The Stunning Short Sentence

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

“I was fourteen: the world was pain.”

Swing Time, by Zadie Smith

Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

I’m often accused of being a fanatical lover of long sentences. Sure, yes, that may be true (they’re so often besieged, the poor things), but I also have a great fondness for the short sentence. With its essence laid bare like the work of a restrained poet, we need the short sentence. The variety of sentence lengths creates different rhythms, which the ear loves. But just because it’s short doesn’t mean it's stripped of style.

The short sentence is the perfect container for what Smith’s narrator is feeling. She can’t possibly utter a longer sentence because she is so minimized and reduced by the pain. It’s as if her lungs have tightened and only this can be said. As Mary Oliver writes in her book, A Poetry Handbook, the pentameter line matches the breath capacity of our English lungs—“that is speaking in English.” She’s talking about poetry, but prose writers can use this. Pentameter is a five-foot line or 10 syllables. So, when you write a sentence with fewer than 10 syllables, you cut off the breath. The short sentence mimics pain cutting off the narrator’s breath.

Smith’s sentence pulses with hyperbole. This is often the language of pre-teens and teens. (I have two sons). For this fourteen-year-old narrator, the world has been flattened. It is only pain. My mind wants to autofill so it reads, “the world was full of pain,” but Smith makes it fresh again.

Parallelism or balance, with the two base clauses similarly structured, creates an eloquent rhythm. They are so balanced they have the same syllable count.

I was fourteen

(Subject) (linking verb) (subject complement)

the world was pain.

(subject) (linking verb) (subject complement).

(note: a subject complement is a word or phrase that describes, identifies, or defines the subject of a sentence. )

“Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue,” writes Oliver. And she goes on: “Rhythm underlies everything.”

Let’s talk about the colon. She could have used a period, but it would have created a strong pause between the clauses, diluting the connection. She could have used a semicolon, which is a grammatically correct way to connect two independent clauses without using a conjunction.

But she chose a colon which establishes a strong connection between the two base clauses and emphasizes the second base clause. Since the colon often introduces a list, for me, this punctuation creates a sense that the second base clause is a description of the state of being fourteen.

(A side note: In American English, when the phrase is a complete sentence after the colon, you capitalize the first word. In British English, the first word after a colon is only capitalized when it’s a proper noun or acronym.)

Zadie Smith

Your Turn

Write a base clause using a linking verb, such as is/was/seems/feels/becomes. This verb needs to be followed by a noun, adjective or adverb. Keep it short.

Add a colon.

Write a second base clause, again using a linking verb. This second base clause is in relationship to the first base clause. Can you use hyperbole? Can you use the same syllable count as the first base clause?

Try it!

How did it go?

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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 for all my books: ninaschuyler.com, including my novel Afterword, How to Write Stunning Sentences, and Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal.

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