That title is misleading since it would be easy to teach a class on Faulkner (indeed, people do) and this it just one post. I do recommend reading his work as a Creative Writing textbook. Even a sentence is a good place to start.

From The Sound and the Fury, “His hands were jabbing at my face and he was saying something and trying to bite me, I reckon, and then they hauled him off and held him heaving and thrashing and yelling and they held his arms and he tried to kick me until they dragged him back.”

Trying to read this as a writer, here are some thoughts.

• I have not written many violent physical confrontations, but this sentence seems to emphasize the visual images of a character in a specific moment rather than fight choreography. In other words, rather than a second-by-second description of who was where when, readers are within one of the character’s consciousnesses.
• This sentence characterizes both the character being attacked and the one attacking. Faulkner gives us the experience through words his character would choose, through the vocabulary of a specific character: “reckon,” “thrashing,” repetition, and the alliteration of “held him heaving.” Described actions characterize the attacker, whose “hands were jabbing,” “trying to bite,” and, once they held his arms, he kicked.
• The conventional wisdom in Creative Writing seems to be that events that happen quickly are best presented in many short sentence (see, for example, Heather Sellers’s excellent The Practice of Creative Writing : “. . . you use short sentences to indicate fast-paced action . . . And when you want to slow down the pace, in order to show a process that is taking place over a long period of time, use a long sentence” [203]). But, I wonder. Here is Faulkner again in short sentences:
  • His hands were jabbing at my face. He was saying something. He tried to bite me, I reckon. Then they hauled him off. He heaved and thrashed and yelled. They held his arms. He tried to kick me. They dragged him back.
  • Perhaps the experience of reading these short sentences and the moment being described contrast too sharply for me, but the periods jerk the fast-paced action to a stop. That Faulkner’s longer sentence doesn’t stop gives the experience of reading it and what it describes greater speed than the shorter sentences.
• Since I’ve quoted Sellers above, I’ll also mention the excellent Metro: Journeys in Writing Creatively by Hans Ostrom, Wendy Bishop, and Katharine Haake. More specifically, their exercise “Sentence Sounds: Exploring the ‘Conjunctive’ and ‘Disjunctive,'” on 171-173, mentions Faulkner in interesting ways.

This is the first sentence from one of his novels, An Object of Beauty:

I am tired, so very tired of thinking about Lacey Yager, yet I worry that unless I write her story down, and see it bound and tidy on my bookshelf, I will be unable to ever write about anything else.

What writing strategies does it suggest?

• A character’s fairly direct statement of desire can be an effective hook, but this sentence includes, more interestingly, conflicting desires. The character seems to both want to forget Lacy and to think about her deeply enough to have written about her.
• The sentence presents movement from one state of mind (“tired”), to another (“worry”), to a third (a dedication to a task/desire). “Yet” bridges two of these states of mind. “Unless” gives not completing the task or fulfilling the desire a consequence for the character. The sentence feels like a plan and includes something at risk for the character. Readers are likely to read on to see if the character gets what they want and how the plan unfolds.
• The sentence also characterizes. The character, at least so far, feels comfortable trying to tell this story and hopes to see it “bound and tidy” on a shelf.

Here is an example effort to apply some of these techniques: Moab is my favorite place to go for the winter solstice, my “family’s” habitual gathering spot for years now, but my car is a terrible vehicle that might not make the trip, and that means I’ll be alone in this town where no one loves me.

From The Passion:

It was Napoleon who had such a passion for chicken that he kept his chefs working around the clock. What a kitchen that was, with birds in every state of undress; some still cold and slung over hooks, some turning slowly on the spit, but most in wasted piles because the Emperor was busy.

Odd to be so governed by an appetite.

I read these paragraphs while on study abroad in London about thirty years ago. I bought the book immediately. Here are some thoughts.

