This Will Change How You Think of Sentences Forever
Lesson 1 of "'Who's got style?" Creating Perfect Sentences with Nina Schuyler

Dear all,
Welcome!
This is my favorite subject! I’ve taught this class or some rendition of it for over 17 years, and I’m still astonished at all a sentence can do.
Let me confess I’ve had a love affair with sentences, an affair that can be traced back decades to my teenage years. Beyond the content of the words themselves, style techniques, too, create meaning. Now I am talking about rhythm and sound, how writing is writing for the ear. Robert Frost writes in “The Sound of Sense” that the ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.
All writers, whether in the fictive or nonfictive world, rely on the same building blocks—words. But what a writer does with these words distinguishes a bland, ordinary sentence from one that memorably and musically shines. The course will focus on the sentence and all that it can do, not at the content level, but by its construction and style techniques. You’ll learn to write sentences that create a feeling of anxiety, euphoria, calm, and abundance, and much more. You’ll learn that there is an entirely different way to write, and it’s by writing with the ear.
Style is an amorphous term. I define it as: syntax, sound and rhythm, schemes and tropes, diction and imagery. For this first week, we’ll focus on syntax. Week 2 is a bit more about syntax and then sound and rhythm; week 3 is more sound and rhythm; and week 4 will look at schemes and tropes and diction and imagery.
Every sentence you write involves many decisions that are often made unconsciously. The more aware you are of these decisions, the more you can deliberately create content by the order of the words and the right words.
Occasionally, we’re going to bump heads with your English teacher and grammar rules. Not often, but now and then, as we bend and twist the sentence to create the kind of meaning that we want. Part of this course is to give you permission to do this. I’ll show you stunning sentences in published work that defy the rules or step outside your preconceived notion of what a sentence can do.
All the Ways a Sentence Can Exist
Let’s start by looking at all the different ways Virginia Woolf could have written this sentence in Mrs. Dalloway:
“How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning.”
She could have written:
The air in the morning was fresh, calm and stiller than this.
In the early morning, the air was fresh, calm, still.
In the early morning, the air was fresh, calm and stiller than this.
How fresh, calm and still, the air was in the early morning.
How fresh, tranquil and quiet, the air was in the early morning.
In the morning, the air was fresh, tranquil, and unmoving.
The air was fresh, calm, stiller than this in the early morning.
And the list goes on and on…
Each sentence we write reflects four main choices:
What you want to write about
What do you want to accomplish in writing about it
Which words to use— “paradigmatic choices”
How to order these words-- called syntax, “syntagmatic choices”
As you see from the above example, I played with word choice and syntactical choice, which will be the focus of this class.
If we further break down a sentence, we see that it contains ideas. For instance, in the Woolf sentence:
How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning.
The air the subject
The air was fresh
The air was calm
The air was still than this
It was morning
It was early morning
By looking at the sentence this way, we begin to see that one choice we have is how many ideas to include in one sentence.
Let’s look at another example:
I examined her face, the eyes so heavily mascaraed but large and gray, the lines extending from her lips that the makeup failed to hide, the creases in her forehead.
The Claimant, by Hollis Alpert
I - the subject (an “I” exists)
Examined - verb
Her face - direct object
What about her face?
her eyes
heavily mascaraed
large
gray
lines
extend from her lips
makeup fails to hide them
creases in her forehead
Alpert included so many ideas in this one sentence! He could have parsed these out into many sentences. By combining everything into one sentence, he allows the reader to see her face and linger, but not linger too long.
Sentence Variety
The first and probably the quickest step to improve your writing is using a variety of sentences. When people say, “Oh, it just flows,” or “Beautiful writing,” this is often what they are hearing. You probably remember that in the English language, we have four basic types of syntactical structures:
Simple Sentence: contains only one base clause (also called an independent clause) with a subject and a verb or verb predicate, which means a direct object and/or indirect object.
Ex: The boy swam.
Compound Sentence: contains at least two independent clauses. The clauses are joined by a coordinating conjunction or a semicolon.
Ex: The girl jumped, and the boy ran.
Ex: The girl jumped; the boy ran.
