Working With Sentences
Writing My Novel - Progress Report #28
This was in the rough draft:
Walter had studied painting in the 1880s at the Royal Academy in London. None of that decadent French atmosphere for Walter.
Hmm.
None of that decadent French atmosphere for Walter.
That’s wrong. Too snarky. Plus it says his name again, feels clunky.
Try other approaches:
The decadent French atmosphere was of no interest to him.
He had no interest in the decadent atmosphere of France.
The Academy in Paris, glorious but tainted by the anarchy of the Impressionists, was repellent to him.
The Academy in Paris, glorious but tainted by the anarchy of the Impressionists, was of no interest, impossible and disorderly.
Any of those help at all? Well, the point of the paragraph is to show us Walter, Charlie’s father -- an imposing and repressive figure in his childhood. Defiance of Walter’s old-fashioned type of painting is part of Charlie’s discovery of modern art, important in Charlie’s journey into abstract painting.
Most of these spitballed sentences steer our minds away from Walter, often putting him at the passive end of the sentence. (Also, they incorrectly put the Impressionists into the Academy…) But the one which begins with his lack-of-interest is too vague. So I took the one version that put Walter into the active start of the sentence and added the more detailed statements of what was appealing and unappealing about France from those that followed:
He had no interest in Paris, decadent and tainted by the rise of the Impressionists and the unruly stirrings of modern art.
Too much art history.
He had no interest in Paris, decadent and tainted by the unruly stirrings of modern art.
But a later paragraph will be all about Walter’s hatred of “modern art.” I don’t want to use it up here. And I really wanted to name the Impressionists.
He had no interest in Paris, decadent and tainted by the unruly stirrings of Impressionism.
Nice. But not quite. Did Impressionism “stir”?
He had no interest in Paris, decadent and tainted by the unruly emergence of Impressionism.
He had no interest in Paris, decadent and recently tainted by the unruly rise of Impressionism.
Too academic.
He had no interest in Paris, decadent and recently tainted by the unruly birth of Impressionism.
That’s it. A faint hint of the messy and biological. The voice is right: clearly narrating, pointing us to an opinion, a self-educated memoirist who wants to be “a writer.”
So that’s the sentence I ended up with:
Walter had studied painting in the 1880s at the Royal Academy in London. He had no interest in Paris, decadent and recently tainted by the unruly birth of Impressionism.
How do I know it’s right? I don’t. It’s not. It’s just the best among the possibilities. I played with it, tried things. I didn’t even know what the questions were (like not putting Walter at the end) until I tried things out. I learned to live with not being absolutely “right.”
And then I said: good enough. Feels good enough. Makes sense, enough. For now: ding! Chosen. Moving on.
Lately, I've been struggling with writing one short sentence. It's one of the most important in a paragraph, so I can't just keep writing and put it off until later. I still struggle, but it's nice to know I'm not the only one who "plays" with sentences like this. Thanks a lot, Glenn!
You're a perfectionist. I remember you already told a similar story that happened to you in your youth, about a character who wanted to ask someone else if they wanted a drink and you couldn't find the right phrase. The same thing happened to me recently (in fact, I apologize if I didn't read this post immediately or participate in the live stream, even though I knew you would mention my post—and I take this opportunity to thank you). When I wrote to you, I was entering a small competition, and then I discovered there was another one that expired in just four days. If selected, it would go to the Berlinale. I had to hurry. Yet I spent hours and hours on the phrase (old Oedipus about his two sons fighting for the throne) "They think power is honor," "They take power for glory," "They believe power equals honor!" "They chase power, calling it honor!" and is he shouting? yelling? and omg "I fought fate" sounds awful. Fought-fate. Maybe three hours just for this phrase. With the clock ticking. It was a great experience. I didn't even think for a minute that just a few days earlier, I didn't even feel adequate to make art, and at that moment I was entering three competitions at once. I suffer, but cannot stop writing. Sorry for the long post.