• Direct statement by the author can characterize effectively. This first sentence humanizes a historical figure or at least reveals surprising information about him, true or not. But it also raises several interesting implied questions, some of which the novel answers and some of which it does not. (Napoleon? Chicken? Of all his passions, this one? Is this the passion of the title?)
• While direct statements can characterize, this beginning uses far more than that strategy. The first sentence presents implied questions. It also suggests a setting (the kitchen), an ongoing process (cooking the birds), and that process characterizes (chickens must be ready on demand, no matter how wasteful).
• The location in time (Napoleon’s day) and more specifically (the kitchen) are presented almost incidentally in the first sentence. The second sentence gives readers images.
• The second paragraph begins to characterize the narrator/main character and might raise philosophical questions. (The narrating character finds it odd to be so governed by appetite? Or is it the kitchen that is oddly governed by an appetite to please Napoleon?)
• These paragraphs also introduce a community of at least Napoleon, chefs, the speaker, and perhaps the chickens.

Not long ago, I finished The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade. It is a very good novel. When trying to read like a writer, I’m working to notice not just sentence-level techniques but larger narrative structures as well. Here are some thoughts on that level about The Five Wounds.

Since there are spoilers here, it might be best to read the book before reading this post.

The writing that interests readers in poems or prose is usually low on the scale of abstraction. It is writing that presents concrete details and avoids abstract generalities or commentary. Abstractions are necessary in some cases, but more often interesting writing avoids them. When the details are presented so that they remind readers of their senses and perceptions, they are more engaging. When the details are presented so that they evoke the memory of senses and perceptions and the importance of those details are obvious to a character or persona, they are even more engaging and interesting for readers.

Consider the following from Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry: “Instead of the abstraction nutriment, one might use such an image as ‘juicy cheeseburger on dark rye with dill pickle.’ What concrete images can you think of that might be used to stand for the following abstractions: exercise, amusement, wretchedness, locality, velocity, attraction, dryness, spiciness, agitation, deception, insufficiency, authority, success?”

Think about the following quotations as you work:

Elias Canetti . . . had declared that “Among the most sinister phenomena in intellectual history is the avoidance of the concrete.” He means that in ignoring what is the “closest and most concrete” of realities, we are endangering the future of humanity. When generals and politicians refer to the deaths of innocent civilians in wartime as “collateral damage,” they avoid concrete images of mangled bodies, obscuring the truth with abstraction. –John Fredrick Nims and David Mason

We think in generalities, but we live in detail. –Alfred North Whitehead

The artist seeks out the luminous detail and presents it. He does not comment. –Ezra Pound

Here is one example of moving down a scale of abstraction:

Clothing

Men’s clothing

Formal men’s clothing

Suits

Suits that I’ve seen

Suits that I’ve worn

The suits I’ve worn that my father paid for

The suit that my father gave me that he bought when he was my age

The suit my father gave me that he wore to church and that I wore to clubs

The pale blue suit, almost white, that he gave me

The pale blue suit with one low button on the long tight jacket, fat linebacker shoulders, and thick cuffs on baggy trousers

The suit lined with smooth silk but mostly made of cheap, tough as burlap, cotton

The suit that smelled a little like worry, like smoke, like apple pollen

The suit she liked so much that she danced with me

The suit I wore while we kissed behind the building

The suit with Isaiah 74:3 handwritten in sharp letters on a card in the breast pocket

Write a similar example of your own.

These are the first sentences of Little, Big by John Crowley:

On a certain day in June, 19–, a young man was making his way on foot northward from the great City to a town or place called Edgewood, that he had been told of but had never visited. His name was Smokey Barnable, and he was going to Edgewood to get married; the fact that he walked and didn’t ride was one the conditions placed on his coming there at all.

And this is the last:

Even the weather isn’t as we remember it clearly once being; never lately does there come a day such as we remember, never clouds as white as that, never grass as odorous or shade as deep and full of promise as we remember they can be, as once upon a time they were.

