I saw one of them last night on the corner of University Boulevard and the East Mall, balancing on his unicycle as he waited for the light to change, three pedals forward, three pedals back, three forward, three back, wobbling elegantly there in the dark next to other students in jackets and backpacks.
“Unicycle Boys,’ by Anne Fleming, from the short story collection, Gay Dwarves in America
Can you feel the movement in this sentence? How it mimics the boy balancing on the unicycle, three pedals forward, three pedals back, three forward, three back?
When you live inside the world of your story and pull in that close, the sentences come alive, and you begin to feel them. Sometimes they come alive through sound and rhythm. (“The trucks thumped heavily, one by one, with slow inevitable movement…” D.H. Lawrence, “Odour of Chrysanthemums.” The cluster of heavy stresses slows the sentence, simulating the trucks). Sometimes, as in Fleming’s sentence, it happens through syntax. The style technique is called syntactic symbolism, in which syntax or sound mimics the content of the sentence. In a sense, this technique doubles delight because the intellect and the body are satisfied.
I love that Fleming repeats the unicycle’s motion with a slight change the second time so there is a different rhythm to wake the reader and convey a faster cycle motion (heavy stresses are capitalized):
1) THREE PEdals FORward, THREE PEdals BACK (6 heavy stresses)
2) THREE FORward, THREE BACK (four heavy stresses)
Fleming also invokes precise imprecision when she writes, “I saw one of them.” The imprecision invites the hum of tension: what is the “one”? Which “one”? Fleming enhances sentence-level tension because the vagueness contrasts with the specificity of the setting, which is named, “University Boulevard and the East Mall.”
She smartly uses contrast or antithesis to highlight the unicycle rider in constant motion compared to the students standing still. Think about a photograph, how darks and lights play off of each other. The students are even more static because of the clustering of hard stresses: STUdents in JAckets and BACKPACKS. Assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds, also draws attention to these unmoving, unicycle-less students.
I also love the oxymoron, “wobbling elegantly” for its freshness and truth. There is true elegance to someone balancing precariously on a unicycle.
Your Turn!
This is a right-branching sentence, with the modifiers coming to the right of the base clause. The subject is “I,” the verb “saw,” followed by the direct object, “one of them.”
Add your first modifier that refers back to your opening base clause. Fleming modifies the direct object, “one of them,” and makes the person more specific with “balancing on his unicycle as he waited for the light to change.” Can this modifier describe how your subject is moving?
Here comes the syntactic symbolism. Add your second modifier that gives more details about the movement. Note that you’re not modifying the direct object, but the movement that was introduced in the first modifier. In Fleming’s sentence, she modifies “balancing.” The modifiers answer the question: how is the person balancing? The answer: “three pedals forward, three pedals back, three forward, three back.”
Now add your third modifier that gives more details about the movement. Can you add an oxymoron? Can you add a contrast to this motion, as Fleming did with the students standing there?
Try it!
What else do you see in this sentence? I really enjoy talking to people who are passionate about writing.
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. In each of these classes, we spend 10 to 15 weeks drenched in the beauty of sentences, reading them and writing them. It’s such a pleasure! 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, www.ninaschuyler.com. You’ll find my book, How to Write Stunning Sentences, and my new book, Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal. I’d really love it if you preordered my novel, Afterword, which will be published in May 2023.
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I know Anne is a poet, also, and I've heard her read from other stories. There's always a beat inherent in the sentences, often humor. I just love how repetitive action here portrays the unicyclist, and how the words "elegantly" and "wobbling" are paired. I used to see a couple of unicyclists in my Brooklyn neighborhood about 15 years ago, both young men, at ease on a contraption that seemed to me never to allow ease, and so I'm drawn right in to this depiction. It's inspiring to me to think of playing with actions as portrait.
I was just reading some Rushdie, marveling over startling sentences that move through space, and thinking of you, and there you were! I love how this sentence captures such a unique movement, balancing on one wheel at an intersection: the way I can feel that precarious act in my own body. So good! (And I feel like I am often wobbling, maybe sometimes elegantly, at intersections in my own life.)
Thanks so much, Nina, and happy New Year!