sentences

Sentences That Stick

By Ellen Blum Barish
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When something we read has us nodding along, marking up the margins or shouting “Amen” to an empty room, a writer’s work has been done. The reader has been moved. The work as a whole may have moved us, but what stops and suspends us, gives us pause or the inclination to take out the yellow highlighter is one beautiful, true sentence or series of words.

These are the words of the sentences that make it memorable; that makes you want to read it again; what makes us fall in love with a piece of writing.

To illustrate, I offer a few examples from the Summer Issue of my literary publication Thread which was just released this week.

Some are the sentences that sold me on the piece. Some I came to love later. But each stands out in their own way – like we do as human beings – highlighting something thoughtful, funny or just human, beckoning you to read on, or, perhaps, write one yourself.

“Hawk” highlights beautiful detail. “Later, when my red skillet was drying — propped up in its usual place on the spindly dish rack on the green and white striped tea towel — I glanced up and saw my hawk in her usual place and I wondered if I went outside, if I tiptoed through the muddy frozen grass and stood straight and tall under the bare red oak, would I see the stain of blood seeping into the rotting wood of the fence that separates me from the other side?  Marie DeLean

 

“A Mother’s Curse” showcases scene. “So I went barefoot for weeks, which gave me a too-intimate connection to tar and pavement and all those tiny bits of gravel and glass the eye misses but the foot feels.” Roberto Loiederman

 

“Swing” plays with language. “His swings scared me, but not as much as his silence.” Noriko Nakada

 

“The Only One with Pants” sets up a nice opening pace. “Think of my story the next time you’re driving on a rural highway in the dark. Watch the taillights ahead of you, the headlights that advance from the opposite direction. Consider their origin, their aim, their destination. Imagine the quiet conversations, the sleeping children, the lost souls turning to God or talk radio.” Matt Forsythe

 

 

All are hard-working sentences but each represents an example of an element of what I call Ellen’s Eight — four microelements (detail, scene, language and pacing) and four macro elements (structure, theme, voice and storyline) that can be seen in the sentence as well as the piece as a whole.

I’ll highlight the macro elements in a blog post to come.

A sentence that moves us is like that blossom, or blossoms, in the garden that stand out, the ones that make us hover a few more seconds, losing ourselves in their beauty, daring us to paint it or take it’s photograph.

 

 

Stuck in midst of a writing project, Hemingway wrote that writers needn’t worry; all we need to do is break it down and write one true sentence.

“But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.”

Yet there’s something beautifully-simply-true here for all of us. Not just the writers.

Say one true thing, feel one true thing, do one true thing, think one true thing and then go on from there.

 

Photos (except for flower photo) courtesy of Unsplash:  Ben White, Rod Long, iam se7en and Gaelle Marcel.

 

Sensational Sentences, Part Three

By Ellen Blum Barish
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There’s nothing like being swallowed up in a writer’s words. When something we read has us nodding, shouting, “Amen,” or marking in the margins, a writer’s work has been done.

The reader has been moved.

But being moved doesn’t mean that we remember every single word. It’s the whole work that moves us, and moves each of us differently. If we’re lucky, we can recall a phrase. With a decent memory, we may remember an entire sentence.

When I read a student’s work-in-progress or a submission to Thread, I’m absorbing an enormous amount of stimuli: I’m hearing the writer’s voice, visualizing her scenes, feeling his sensory details, absorbing the language, emotion, pace and theme.

But what stops and suspends me, urging me to hang there for a moment, is one beautiful, true sentence. And that’s usually the moment I fall in love with the work, even a work still under construction.

There’s just no arguing with a sensational sentence.

To illustrate my point, I offer eight very different examples taken from the pages of Thread. Some are the very sentences that sold me on the piece. Some I came to love later. But each stand out in their own way, like each of us does as human beings, highlighting something thoughtful, funny or just, human, and beckoning you to read on, or perhaps, write one yourself.

It was just some dog, the victim of a hit-and-run, lying in the middle of the street on a humid summer night in Detroit, not yet dead, panting shallow gasps, no visible sign of injury except for the small pool of sticky blood below its snout.

From “Rescue,” by Tom McGohey (forthcoming Spring 2016)

During my travels across America, I’m always looking at other cities and asking, “Could we grow old together?”