Here are some thoughts on strategies I noticed in the first sentences:

• The first phrase both promises a “certain day” and ignores that promise by including only the month and century. The first seven words contain a degree of tension between the abstract and the specific, maybe between the certain dates of history and a more general nostalgia. Tension between what is objectively before us and what might be imagined in the past and the present and the consequences of moving back and forth are probably themes of the novel.
  • This tension continues with the unnamed and abstract, but capitalized, City
  • and the “town or place” called, more specifically, “Edgewood.”
• The main character immediately has a task, something they are doing, and that character is moving forward into an unknown area bit by bit, like the reader. If I’m remembering well, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino begins similarly but much more explicitly.
• In the second of the first sentences, the character is named. Readers might have read on just to discover the character’s name. It is a slightly odd name. Odd names raise implicit questions: “What kind of person has that name?” “What kind of person names their child this and how has this name shaped him?” Characters beyond the named character are suggested.
• The second of the first sentences also suggests the reason for the task, for the process, the character is involved in: a marriage. And, interestingly, conditions have been placed upon the successful completion of the task. More implicit questions follow: “Who would expect this? Why?” “What will happen along the way?” “Will he be tempted to ride and how will he respond to the temptation?” “How did they meet?”

The last sentence is interesting because it makes a traditional, nostalgic beginning part of the end of the book. At the same time, it warns against nostalgia with three “nevers” and calls for it with three “remembers.” With “once upon a time,” it evokes fairy tales and the possibilities imagination suggests.

Consider trying some of these strategies in what you write next.

This sentence is from “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin: “For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.”

An awesome pair of sentences from an awesome story. What might we learn from them as writers?

1. Don’t be afraid, or not too afraid, to address big questions. The rest of the story, at least in one reading of it, leads to this assertion about why we make art. The rest of the story provides the personal context for a character to make this statement. I don’t say that to minimize the other big questions in the story: race, relationships, ethics and others, but these sentences address aesthetics directly.
2. The sentences also appear very organically as a part of the story, as a comment on a blues performance. They are in the middle of the paragraph in which they appear and it is possible to miss them. This possibility, it seems to me, makes them more valuable when found.
3. The sentences are also in the language of a specific character, who comes to think this in a specific situation that is part of a larger specific relationship. I don’t think Baldwin started with these sentences, but the story seems almost build around them. Perhaps this third point is just a way of restating the first two.
4. To get even more focused, one elements (a tale), which contains others (suffering, delight, conditional/optional triumph), is described (never new) in ways Pound, for example, might be critical of, and its necessity is also stated (it always must be heard). The second sentence, fused with a third, justifies the first sentence and its assertion.

Here is an interesting sentence: “Surprise is the drug of editors.” It’s from The Artful Edit by Susan Bell, an excellent book about sentence-level editing.

If I’m reading like a writer, this sentence can teach me several things. For example, it’s an example of surprise because of the interesting comparisons it makes. Most readers probably won’t have thought of surprise as a drug. Whether its user is an addict or in need of healing, drugs are desired. Surprise is part of what editors–and readers–want and Bell provides that insight. It’s presented so directly and gracefully, it makes me smile.

Finally, the sentence demonstrates the power of brevity. Not to go on too long, but part of the appeal of the sentence is how memorable it is. It’s memorable because it is both short and good advice.

For writers then: make your comparisons interesting and be concise.

These two sentences are from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson: “I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old. And you put your hand in my hand and you said, You aren’t very old, as if that settled it.”

Some sentences just make me happy. These do. Why, though? What can we learn from them as writers?

