I can say that in six words or less!

          Engaging in a writing exercise recently on writing sentences challenged the author to take a simple three, four or five word sentence and revise it in fifteen words, then thirty and finally 100 words. Each draft had to include the original three to five word phrase. Adapted from a similar exercise in Stanley Fish’s book, How to Write a Sentence, the point was not simply to pad the sentence with the necessary number of words but to increase the meaning and content of the original phrase.

            This brings up several points of the craft. Most authors have heard the advice to write simply and cleanly. When does that rob the story of depth or color or imagination? In an essay in the New York Times, author Annie Dillard advised, “Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients…What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?”

            Which sentence tells the reader more-“Hair lay in the sink” or “Andrew’s knuckles cracked raw from the bleach he used as he scrubbed the gleaming white porcelain bowl, frantic in his desperation to the remove any remnants of the shimmering golden ghosts, lingering reminders of her fragile presence, harbingers of his infidelity, clarions trumpeting his moral and masculine shortcomings, fine blonde threads knotted  into a noose of accusation he felt sure were a warning someone had seen the comely young woman arrive at his suite, saw his hands tighten around her delicate porcelain neck then witnessed his cold-hearted disposition of her lithe remains, a crime he felt flawless until he returned to his room and saw strands of her blonde hair lay in the sink.” It is an unfair comparison on the surface, but illustrates the point when do we decide when a sentence says too little and when does it show too much?

            Each author has to gauge for themselves to nature of their own sentences and what they want to communicate to a reader. Dillard explains it this way; “The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot’s turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm’s blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of a sentence.”

            Three sentences with just over fifty words, a perfect sentiment.