Building-Block Stories:
Practice Mixing Sentence Styles
This exercise is designed to keep you writing, in Richard Hugo's terms, "off the subject." It assumes that: 1) your subject will prevail in your text only if it is somehow protected from most earnest intentions, and 2) the smallest unit of particular attention in fiction is the sentence. It is adapted, in part, from a similar writing exercise developed by Ken Waldman.
Below, find a number of opening sentences for the exercise. Select one and go on to the following directions. Work to develop a narrative sequence—that is, each sentence should lead to the next. In the end, does a story emerge? What can you say about it?
Note: You may need a dictionary and a book of English usage.
The First Sentences.
|
One day I was listening to the AM radio. |
-Grace Paley |
|
The last time I saw my father was in Grand Central Station. |
-John Cheever |
|
I started when I was six. |
-Jane Martin |
|
The quail came just before the lilacs bloomed in the green time of their first year married. |
-Rolf Yngve |
|
No one knows what they are about or, for that matter, where they come from. |
-Tom Whalen |
|
We decided to stop drinking and spend Sunday at the zoo. |
-Stuart Dybek |
|
The bank robber told his story in little notes to the bank teller. |
-Steven Schutzman |
|
My sickness bothers me, though I persist in denying it. |
Max Apple |
|
She knew it was only boys in the field, come to watch them drunk on first wine. |
-Jayne Anne Phillips |
|
For my eighteenth birthday Jack gave me a five-year diary with a latch and a little key, light as a dime. |
-Elizabeth Tallent |
|
Hecht was born a late bloomer. |
-Bernard Malamud |
|
One of Irina's grandsons, nicknamed Riri, was sent to her at Christmas. |
-Mavis Gallant |
|
One morning Senorita Cordoba received a letter from her mother. |
-Jane Bowles |
|
In Palm Springs the poor are as dry as old brown leaves, blown in from the desert—wispily thin and almost invisible. |
-Alice Adams |
|
When you're the sheriff of Nowhere, you encounter strange crimes. |
-Hans Ostrom |
|
Karl kept one cannon on the front porch and one on the back. |
-Chuck Rosenthal |
|
Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water. |
-Raymond Carver |
|
For years the children whimpered and tugged. |
-Barbara L. Greenberg |
|
Lately I begin each day beside myself with a question: so, what is DeVeda Spaulding to me? We live with acts of God. I talk to my tumbler of Dewar's. |
-Darrell Spencer |
Optional.
Look for your own first sentence, one that compels you. Or write one yourself.
The Directions.
1. Write a sentence that repeats one word, but no more than one, from your first sentence.
2. Write a sentence that repeats one word, but no more than one, from your second sentence.
3. Write a sentence that repeats one word, but no more than one, from your third sentence.
4. Write a sentence that includes: a place name.
5. a dash.
6. a color and a name.
7. more than thirty words.
8. less than ten words.
9. a colon.
10. a part of the body.
11. the conditional tense.
12. a first person pronoun.
13. an interruptive clause.
14. quotation marks.
15. two interruptive clauses.
16. three articles of clothing.
17. a simile.
18. any form of the word "try."
19. a geographical formation.
20. italics.
21. a dictionary definition.
22. a metaphor.
23. a parallel structure.
24. exactly twenty-nine words.
25. exactly seventeen words.
26. exactly five words.
27. a comma and a semicolon.
28. the same words four times.
29. a second person pronoun.
30. a question mark.
31. reference to a past event.
32. a familial relationship.
33. parentheses.
34. alliteration.
35. a paradox.
36. exactly ten words.
37. exactly twenty words.
38. exactly thirty words.
39. exactly forty words.
40. exactly fifty words.
41. a comma splice.
42. two dashes.
43. something seen.
44. something tasted.
45. something heard.
46. something touched.
47. something smelled.
48. an equivocation.
49. the future tense.
50. the present tense.
Write a sentence, a paragraph, a page, and finish. Remember that the rules are minimums.
Don't cheat.
(K.H.)
From Metro Bishop, Haake, Ostrom.
*******************