From “I’m Not From Here,” by Eileen Dougharty (Summer 2015)

This counterfeit ski photo of me sitting dumbfounded on top of a grimy snowbank represented exactly where I was in life: Stuck on the Bunny Hill of a career that was on a slow downhill slide.

From “The Paper Trail” by Tom Wolferman (Spring 2015)

I wanted to write stunning poems and make my friend David, a classical guitarist with green, basset hound eyes, fall in love with me.

From “Should I Feel Anything Yet?” Ona Gritz (Fall 2015)

Others looked where he looked, not seeing what he saw.

From “Seaside Bohemia,” by Randy Osborne (Fall 2015)

It was also the summer my brown baby boy learned to battle the blue jays.

From “First Day of School,” by Gay Pasley (Fall 2015)

Imagine the nerve: My dealer had gone out of town without informing me beforehand.

From “Smoke Screen,” by Timothy Parfitt (Spring 2015)

All I wanted was Barbie’s Dream House and a decent set of Shabbat candle sticks.

From “A Piece of Sky,” by Jeremy Owens ( Summer 2015)
Want to read “Sensational Sentences,” parts one and two? Here is One and here is Two.

Sensational Sentences

What a Stitch! Sensational Sentences, Part Two

 

Photo by Ellen Blum Barish. Copyright 2016.

What a Stitch! Sensational Sentences, Part Two

By Ellen Blum Barish
Posted on

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Sensational sentences are the threads of great writing.  And like thread – cotton or nylon, wool or silk – they are full of color, shine and texture. Sure, they pack more wow when followed by another great sentence and then, another. But the great sentence stands on its own, telling its own story.

I look for them and collect them. Because in their simplicity, they embody the craft of writing beautiful sentences.

You can find them in the most interesting places.

The specimens below were all posted on Facebook (yes, Facebook!), sprung from a sharp wit and keen, urban observing eye. I was delighted when the writer gave me permission to reprint them, as she doesn’t always say yes to her mother.

This time, she did. Note the well-selected details, use of senses (especially smell), dollop of imagination, mix of quote, observation and advice and, of course, humor.

On family reunions

Grandpa, referring to the Google map direction voice to the restaurant: “Hush, everybody! This woman is trying to take us someplace!”

On temptation

Every morning I don’t succumb to the siren song of bacon emanating from Longman & Eagle [a popular Logan Square restaurant] on my way to the train is both a victory and a loss.

City commuting

Sometimes, after it rains in the loop it smells like a giant fart cloud.

More on farting. Advice from a city girl on her lunch hour

If you’re wandering around Macy’s trying to kill time and you find you have to fart, just waltz into the perfume section.

On the winter of 2014

I’m moving to Hell for the weather.

Airport travel

Airport sushi is a sure fire way to miss your flight in more ways than one.

On St. Patrick’s Day

If I were really smart, I would have targeted the drunkest of drunk people, pretended to be a leprechaun, then stolen their wallets amidst their awe and confusion.

Thanks, Em!

Photograph by Ellen Blum Barish. 2014.

 

 

 

 

 

The Jewel in the Sentence

By Ellen Blum Barish
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IMG_1534Photograph by Ellen Blum Barish

When I’m looking for inspiration, I frequently turn to the craft essays in Brevity, an online literary publication with great essays as well as process pieces. This one, called “Not Every Sentence Can Be Great But Every Sentence Must Be Good,” written by Cynthia Newberry Martin, offers up tangible ways to brighten up our sentences with some spit and shine. I’m taking the liberty to share the second half of her piece which is filled with tips. Click here for the complete essay.

Perhaps good is best defined by what a sentence is not: indifferent, slack, utilitarian, boring, Since it’s more effective to work toward a positive than away from a negative, let’s look at seven ways to revise a sentence – seven ways to take a sentence from boring to good.

1. Add detail.

a. An unusual detail and/or a detail that is personal to the narrator.

May Sarton in Journal of a Solitude: There is nothing to be done but go ahead with life moment by moment and hour by hour—put out birdseed, tidy the rooms, try to create order and peace around me even if I cannot achieve it inside me (33).

Note: The detail of “putting out birdseed” emerges as unusual and specific in this list of tasks. Readers of May Sarton will recognize it as characteristic of her.

b. Framing details plus a dash of vagueness.

