And then the light cracked into them, and then the question mark that was the world snapped itself out straight, dividing them from mystery forever.
“The Oysters,” by Wendy Brenner, from her collection, Large Animals in Everyday Life
This slim sentence swells with style. To fully enter the sentence, you need to know that the pronoun “them” refers to oysters about to be irradiated, a new preservation process. We are in the point of view of oysters.
The sentence unfolds slowly, step by step, the light, the world, the mystery. By elongating time, Brenner signals to the reader that this is a significant moment. I hear implicitly: pay attention.
And I do. Because the first base clause pairs the subject, “light,” with the verb, “cracked.” The oxymoron, seemingly contradictory terms that appear side by side, startles and delights me, and energy bursts on the page. The verb is perfect because it captures the sound of opening the oyster shell, which is what’s happening; the oyster’s dark, contained world has been cracked open by the piercing, infiltrating irradiation.
How do you find the perfect and best word? In part, it lies in avoiding the usual and expected diction. It’s also character-appropriate; that is, it’s derived from embodying and thinking like your character. In this case, an oyster. (By the way, I think it’s a writer’s job to rebut Thomas Nagel’s 1974 philosophical paper, “What is it Like to be a Bat?” in which he says, among other things, humans can never know what it’s like to be a bat. It’s also a chance to upend human exceptionalism, but that’s a discussion for another time).
The second base clause, “and then the question mark that was the world snapped out straight,” is a metaphor, equating the world with a question mark. Metaphor speeds us, imaginatively, toward a new meaning, writes James Wood in How Fiction Works. In this sentence, before the radiation, the outside world of light is a question for the oyster. Brenner goes one step further and invokes metonymy, in which the name of an object or concept is replaced by a word closely related to it. Here, the concept of a question is replaced by the specific symbol of a question mark. It’s a fantastic way to make the abstract more specific and introduce more images.
Brenner beautifully extends the metaphor with the image of the question mark “snapped out straight.” The question mark is no longer needed because the question is answered; the oysters know about the light outside the shell. Brenner adds the final participial phrase, which functions as an adjectival phrase, “dividing them from mystery forever.” Not only does the modifying phrase give more specificity, but it also makes the reader linger here longer, and it raises the emotional stakes with the word “forever.” The oysters will never again live in mystery.
Your Turn!
Write a base clause, a subject and a verb. Think about your subject and its subjectivity. Let me turn to Nagel again. He defined consciousness to be: "An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism – something that it is like for the organism." So for you, the writer, the question is: how does your subject experience the world? This imaginative work will help you pair the subject with the “right” verb to create an oxymoron and avoid the usual, expected diction.
Add a conjunction.
Now write a second base clause that uses a metaphor. One way to approach this is to find the “target,” or what you want to describe. In Brennan’s sentence, it’s the world. To come up with the “source,” which is the description of the target, think of another domain that is different from the target’s domain. So if your target is a human, maybe the source domain is a fruit or flower or kitchen appliance.
Brennan did something that brought even more energy to the sentence by inverting the order of the metaphor. Instead of first introducing the target, the world, she starts with the source, the question mark. Take your metaphor and reverse the order so the source comes first.
Extend the metaphor through the verb. Here, it’s “snapped itself out straight.”
Now add one more modifying phrase that gives more details about the second base clause. Can you raise the stakes?
Try it!
Let me know how it goes!
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.
Preorder links:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/afterword-nina-schuyler/18618162?ean=9781955904704
https://smile.amazon.com/Afterword-Nina-Schuyler/dp/1955904707/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3TZ5QIYJ90EYM&keywords=afterword+nina&qid=1673155946&sprefix=afterword+nina%2Caps%2C139&sr=8-1
I’m thrilled to receive this generous review from bookchew:
“AFTERWORD is complex and elegant…. This is a love story and a horror story, a mystery and a morality play. But above all, it is just so damn beautiful. The whole book feels gently haunted. Nina Schuyler’s blend of literary intricacy and speculative fiction makes this read perfect for fans of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel or The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki.” —bookchew
Beautiful writing. But am I crazy to wish that sometimes, or maybe most of the time, could we just leave some of these beautiful creatures (mollusks, lobsters, squid, octopi) the hell alone? Is it possible that we are here for them as much as if not more than they are here for us?
(Forgive my ranting. Thank you, Nina.)