over the floorboards,
swept along the floor,
singing.
It was a hypnotic song,
lilting on the breeze,
swaying in the air like a fairy flute,
a singing that holds the soul in the spirit of its tune,
a singing that calls soft "be mine, be bold".
Victoria,
This is beautiful, with the rhythm of the --ing (present participials) sounds echoing and ringing out. I love the way it expands with the "soul in the spirit of its tune," transcending the concrete, physical reality.
Just found your Substack, and so happy I did. Thought I'd start from the beginning, and see how I go. I just love the idea of this - I do believe that beautiful, striking sentences are the heartbeat of good writing. So here's my first attempt. I've got two sentences, not one. I could have used a dash perhaps? Hmm. Now I'm not sure.
It was a purple flower, the deepest of purples, a purple that spoke of sultry nights in romantic places, and he’d have admired her dress, how its purple resonated with her eyes, as he held her close to gaze into their depths. But this was just a small boy, and he’d found the flower, and wasn’t it pretty?
Another one:
The boy agonised for days but in time he gave the woman a flower, rarely found in the city of lights. He quietly stood outside deluxe abodes, their peripheries outlined by timeless peepal trees, towering coconut palm trees and thriving bougainvillaea bushes, foraging fallen foliage for that distinct delicate snowy and turmeric chameli, its fragrancy on warm summers sealed in his memory.
By adding these specific sensory details, I become immersed, as the boy is, in this world, standing outside the deluxe abodes. I love that scent comes in, and the clustering of alliteration. Lovely!
The boy gave the woman a flower, a dried rose. Caressing its blunted thorns, brittle petals and battered leaves, she almost cried, imagining him safeguarding this shrivelled bloom between the pages of his treasured love poems that he transcribed by hand.
Oh, this is beautiful! I love the surprise that the flower is a dried rose. It's unexpected, and my mind starts trying to interpret--why dried? Does the boy dislike her? Then we see she's caressing it. Now I have to rethink my interpretation. If she's caressing it, she sees this dried rose as a kind and loving gesture. We get the modifiers with the repetition of "b" blunted/brittle/battered. She imagines him--and now I understand why the rose is dried. It's been tucked in the pages of his love poems. You built to this last moment beautifully!