How To Write Stunning Sentences – Nina Schuyler

4. Write a sentence that includes a high register word and a colloquial phrase, as Bellow does in these sentences with the word “peritonitis” pressed up against, “So you see”: “But then Houdini was punched experimentally in the belly by a medical student and died of peritonitis. So you see, nobody can overcome the final fact of the material world.”

OceanofPDF.com Schemes and Tropes OceanofPDF.com The Power of Repetition When my son’s fifth birthday was a mere five months away, he frantically put together his wish list of presents. For days, I heard, “Please, I want a LEGO Batmobile. Please, I really want a LEGO Batmobile. Mom, I really, really want a LEGO Batmobile,” like a refrain, or an uninspired Greek chorus. It doesn’t take long for the voice of my sixth grade English teacher to kick in, ripe with certitude and rules: “No repetition.

In the English language, we have an abundance of wonderful words. Let’s use them.” We were required to buy and bring to class a thesaurus, and every essay, every memoir, every argumentative piece had to overflow with new and unique words. This was how we earned an A. It is yet another rule handed to me by my English teacher that I— older and wiser—have had to toss. By the fourth day of my son’s pleas, I marveled at the emotional weight created by the repetition. I heard his excited demand turn into a plea and, finally, a deep-seated longing, threaded through with hope and despair.

Poets have known about repetition for a very long time. Anaphora, repeating the same word or group of words at beginning of successive clauses or sentences, is possibly the oldest literary device, with roots in Biblical Psalms. Elizabethan and Romantic writers breathed new life into this device, creating strong emotion on the page through emphasis.

With its song-like quality, anaphora is easily remembered, and so it is no surprise that most people remember the opening of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …” Politicians have caught on and frequently use it to spark emotion. How brilliant, my son, to invoke such power in his devotion to his longed-for present.

Brilliant, too, is Elizabeth Alexander’s memoir, The Light of the World, and her use of anaphora. Essayist, poet, playwright, Alexander has written a loving elegy to her spouse, who died suddenly four days after his 50thbirthday.

Published in the United States by Sibylline Press, an imprint of All Things Book LLC, California. Sibylline Press is dedicated to publishing the brilliant work of women authors ages 50 and older. www.sibyllinepress.com Ebook ISBN: 9798897400010 Print ISBN: 9798897400003 Library of Congress Control Number: 2025934037 Book and Cover Design: Alicia Feltman HUMAN AUTHORED: Any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited.

OceanofPDF.com To my students and those who love sentences. OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com INTRODUCTION It’s been eight years since How to Write Stunning Sentences was published and over that time, I’ve learned more (there’s always more) and my love affair with sentences has only deepened. After all these years, I’m a little embarrassed at how much delight I feel when I read a stunning sentence, especially one that is a new sort of creation.

But only a little embarrassed. Mostly I feel fortunate that such a thing can give me such pleasure. How is this possible that I’m still enamored? Because there are infinite, glorious ways to write a sentence, and the sentence is our material, our clay, our paint. It’s the stripped-down essence of what we have to work with. Thank god, because sentences can jump and twist and dance and stretch—they are little beads of life. I’ve come to think of them as alive and by looking at them closely, you begin to see their atoms—if this atom is moved here and that one there, well, it changes everything.

In this new edition, I’ve added a lengthier chapter on Rhythm and Sound. Poets may know all this, but most prose writers, whether fiction or nonfiction, have not fully plunged themselves into this way of writing. What way? By hearing it; by feeling it. When I talk to my poet friends, they say they always read their work out loud.

Novel writers, I hear you grumbling—yeah, but I have 320 pages of story, how can I possibly read it out loud? Exactly as the poets do, sentence by sentence. I’ve added a new essay about Virginia Woolf and her use of style and, in particular, rhythm. When I first read Mrs. Dalloway, I was astounded.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: ea13847e5b32e70d
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,827,423 bytes (1.743 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9798897400010, 9798897400003
• Pages: 200
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 229.43 minutes
• Total Words: 45,886
• Total Characters: 270,188
• Average Words per Page: 229.43
• Average Characters per Page: 1350.94

Most Frequent Words

sentence (465), one (181), story (151), like (149), word (129), write (122), words (121), two (119), sentences (118), now (117), writing (116), new (113), use (101), it’s (97), another (86), clause (85), time (84), also (76), short (75), verb (75), subject (74), something (72), language (70), rhythm (68), first (65), way (64), reader (64), sound (62), world (62), said (59), back (59), book (58), make (58), york (58), long (56), uses (55), narrator (55), love (54), three (54), character (52), com (51), mind (51), work (50), says (50), sounds (50), style (49), add (49), end (49), oceanofpdf (48), see (48), don’t (46), next (44), there’s (43), much (43), using (43), create (42), clauses (42), little (40), read (40), every (40), right (40), beginning (39), base (39), phrases (39), things (38), i’m (38), adjectives (38), even (38), writer (37), old (37), try (37), man (37), adjective (37), house (37), come (36), novel (36), look (36), comes (36), stories (36), phrase (36), still (35), know (35), series (35), light (35), essay (34), balance (34), opening (34), english (33), get (33), fiction (33), find (33), prompts (33), hard (33), repetition (33), object (33), image (33), always (32), used (32), syntax (32), part (32).

PDF Download