Clapping my hat on my head, I strode into a world inhabited by vast numbers of men who had also clapped their hats on their heads, and as we jostled and encountered in trains and tubes we exchanged the knowing wink of competitors and comrades braced with a thousand snares and dodges to achieve the same end—to earn our livings.
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf is one of the great masters of elegant, rhythmic language. In The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Three, she wrote,
“Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief) one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it. But no doubt I shall think differently next year.”
Woolf’s sentence overspills with rhythm because of balance, the pairing of twos. There are four pairings:
1. jostled and encountered
2. trains and tubes
3. competitors and comrades
4. snares and dodges
The balance creates distinct patterns of rhythm (Heavier stresses are in bold. A heavier stressed syllable has a longer, louder, and higher sound than the other syllables in the word) and allows her to use alliteration and assonance.
1. and as we jostled and encountered (three soft stresses followed by one heavier stress)
2. in trains and tubes (one soft stress followed by one heavier stress)
3. of competitors and comrades (here there is variation in the rhythm: two soft stresses followed by a heavier stress; then three soft stresses followed by a heavier stress
4. snares and dodges (one heavy stress followed by a soft stress)
To create the fifth pairing, she uses epanalepsis: the same word(s) are at the beginning and end of a phrase, clause, or sentence. Here, she opens with “clapping my hat on my head” and uses a slight variation at the end of the clause: “clapped their hats on their heads.” By doing this, she creates this rhythm:
Clapping my hat on my head
Clapped their hats on their heads.
As Woolf says, a sight or an emotion first creates a wave in her mind long before it makes words. This is reminiscent of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who talked about inner speech, or pre-language. Vygotsky and Woolf remind us that words are first sounds, and sounds are vibrations and rhythms. I know from teaching this subject, some students can’t distinguish heavier stresses from lighter stresses. Try reading your sentence out loud. You can also use a dictionary that shows the stresses of a word.
The long sentence mimics the content (syntactic symbolism), with the narrator and the vast numbers of men striding to work. It takes several breaths to read it out loud. It also creates an excellent build to the end with the very short phrase: “to earn our livings.”
Woolf created many patterns of sound:
The short “a” that rings out: “clapping,” “hat,” “inhabited,” “vast,” “clapped,” and “as.”
The long “a” in “trains,” “exchanged,” “braced,” and “same.”
The short “o: in “competitor,” “comrades,” and “dodges.”
And “encountered” is heard at the end with “thousand.”
Your Turn:
Open with an adjectival phrase that modifies your subject. You’ll repeat this phrase at the end of this clause.
Add a subject and verb.
Include a relative clause that describes something in this part of the sentence. Now, repeat your opening phrase.
Use a conjunction and a dependent clause. In the dependent clause, use two verbs, like Woolf did: “jostled and encountered.”
Use a prepositional phase and two nouns, as Woolf did: “trains and tubes.” Can you use alliteration?
Now comes your second independent clause. Include another pairing as Woolf did with “competitors and comrades.”
Use a modifier and include one more pairing.
End with an em-dash followed by a short phrase.
How did it go?
What else do you see?
Thank you, subscriber, for sending this to me!
The Waves: Innovative and deeply poetic, The Waves is often regarded as Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece. It begins with six children—three boys and three girls—playing in a garden by the sea, and follows their lives as they grow up, experience friendship and love, and grapple with the death of their beloved friend Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing their inner lives: their aspirations, their triumphs and regrets, their awareness of unity and isolation.
“You would learn very little in this world if you were not allowed to imitate… I think if imitation were encouraged, much would be learned well that is now learned partially and haphazardly.”—A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
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 to find all my books: ninaschuyler.com, including my novel Afterword, How to Write Stunning Sentences, and Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal.
AFTERWORD is a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Finalist in two categories: Science Fiction and Literary!
Please consider preordering my award-winning short story collection:
I’m so happy that my short story collection, In This Ravishing World, will be published in July 2024. The collection won the W.S. Porter Prize for Short Story Collections and The Prism Prize for Climate Literature.
I’m honored and thrilled to receive this blurb from the fabulous writer Karen Joy Fowler:
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Classes
I’m teaching “Building a Story: Plot” for the independent bookstore Book Passage on Sunday, April 14th, and the 21st, 10:30-12:30 PST, in person and on Zoom. This class examines the traditional causation plot and an alternate structure called the braided or episodic plot. By the end of these sessions, you will have the bones of two new stories. Please join me!
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I love trying to craft a sentence after such a master. Thank you, Nina!
Fearful of our fellow man, we locked doors, ducking deliverymen and dodging others fearful of their fellow man, and as we peered into computer screens and peeked around drapes then snatched packages left outside through a sliver of open door, we slowly lost parts of us—unidentified and buried so deep as to defy recapture.
Wish she never walked into the river..with stones in her pocket and I slept in her bed^^