Seven coordinating conjunctions: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so (FANBOYS)
Complex Sentence: contains at least one subordinate clause and an independent clause. A subordinate clause (or dependent clause) is a group of words that has a subject and verb but does not express a complete thought. It can’t stand alone.
Ex: When the rooster crowed, the girl jumped.
Compound/Complex Sentence: contains at least two independent clauses and at least one subordinate clause.
Ex: When the rooster crowed, the girl jumped, and the boy ran.
Tessa Hadley, one of England’s most stylish writers, opens her short story “Sunstroke” from her collection, Sunstroke, with this paragraph:
The seafront really isn’t the sea but the Bristol Channel (simple): Wales is a blue line of hills on the other side (simple). The district council has brought sand from elsewhere and built a complicated ugly system of seawalls and rock groins to keep it in and make the beach more beachlike, but the locals say it’ll be washed at the first spring tide (compound). Determined kids wade out a long way into soft brown silt to reach the tepid water, which barely has energy to gather itself into what you could call a wave (complex). It’s hard to believe that the same boys and girls who have PlayStations and the Internet still care to go paddling with shrimping nets in the rock pools left behind when the tide recedes, but they do, absorbed in it for hours as children might have been decades and generations ago (compound/complex).
The longer a sentence is, the more opportunity there is to add style techniques. During the next weeks, this idea will become clearer as you learn more style techniques. In this opening from Hadley’s short story, in addition to a variety of types of sentences, she uses so many style techniques! As you learn more, return to this sentence and see what else you can identify.
For now, let me say that a simple sentence, which by definition tends to be shorter, can contain only a minimal number of style techniques. That means it’s important to understand how to grow a sentence. Even if it’s a simple sentence, you can grow it beyond the basic subject and verb predicate, “The girl ran through the woods.”
But I don’t want to dismiss out of hand the simple sentence style or “base clause” writing, so I’ll introduce that first. It may be that you have a blunt, direct character and then you’d use this sentence a lot.
Base Clause Writing
It’s a writing style, a take-or-leave-it quality. It’s blunt and conveys a jagged toughness. Ernest Hemingway is well known for this type of style. (PS: it looks easy, but I’ll add here that he’s also using other style techniques). Raymond Carver also used this style.
EX: Ernest Hemingway
“In the morning I walked down the Boulevard to the Rue Soufflot for coffee and brioche. (simple) It was a fine morning. (simple) The horse-chestnut trees in the Luxembourg gardens were in bloom. (simple) There was the pleasant early-morning feeling of a hot day. (simple) I read the papers with the coffee and then smoked a cigarette. (simple) The flower-women were coming up from the market and arranging their daily stock. (simple) Students went by going up to the law school, or down to the Sorbonne. (simple) The Boulevard was busy with trams and people going to work. (simple)”
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
Ex: Raymond Carver
This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night (simple). His wife had died. (simple) So he was visiting the dead wife’s relatives in Connecticut. (simple) He called my wife from his in-law’s. (simple) Arrangements were made. (simple) He would come by train, a five-hour trip, and my wife would meet him at the station. (compound)
“Cathedral,” by Raymond Carver
There are three main ways to build on the base clause:
Connective: Use conjunctions or other connective words
A. She had wonderfully beautiful hair and I would lie sometimes and watch her twisting it up in the light that came in the open door and it shone even in the night as water shines sometimes just before it is really daylight. Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
If you look closely at Hemingway’s sentence, you see three independent clauses (also called a “base clause” or “kernal.”)
She had wonderfully beautiful hair
I would lie sometimes and watch her twisting it up in the light that came in the open door
It shone even in the night…
B. She turned her back on him and joined some guests, and he went to the bar and ordered a whiskey. “The Swimmer,” by John Cheever
Cheever connects two base clauses:
She turned her back on him and joined some guests
He went to the bar and ordered a whiskey.
It’s always interesting to think about what you’re connecting together and why. There is an implicit causation in the connection. With Cheever’s sentence, there is a sense that the fact that she turned her back on him to talk to guests led him to the bar for a whiskey.
Subordinative: Subordinate some parts of the sentence to other parts
A. Everything about him made a contrast to his older brother, whose frame had begun to sag. “Requisite Kindness,” by Richard Bausch
Remember: a dependent clause can’t stand alone (unless you’re writing fragments). You often find them in the opening of chapters when authors want to give details quickly.
