Composition: Hardworking Sentences

I came across an interesting article recently. It was an online Wall Street Journal contribution by Karen Thompson Walker, author of newly published and critically acclaimed novel ‘The Age of Miracles’.

In the article, Walker talks about something that is very insightful for writers. She talks about ‘hardworking sentences’. ‘Hardworking sentences’, according to Walker, do at least more than one of the following tasks:

1.         it delivers crucial information about the background story;

2.         it creates mystery and suspense (in Learning Partners’ parlance, this means it forms a big fat hook to hook the reader into the story);

3.         it shows carefully chosen details, as vivid as they are meaningful (in other words, show, and not tell); and

4.         it sounds good.

Walker uses an example to illustrate her point. Consider the following line which is the first line from ‘The Virgin Suicides’, a book by Jeffrey Eugenides:

On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide – it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese – the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope.’

How does this sentence fulfil the four points mentioned above?

1.         It delivers the background story – all the girls in the Lisbon family have committed suicide – in just one sentence.

2.         It creates mystery and suspense by holding back the reasons for the suicides, which will of course pique the reader’s curiosity and compel said reader to continue reading to find out why.

3.         The sentence does not just tell us that that the Lisbon girls committed suicide. It also shows us how they did so: stabbing themselves/cutting their wrists, gassing themselves, hanging and of course ingesting poison.

4.         There is an interesting turn of phrase in the sentence – ‘the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide’. This is an unusual way of saying ‘the last Lisbon daughter committed suicide’ and its unusualness rings in our ears and captures our attention. It is also a very witty way of stating that her sisters had committed suicide too.

I thought long and hard about whether I should write about this article. Why the dilemma?

Because it is not easy to write such sentences. It takes years of practice and a lot of conscious thought and deliberation. By the time a person is able to do this, said person would be an accomplished novelist, comparable to the Stephen Kings and Haruki Murakamis of the world.

Hence my concern: Is such a high standard applicable to Singapore’s students?

After some consideration, I’ve come to the answer ‘yes’. This post is aimed at secondary school pupils or very advanced Primary 5/6 pupils. And while it may be too much to demand that our pupils produce works of such outstanding calibre, I believe that if you set the benchmark high, they can’t fall too low. (And you never know, this post might well plant the seeds for a future Singaporean Nobel Prize-winner for Literature J.)

We could water down the requirements for Primary 5/6 pupils. In an essay of 300-500 words (I know, I know – in the PSLE, the continuous writing requirement is a minimum of 150 words but seriously, how many children can write 150 words for continuous writing and hope to score an A* for English?), if they could produce two to five such sentences, it’s a valiant effort already. Moreover, their sentences do not have to fulfil all four points. If their sentences can fulfil more than one point, that is good enough.

As for secondary school pupils, as they are older, we do require that their works be more mature and sophisticated. Hence, this is a very useful tip for them if they want to make sure that their writing is a cut above their peers’. If they make an effort to include such sentences in their writing, this will automatically make their stories richer and more nuanced. Of course, the results won’t be immediate. Like any other skill, this is a skill that will take time and practice but if the pupils diligently and mindfully attempt to do this each time they write, gradually but certainly, there will be a marked improvement in their written work.

Lastly, for those who are interested in reading the original article, click here. Walker includes a few more examples in the article that help to shed more light on the subject.

Her new book also seems to be very interesting. I’m waiting for the National Library to stock it but for the impatient people who don’t want to wait, you could always get them from Amazon or the leading bookstores in Singapore.