• The first sentence characterizes two characters. It shows what the characters want (to prepare another person for an absence/death due to being with “the Good Lord” and for the relationship to continue, though stated indirectly, “I don’t think you’re old”). It shows these desires through reported dialogue.
  • There is a degree of tension between the two sentences but especially within the first.
    • Much of this tension is a result of the captured dialogue, specifically the shortness of the second speaker’s first two replies: where and why.
    • There is also tension because of the content of the first sentence as well: I’m old! and, no, you’re not.
    • Also, because this is reported dialogue, it is recalled dialogue. The speaker is not trying to forget it. Readers might read it as recalled with fondness.
  • Readers are also likely to be asking the same questions as the second character in the first sentence. Where are you going? I’ve barely started reading about you! Why are you going to be with the Good Lord?
• In the second sentence, readers continue to be shown the relationship between the characters. The sentences, to paraphrase a cliche, complete each other. The second sentence continues characterization with an action, more dialogue, and a reaction.
  • The action is a variation on a cliche. Specifically, the variation expands “you put your hand in mine” to “you put your hand in my hand.” This allows “hand” to be repeated; the same sound is heard twice. The repeated shard sound, at the same time, is preceded by your and mine, suggesting similarities coming together despite differences.
  • The recalled dialogue in the second sentence is a revision of dialogue from the first sentence, from “I don’t think you’re old” to “You aren’t very old” in the second. This is kind of a concession, from unambiguously old to not very old. Given some of the content of the first sentence (death and going to the Good Lord) it seems hopeful.
  • The reaction, “as if that settled it,” raises all kinds of almost philosophical questions. “How can human love stand against time?” “What does it mean to ‘face reality?'” “How do we reconcile the joy possible in the present moment with the anxiety of our last moments, even if we can expect the be with the Good Lord? If we can?”
• There are five “ands” and a period in the first sentence. Then two “ands” a period in the second.
  • Conjunctions and punctuation matter.
  • They shape momentum and end it.
  • They help control readers’ experiences with writers’ words.

Certainly more could be said about these sentences. What do you think? What do these sentences make you want to try?

These sentences are from Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson: “My name is Ruth. I grew up with my younger sister, Lucille, under the care of my grandmother, Mrs. Sylvia Foster, and when she died, of her sisters-in-law, Misses Lily and Nona Foster, and when they fled, of her daughter, Mrs. Sylvia Fisher.”

Interesting, interesting, interesting. Here are some of my thoughts.

• Does “My name is Ruth” echo of “Call me Ishmael”? Maybe others have already written about these similarities:
  • “Call me Ishmael,” at least to me, has always implied that the character’s actual name is something else besides Ishmael. Robinson’s sentence is a similarly direct, short statement, but of actual identity.
  • Like Moby Dick, the first two sentences contrast with each other; both are short to long sentences, simple to complicated.
  • Again like Moby Dick, the sentences are an introduction to a community, but the narrator views herself as part of it and the community is much smaller, much more specific. The fourth sentence of Moby Dick, specifically, dives within Ishmael and describes him as at odds with the community around him: “Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos gets such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
• The second sentence from Housekeeping includes an absence: Ruth’s parents. Neither her mother not her father are mentioned, though a large group of female relatives and caregivers are. This absence creates all kinds of implicit questions, and readers are likely to read on in search of answers to those questions.
  • The second sentence, as I’ve mentioned, includes implicit questions almost within each phrase. Those general or abstract phrases could be unpacking into specific sensory scenes and chapters. How and where did Ruth grow up with Lucille? What does it mean to be “under the care of” a grandmother? How were these people different from and alike each other? What did they think of each other? What was the death of the grandmother like? Why did the sisters flee?
  • The second sentence also implies a general novel-length process (growing up and growing up with a sister and growing up with a sister without a father or mother, though the mother’s family is present) while involving many characters in many different ways.

What did you notice? Which strategies modeled here do you want to try in a sentence or two?

Here is one effort to apply some of the strategies modeled: “My friends call me Sam. He called me Karen, which is my name, sure, but ignored the way I introduced myself, my last name (“Sampson”), the one thing my friends have in common—they are a motley crew of gamers, cosplayers, punks, and cops—and most of all ignored the simple thing I asked him to do; it was, my girlfriends and I decided, rude.”