B. For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother’s head like the very cup of trembling. “Sonny’s Blues,” James Baldwin
C. If she stumbles, she is not aware of it because she does not know where her body stops, which part of her is an arm, or foot, or a hand. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Adjectival: Use modifying words or phrases
A. He played the entire width of the table, his body leaning and twisting as his fingers swept the keyboard, left hand pounding at those chords that jangled silverware, while his right hand raced through runs across tacky oilcloth. Stuart Dybek, “Chopin in Winter”
B. I was old enough to feel embarrassment at standing there alone with my mother, beside a wind-stunted spruce tree, on a long spine of shale. “Flight,” John Updike
You can combine the techniques:
When the voice drawled TEN, I was lifted up and dragged to a chair. (subordinate and connective)
When the low, scratchy voice drawled TEN I, a young man filled with ambition, was instantly lifted up and slowly dragged, bumping along the ground, to an old, broken-down chair made of oak. (subordinate, adjectively and connective)
Note: when you add adjectival or adverbial information, there are different slots to put this information:
The subject: “I”—a young man filled with ambition; bumping along the ground
Verb: instantly lifted/slowly dragged
Direct object: chair: old, broken down, oak
Indirect object
Or the entire sentence itself: On a cold early morning..
The Cumulative Sentence
I want to linger on the cumulative sentence construction because it can hold so many style techniques and convey so much meaning to the reader. Typically, you begin with a base clause and add adjectival phrases that refer to and elaborate on the base clause. It’s an interesting motion because the accumulation of precise detail through the phrases (that’s where it gets its name “cumulative”) moves the reader forward AND sends the reader spiraling back to the base clause because the details are fleshing out something in the base clause. The sentence makes the reader experience whatever the sentence is about because it’s holding the reader for beats longer than usual.
The cumulative sentence also contains so much rhythm (more on that next week), setting up parallels and repetition and balancing sound against sound. You hear the ring of -ing words or –ly words in the phrases.
Professor Francis Christensen, an English Professor at USC, wrote extensively about this sentence type and believed that writing improved most dramatically and quickly when a student learned to write a cumulative sentence.
Here are some examples:
EX: His father struck him with the flat of his hand on the side of the head, hard but without heat, exactly as he had struck the two mules at the store, exactly as he would strike either of them with any stick in order to kill a horse fly, his voice still without heat or anger. “Barn Burning,” William Faulkner
The base clause: His father struck him with the flat of his hand on the side of the head
Most of the phrases that follow modify and give precision to the verb “struck”: how did he strike the boy?
A. Hard but without heat
B. Exactly as he had struck the two mules at the store
C. Exactly as he would strike either of them with any stick in order to kill a horse fly
The final phrase refers not to the verb but to the father and his voice:
D. His voice still without heat or anger
EX: The air was thin and clear, stringent with wood smoke and the tang of fallen apples, sharp with the hint of early frost.
A.J. Cronin, The Keys of the Kingdom
The base clause: The air was thin and clear
The adjectival phrases that follow refer and elaborate on the subject “air” in the base clause
A. Stringent with wood smoke and tang of fallen apples
B. Sharp with the hint of early frost
I earlier used Alpert’s sentence. It, too, is a cumulative sentence:
EX: I examined her face, the eyes so heavily mascaraed but large and gray, the lines extending from her lips that the makeup failed to hide, the creases in her forehead.
The Claimant, by Hollis Alpert
Base clause: I examined her face.
What follows are adjectival phrases that refer to “face” (which is the direct object, answering the question—what did the narrator examine?) in the base clause. This structure makes the reader really see her face.
When you write a cumulative sentence, you can decide to describe
--the subject
--the verb
--the direct object
--indirect object
--the entire sentence itself
We will come back to this type of sentence later when we talk about rhythm and sound.
Exercises
Time to start playing with sentences! Draft the following and share in the comment section below:
Write a simple sentence.
Use that simple sentence and add a conjunction and another simple sentence. Now you’ve written a compound sentence. (You’re beginning to write like Hemingway!)
