By Emily Brisse

The Geography of Sentences

novel, and its the work I hold most responsible in my pursuit of an MFA. I remember reading it four years ago . . . . I felt language cast a spell over me and I knew I wanted that power. Rereading Love Medicine this past winter, the same thing happened, and every time it did, I took the cap off of my highlighter and colored over paragraphs, sentences, and phrase after phrase after phrase. Eventually I turned to my husband. Damn, I said. I think Im writing an essay on grammar. Lest you start to think the same thoughts I aimed at my ninth-grade teacher, let me clarify that by grammar, I mean syntax, and by syntax, I mean the ways writers manipulate chunks of languagespecifically during the revision processto achieve certain effects. So, magical incantations after all. Rereading Erdrich has helped me realize and appreciate that after the character, after the fully fleshed-out plot, after point of view and theme and setting and everything else that makes our stories come alive, there is the sentence. There is the one well-laced word. And these small geographical details of our writing are what take our words from drafts to shining, gracefully crafted landscapes. I wont diagram any sentences here, and Im not going to explain what a nominative absolute is, but I am going to talk syntax in regard to stylefocusing first on shape and then symboland its my hope that these pages leave you with a deeper appreciation for why the sentence is one of our most powerful tools. systematic, predictably structured sentences. Its no wonder that a garbled sentence feels ungainly and confusing to a reader. Reading it would be something like a child navigating her way through a dense forest when shes only used to wide-open plains. But, of course, our readers are not simple-sentence pattern exists: I grabbed Lipshas arm. But this line As if the sky were a pattern of nerves and our thought and memories traveled across itcomplicates the familiar structure. And in Northern lights and Living lights were given fragments. Both of these two-word sentences are the shortest in the passage, and

cannot begin this essay without admitting that: I am an English teacher, and yet the one thing I loath perhaps even more than algebra is grammar. I start reading terms like adjectival complement and predicate nominative and nominative absolute, and my brain begins to settle into a dull sludge, and instead of slowing down, deconstructing these words, figuring out what they mean and what they can teach me about writing, my mind chooses to remember sitting in the back of my own ninth-grade English classroom, looking at my sweet teacher, and suddenly and passionately knowing that I hated her. As long as she continued to put up overheads of grammar exercises and draw lines on the board that looked like tippedover treesyes: I felt hate. What I actually hated, of course, was what she was turning language intosubject, predicate, objectas if sentences were all logic, not the magical incantations I had until then believed them to be.

oseph Williams, the author of Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, talks about the psychological geography of a children, and its my guess that most they contrast with the longest, which sentence. This term resonates of themand most of uswouldnt is compressed of twenty-two words. with me because even though he is mind now and again trading in a What does this math and labeling talking about a grammatical formula familiar landscape for something new amount to? The reason why we all love that most Western readers expect and and unexpected. Its the same way a good road trip: the changing scenery recognizeintroductory material plus with the structure of our sentences, and keeps our eyes and minds interested. Magical incantationsnow that sounds subject-predicate-object plus the rest of that is why studying their shape can be more interesting. Certainly more fun. the sentencejust that word geography so beneficial in the revision process. For the sake of this metaphor, consider In fact, its what I originally had in is enough to help me frame this structure short sentences as short roadssmall mind for this essay: why certain stories in images. He is saying that our readers Look again at the earlier extract from stretches of pavement or gravel that move us, why particular passages come to our sentences expecting to find Love Medicine. If we take it apart lead quickly to intersections, dead steal our breath away, why the right patterns, to first see the sandnoun in regard to the shape of Erdrichs ends, and destinations. This is the sentence orbits and leaves us grasping before they feel itverb hot between sentences, we can see that, yes, kind of sentence we all started with, in an entirely new world. Isnt this their toes. Ellen Bryant Voigt, the most of them adhere to the subject- the kind we pronounced proudly from why most of us started writing in the author of The Art of Syntax, a text that plus-predicate pattern, but its clear our kindergarten readersIt is cold! first place? To affect readers like this? analyzes the uses of syntax in poetry, that they are not all wide-open I want spring! Its pretty clear what To create such scenes? It was for me. insists that these patterns are deeply plains sentencesor dense forest or those sentences mean, and yet the rooted, that they form when, as babies, mountain range sentences, for that short clause goes beyond simplicity. So I went to the book Love Medicine we list to our parents and cargivers matter. Instead, there are varieties in It can serve very sophisticated by Louise Erdrich. Its a collection string together vowels and consonants the presented landscapes. The basic functions if we understand its potential. of linked stories that reads like a that become words then phrases then The Writers Chronicle The Writers Chronicle 101 102

...after the character, after the fully fleshed-out plot, after point of view and theme and setting and everything else that makes our stories come alive, there is the sentence

Imagine yourself paused at an unexpected stop sign. Those moments of heightened alertnessDo I go straight? Do I turn What is this handwriting?are moments a writer should take advantage of, and ca, by grasping the capabilities of the short sentence. According to Virginia Tufte, author of Artful Sentences, these quick clauses act as the perfect conduit for interruptions, transitions, restatements, conclusions, introductions of new speakers, andthe most common purpose of short sentencesemphasis. Where do you want the reader to look? To what do you want them to pay attention? By placing such information inside of a small syntactic unit, you will not only make it hard to miss, but you will also make it memorable. It will have impact. Short sentences also add the element of texture. Imagine navigating through a battle zone. Mud flying. Smoke rising. Bombs exploding into deep earthen bruises. Tufte points out that using action verbs with little expansion can portray a frenzy of activity, of anxiety or violence. Conversely, think now about passing a field after field of corn. Theres a field. Theres a road. Short clauses in parallel patterns of be phrases are clearly useful in recounting routine, dreariness, evacuation, and absence. On the first page of Love Medicine, Erdrichs shortest sentence (Excerpt taken from a larger article). come and go. This captures not only characterization, but also toneeach verb inevitable, each word save one a single syllable, each word intimating