Tag Archives: sentence writing

Building a Sentence, Step by Step

Photo by Dmitry Shamis on Unsplash

You know what excites me? Crafting sentences that overflow with content and brim with alluring vocabulary. When I read Stanley Fish’s book, How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One, I became giddy with pleasure, thinking about all the future memorable sentences I could write. In one chapter, Fish demonstrates how to expand a four-word basic sentence into one that reveals character, moves the plot, and illustrates how the setting affects a story. Let me show you what he suggests with my own example.

My basic four-word sentence is: her brother went to the meeting.

Now, if I want to build the character of the brother, I must say something about him. Here’s my first addition: her brother, a tall and lanky 56-year-old with a cantankerous and rude demeanor. But I could say even more. Here goes: her brother, a tall and lanky 56-year-old with a cantankerous and rude demeanor who always arrived twenty minutes late to every appointment and made excuses for his tardiness. Now, the reader knows that this guy is unpleasant and too arrogant to take responsibility for his short-comings.

Next, let me tackle how he went to the meeting. I replace the verb “went” with a more exact one and add some related information: her brother, a tall and lanky 56-year-old with a cantankerous and rude demeanor, who always arrived twenty minutes late to every appointment and made excuses for his tardiness, rolled his wheelchair across the snow-packed sidewalk in thirty-degree weather, wearing a down jacket, gloves, wool hat, and earmuffs. Not only does this addition explain how he got to the meeting, but under what conditions. It also infers that he was determined to go since driving a wheelchair over the snow in freezing weather is tough.

Ok, home stretch here. Let’s finish by adding something about the meeting: her brother, a tall and lanky 56-year-old with a cantankerous and rude demeanor, who always arrived twenty minutes late to every appointment and made excuses for his tardiness, rolled his wheelchair across the snow-packed sidewalk in thirty-degree weather, wearing a down jacket, gloves, wool hat, and earmuffs, to get to his AA meeting. Whoa, I only added one more word, here, but a term full of meaning and content. Now, the reader might associate the brother’s tetchy deportment with his alcohol problem that he is struggling to overcome.

I like this sentence so much I’m going to paste it on the bottom of this post, so I can admire it. Happy sentence-crafting to you, too.

Her brother, a tall and lanky 56-year-old with a cantankerous and rude demeanor, who always arrived twenty minutes late to every appointment and made excuses for his tardiness, rolled his wheelchair across the snow-packed sidewalk in thirty-degree weather-wearing a down jacket, gloves, wool hat, and earmuffs-to get to his
AA meeting.

by Tess Perko

Reference: Fish, Stanley. How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One. Harper. 2005.

A Writing Exercise for Immediate Satisfaction

I love writing, but sometimes, I tire of working on a huge project, such as a novel. I want to write something that rewards me with instant pleasure.

Last week, I read Stanley Fish’s How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One. In this captivating book-length essay, he includes some exercises to help people write “finely crafted sentences.”

In Chapter 2, he asserts that “a sentence is a structure of logical relationships,” and excellent writers build sentences with a variety of logical relationships.  

To practice, he proposes that a writer begin with a short sentence of three or four words such as my example of “Toby cooked the chicken.” Then, the writer adds a series of logical relationships to this short sentence to make it interesting. Here’s my attempt:

  • Toby, who had arrived at the restaurant at 10:06 a.m. instead of his expected time of 9:00 a.m., cooked, or rather deep-fried the chicken, which the owner purchased at the local butchery that morning before he arrived at 9:00 a.m. on time.

I realize that this isn’t the most incredible sentence of all time, but it says much more than its original version. First, we know that Toby was extremely late to work. We also know that he cooked the chicken with grease since he deep-fried it. He works with his boss, who does the purchasing for the business, and his boss knows he was late since he arrived before Toby. As soon as I wrote it, I felt elated at my new-found skill.

Here are a few more examples of my sentence-relationship-building exercises.

Short sentence: The dog scratched his ear.

Adding logical relationships:

  • The dog, a runt mixture of auburn English Setter and black Poodle, scratched his ear, which was covered with a bandage due to an infection.

Short sentence: Joan called her father.

Adding logical relationships:

  • Joan, who was suffering from the flu and lying in bed with a box of Kleenex, called her father to whom she hadn’t spoken since before she bought her new car.

Short sentence: Dan drove his car.

Adding logical relationships:

  • Dan, a medium-sized guy with a mop of brown hair and a sliver of a mustache, drove his car, a bright red Subaru Outback that he had bought five years ago in Bozeman, Montana.

This exercise is so easy that I plan to do it every day. Why shouldn’t life be fun all the time? Thank you, Stanley Fish.

Source: Fish, Stanley. How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One. Harper. 2005.