Use the original simple sentence and add a dependent clause—one that cannot stand alone. Now you’ve got your complex sentence.
Use the original simple sentence. Add a conjunction, and another simple sentence and also a dependent clause. Now you’ve written a compound/complex sentence.
Write a paragraph using at least three different types of sentences. If you can use all four, try it! You can put them in any order.
Now take that paragraph and turn all of the sentences into compound sentences. We’re just playing with sound now—how does it sound to have all of these sentences structured this way?
Now change all the sentences to simple sentences. (a la Hemingway and Carver)
Write a cumulative sentence. Begin with a simple sentence. What do you want to further describe in that simple sentence? Add three adjectival phases that give more details about something—the subject, verb, direct or indirect object. Like Faulkner’s sentence, you can begin by adding more details to the verb and then switch to the subject.
Extra credit: Read through other people’s work and leave some positive feedback!
If you have any questions, please post them in the comment section.
Long time lurker, first time commentor-of-my-exercises!! This was a great, succinct write-up of a really interesting and complicated topic. Loved the examples and explanations. Had fun disconnecting from my work in progress to just think about what made me want to be a writer in the first place--words!
1. Write a simple sentence.
The mother rocked the baby in her arms.
2. Use that simple sentence and add a conjunction and another simple sentence. Now you’ve written a compound sentence. (You’re beginning to write like Hemingway!)
The mother rocked the baby in her arms and tried to remember something from some long ago dream.
3. Use the original simple sentence and add a dependent clause—one that cannot stand alone. Now you’ve got your complex sentence.
The mother rocked the baby in her arms while she cooed a lullaby and she treid to remember something from a long ago dream.
4. Use the original simple sentence. Add a conjunction, and another simple sentence and also a dependent clause. Now you’ve written a compound/complex sentence.
The mother rocked the baby in her arms while she cooed a lullaby, the heavy blanket of exhaustion covering her, and waited for her infant to fall back to sleep.
5. Write a paragraph using at least three different types of sentences. If you can use all four, try it! You can put them in any order.
The baby began to cry again as soon as his mother had gotten back to bed. Pushing the heavy blanket of exhaustion off, she stumbled back to her son’s room, her husband breathing evenly on his side of the bed. She didn’t turn any lights on, the glowing star nightlight in the windowsill illuminated the well-trodden path from door to crib, from crib to rocker. The mother rocked the baby in her arms while she cooed a lullaby, trying to remember a dream from some long-ago time.
6. Now take that paragraph and turn all of the sentences into compound sentences. We’re just playing with sound now—how does it sound to have all of these sentences structured this way?
The baby began to cry as soon as his mother had gotten back to bed and she rolled over unhappily, pushing the heavy blanket of exhaustion off herself. Her husband continued to breath evenly, undisturbed on his side of the bed but she stumbled back to her son’s room. She didn’t turn any lights on and used the light of the glow starnight light to guide her steps along the well-trodden path from door to crib, crib to rocker. The mother rocked her son in her arms while she cooed a lullaby, and she tried to remember a dream from some long-ago time.
7. Now change all the sentences to simple sentences. (a la Hemingway and Carver)
8. Write a cumulative sentence. Begin with a simple sentence. What do you want to further describe in that simple sentence? Add three adjectival phases that give more details about something—the subject, verb, direct or indirect object. Like Faulkner’s sentence, you can begin by adding more details to the verb and then switch to the subject.
The mother rocked her baby in her arms.
The mother, bleary eyed and heavy with exhaustion, rocked her newborn son with his pink cheeked cherub face contorted in unhappy whimpers that escaped from him any time he was forced to stay alone in his crib for more than a few minutes at a time, while she tried to remember a dream from some long-ago time, a dream where she had clean hair and ambitions beyond several connected hours of sleep.
I was thinking about sentences. I thought sentences were living things, with limbs. Living things, with branching limbs, pliant brains, beating hearts, wills. I invited a handsome sentence into my home, and despite my welcome, it sat there, glaring at me, suspicion written in its full-stop eyes. I made the sentence tea, I gave it sweet biscuits, I told it a wry pun, I clapped it on the back, I praised its relatives; all was in vain—it sat, silent and disapproving. So I moved on to a paragraph.