She watched Sergeant Garp suckle in his sleep and tried to imagine that his ultimate regression would be peaceful, that he would turn into his fetus phase and no longer breathe through his lungs; that his personality would blissfully separate, half of him turning to dreams of an egg, half of him to dreams of sperm.
The World According to Garp, by John Irving
A friend of mine sent me a fascinating article about John Irving’s process of finding a story. It’s not the usual route through character, image, a snippet of dialogue, or an idea. He designs through sentences.
“I write endings first,” John Irving told NPR in 2012. “I write last sentences— sometimes last paragraphs—first. I know where I am going, and I don’t mean that I only have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.” In another interview with NPR in 2015, he added, “It's like a piece of music that you're writing toward: This is how it sounds when I get to the end.”
For him, the ending sentence is like an endnote to a piece of music.
And what does he do for the middle section? He comes up with sentences that encapsulate a chapter and posts them on his wall. His sentences are like seeds that grow into chapters.
Maybe the sentences you’re writing here will be the ending of a story or the beginning or the middle. Maybe they contain the very seeds of the story.
Irving’s sentence is right-branching, opening with the subject, “she” and a compound verb, “watched” and “tried.” (Jenny Fields is a nurse, and though she is taking care of Sergeant Garp, she’s also scouting for a sperm donor so she can have a baby). What stands out for me is how Irving grows this sentence through a series of dependent clauses, all of which refer back to what she is trying to imagine:
1. that his ultimate regression would be peaceful
2. that he would turn into his fetus phase and no longer breathe through his lungs
3. that his personality would blissfully separate
Irving creates rhythm and heightened emotion through the repetition of “that”—the style technique of anaphora, the repetition of a word(s) at the beginning of phrases, clauses or sentences. After his second dependent clause, which is 18 syllables long with the lovely alliteration “fetus phase,” he uses a semicolon, giving the reader a little breather. The third clause is further elaborated with balance (two) or parallelism, ellipsis, and anaphora:
1. half of him turning to dreams of an egg
2. half of him to dreams of sperm.
With the second phrase, Irving changes the rhythm through ellipsis, eliminating “turning”: “half of him [turning] to dreams of sperm.” The ear picks up the slight change.
The three clauses mimic a process of regression and it’s a slow process. For instance, Irving could have written it like this: “tried to imagine that his ultimate regression would be peaceful, from fetus to dreams of an egg and sperm.” The longer dependent clauses imply that for Jenny, the process of Sergeant Garp’s demise is slow.
Was this one of the sentences pinned to the wall? A sentence from which the first chapter, “Boston Mary” unfurled? I don’t know, but it seems like it might have been.
Your Turn
1. Open with your subject and use two verbs.
2. Now add three dependent clauses. Before you add the final clause, use a semicolon. Note that “that” is a relative pronoun when it refers to a noun. (For example, “The woman that you saw me with is a good friend.”) In Irving’s sentence, it’s referring not to a noun but to the verb phrase so it’s a dependent clause.
3. After the third dependent clause, add two modifying phrases, beginning each with the same words. Can you use ellipsis?
Try it! Maybe you’ll create the seed of a story!
Let me know how it goes!
PS: The last sentence of The World According to Garp? “But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”
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. If you’ve read my novel please consider posting an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads or social media.
Thank you!
Order links:
bookshop
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A Wonderful Review of Afterword!
I’m so grateful and honored!
“The novel is an incredible introspective work that makes us ponder the ethics and humanity that AI can display as they only become more and more advanced and capable of learning. The devastation and heartache in this novel is not as catastrophic as many other AI stories, but it is quiet in its pain and in the loneliness that comes from staring at a screen for too long.” —Alex Carrigan, Heather Feather Review
Upcoming Readings:
Monday, August 7th, 7:00 pm, Odd Mondays Reading Series! Bethany United Methodist Church, 1270 Sanchez Street. Please join us. So much to talk about and worry about, and think about.
On August, 5th, 12:00-2:00, I’ll be talking to “Sisters in Crime” about how to write stunning sentences. Sausalito’s Edgewater Room at the Sausalito Library.
I love this idea of intriguing sentences, not yet attached to a story, containing the seeds for a story to grow. Another very fun Stunning Sentence exercise! Here's mine (from my experience of needing to drive my husband's huge truck yesterday, not something I usually do!)--
She gripped the steering wheel and forced herself to take deep breaths as if she knew what she was doing, as if she’d done this a million times before; as if she wasn’t terrified, her left foot pressed to the vibrating floorboard, her right foot to the gas pedal.
Thank you! This sentence prompt was so engaging I had to try it. Not sure it's a story seed but the idea of building a story through sentences intrigues me. And, Irving's final sentence is a gut punch.
She reached through the light patterns playing on the bottom of the pool as she swam away from her fear of the people partying under the gazebo, drinking margaritas in orange plastic cups, talking in loud, laughing voices; forgetting for a moment they were flotsam washed up on the shores of a great campus in a wide world where there was no longer a place for them.