Neil Young in Waging Heavy Peace: Crosby had recently gotten straight, was recovering from his addiction to freebase, had just completed jail time he got for something having to do with a loaded weapon in Texas, and was still prone to taking naps between takes (3).

Note: Adding details to just one of the clauses brings this sentence to life. The details plus the spot of vagueness cause our minds to go to work imagining what might have happened in Texas.

2.    Add unusual repetition.

a.  Different forms of the same word.

Anne Enright in The Gathering: I close my eyes against the warm sunlight and doze beside the dozing stranger on the Brighton train (55).

Note: Enright repeats doze in the adjective form of dozing.

Pam Houston in Contents May Have Shifted: Henry is the only man I’ve ever known in my life that I knew how to love well, and as luck would have it, we were never lovers (6).

Note: Houston repeats love in the noun form of lovers. And notice the rhythm of the sentence.

b.  The same word as different parts of speech.

Anne Enright in The Gathering: I was back to school runs and hovering and ringing other-mothers for other-mother things, like play dates, and where to buy Rebecca’s Irish dancing shoes (133).

Note: Enright uses other-mother both as a noun and as an adjective, where it supplies a frame for the vagueness of things, which she then frames even more by using examples.

3.  Incorporate a character’s voice.

David Foster Wallace in “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s”  from Consider the Lobster and Other Essays: People keep asking Mrs. T’s permission until she tells them to knock it off and for heaven’s sake just use the phone already (138).

4.  Add a surprising or unusual perspective.

Anne Enright in The Gathering: The Hegartys didn’t start kissing until the late eighties and even then we stuck to Christmas (53).

Note: Enright enlarges the time frame: instead of referencing an event, she references an entire decade.

5.  Use sentence fragments.

Brian Doyle in “Joyas Voladoras” from The Best American Essays 2005: So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment (30).

Thomas Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander: How the valley awakes (117).

Cheryl Strayed in Wild: Planet Heroin (53).

6.  Use compression—combine sentences to create density.

Pam Houston in Contents May Have Shifted: We were each locked inside our individual sorrows, didn’t know each other well enough to share, but we agreed, out loud, that like moose, pelicans were surely put on earth to act as suicide preventers, agreed we’d never kill ourselves within the sight of one (8).

Note: Multiple could-have-been-single sentences are contained in one sentence; notice how the compression creates a lovely rhythm.

7.  Delete a sentence.

From my novel-in-progress:

Original: Angelina went straight from Lucy’s to the gym. In the face of matching clothes, mirrors, strutting, she could feel her body regressing—curling in instead of opening out—and she reminded herself to breathe.

Improved: But at the gym, in the face of matching clothes, mirrors, strutting, Angelina could feel her body regressing—curling in instead of opening out—and she reminded herself to breathe.

 

Sensational Sentences

By Ellen Blum Barish
Posted on

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When we read something that we really respond to, that makes us pause or prompts us to read it again, it’s the sentence that connects us to the work. Sometimes, it can be just a phrase. We couldn’t possibly remember every word we read. When we tell others why we liked something, we try to reconjure the exact words.

I’ve been asking my students to pay attention to sensational sentences, the emphasis on words that activate the senses.  I urge them to underline, asterisk or highlight them; to write them down so they can see their structure and hear their rhythm.

Here are a few I’ve liked from recent reading:

On witnessing two people leaping from the South Tower, hand in hand, on September 11, Brian Doyle wrote in “Leap,”

“I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers but I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.”

On standing up in a field of cows on an English hillside, G. K. Chesterton wrote in “A Piece of Chalk,”

“Then I suddenly stood up and roared with laughter, again and again, so that the cows stared at me and called a committee.”

In the opening of her essay, “Traveling Mercies,” Anne Lamott wrote,

“Broken things have been on my mind lately because so much has broken in my life and in the lives of people I love – hearts, health, confidence.”

Like the fresh vegetables in a salad compared to the bland, uni-size frozen versions, we recall the taste of that sweet red pepper or crisp garden cucumber or the surprise of black olive, chopped parsley or feta cheese. Maybe we are struck by how the vegetables are sliced. Because it can be in the fewest words that writers leave their impression.