The Up-and-Down Sentence

Clear by Carys Davies

Each time they rose he glimpsed the rocky shore, the cliffs, the absence of any kind of landing; each time they descended, the rocks vanished and were replaced by a liquid wall of gray.

Clear by Carys Davies

Photo by Ilse Orsel on Unsplash

The impoverished minister, John Ferguson, is on a ship, traveling to a remote island to expel the last remaining resident, a man named Ivar. Ferguson has been hired by landowners, but soon after he arrives, he falls off a cliff and is knocked out. It is Ivar who finds him.

Which brings me to Davies’s sentence, the second sentence of this slim, poignant novel that draws attention to vertical movement. It foregrounds verticality, subtly preparing us for the fundamental action—the fall—that eventually will bring these men together in friendship. (This type of sentence might appear in your writing, only after you have a sense of your story. Then you can go back and, as Davies does here, provide imagery and diction in the opening to echo what will happen later.)

The sentence mimics the up-and-down feeling of a boat rising and falling with the big waves; we’re in the realm of syntactic symbolism with the syntax simulating the content of the sentence. You feel like you’re in the boat going up and down. How does she do this? In part, it comes from parallelism or balance, the pairing of two things. There is the “up” independent clause, which is syntactically similar to the “down” independent clause.

1. Each time they rose he glimpsed the rocky shore, the cliffs, the absence of any…

Subordinate clause (an implied “that” or “when”) + subject + verb + direct objects

2. Each time they descended, the rocks vanished and were replaced by a liquid wall…

Subordinate clause + subject + verb + conjunction + verb + direct object.

The semicolon that connects these two clauses adds to this sense of balance, acting like a hinge, helping us feel the rhythmic up-and-down motion. The rising and falling waves feel about the same strength in part because the two clauses are nearly identical in terms of word count, with the first one 18 words and the second 16.

Anaphora, the repetition of word(s) at the beginning of phrases or clauses, helps intertwine these two sentences with the refrain, “Each time they.” (I hear either “Each time that they…” or “Each time when they…) It also creates heightened emotion, which in Ferguson’s case, is unease and sea sickness.

Davies creates urgency by using asyndeton, the elimination of conjunctions with her list, “the rocky shore, the cliffs, the absence of any kind of landing.” If she abided by grammar rules, the series (list of three) would have ended like this: “and the absence of any kind of landing.”

Antithesis or opposites make the up-and-down motion more vivid and visceral. Antithesis reminds me of black and white photos or paintings, each color punched up because it’s positioned next to its opposite. In the first sentence, the boat “rose.” In the second sentence, it “descended.” The opposites don’t end there. There’s the juxtaposition of images that convey solidity: “rocky shores, the cliffs” and the image of liquid: “a liquid wall of gray.” Finally, there’s the contrast between visibility and obscurity.

Images invite associations and here they inject more tension and a sense of future trouble. The phrase “the absence of any kind of landing,” makes me think of no refuge, no escape, no firm ground. Ferguson has a task and already there is a sense he’ll encounter obstacles.

The image of “liquid wall of gray” suggests blindness, danger, and being overcome by something or someone.

A beautiful sentence (and novel) that accomplishes so much in a small space: musicality, rhythm, tension, emotional resonance, and echoes of the novel’s themes.

Your Turn

Open with your first base clause. Whatever words you use to begin this sentence will repeat in the second base clause. Since we’re practicing, can something rise? And in the second clause, fall? If you have a list, try eliminating the conjunction for the final item to create speed.

Add a semicolon and your second base clause. Can this clause be roughly the same number of words as the first one? Can you use an image(s) that contrasts to the first base clause’s image(s)?

Try it!

How did it go?

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Upcoming Classes

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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.

My short story collection, In this Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature and was published in July 2024. My award-winning novel, Afterword, was published in May 2023. My novel, The Translator, was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize, and The Painting, a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. My nonfiction books, How to Write Stunning Sentences and Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal, are bestsellers. Second editions are coming in January 2026. My short stories have appeared in Zyzzyva, Chicago Quarterly Review, Fugue, Nashville Review, Your Impossible Voice, and many other publications. I teach creative writing at Stanford Continuing Studies. Please visit my website: www.ninaschuyler.com

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