Building Great Sentences

In the writing game, sentences are our baseballs. Although not every sentence is a home run, isn’t our goal to hit at least one out of the park? Moving sentences like that requires aim and power. “The sentence is where we must start if we hope to understand why some writing captivates us and other writing leaves us unmoved.” This sound advice is from University of Iowa Professor Dr. Brooks Landon. Just as home runs move fans to stand up and cheer, we want our sentences to move readers’ imaginations and emotions—bring them to tears, to laughter, to gain new realizations.

Taking aim

One strategy for capturing the reader’s imagination is by composing sentences called cumulative, also known as loose. The Oxford Dictionary defines cumulative: “increasing or increased in quantity, degree, or force by successive additions, i.e. ‘the cumulative effect of two years of drought.’ Synonyms: increasing, accumulative, accumulating, growing, progressive, accruing, snowballing.” I think we get the idea. Such a sentence would tag each base and slide the reader into home where it counts. Fans aren’t captivated by weak fly balls—sentences going nowhere. What engages readers is crossing home plate—sentences that score.

The Teaching Company, publisher of The Great Courses: Teaching That Engages the Mind, produced a two-part course titled Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft by Professor Landon. He thoroughly investigates what cumulative sentences are, how to build them, and when and how to make them enliven your work. What are cumulative sentences? They grow from a base clause, such as “She re-read chapter one” by piling up modifiers and adding clauses to make it grow into “She re-read chapter one, cleaned the kitchen, and while the kids were napping, she finished writing her book.” Better examples from masterful writers appear below. But first …

Building power

Remember in Earth Science class when you learned about cloud formations? If you missed that day, here’s a recap of one formation that sounds much like the kind of sentence we’re talking about: cumulus clouds. Merriam-Webster defines cumulus: “1. Heap, accumulation. 2. [New Latin, from Latin]: a dense puffy cloud form having a flat base and rounded outlines often piled up like a mountain.” Although the adjective cumulus for clouds is spelled differently than cumulative for sentences, it carries the same idea, the same sense of piling something onto a base. Next time you notice a cumulus cloud, try writing a cumulative sentence, as found in these examples. Enjoy!

Examples of cumulative sentences

1. E. B. White: “We caught two bass, hauling them in briskly as though they were mackerel, pulling them over the side of the boat in a businesslike manner without any landing net, and stunning them with a blow on the back of the head.” From White’s essay, “Once More to The Lake.”
2. Muriel Spark: “He went to speak to Mrs. Bean, tiny among the pillows, her small toothless mouth open like an “O,” her skin stretched thin and white over her bones, her huge eye sockets and eyes in a fixed, infant-like stare, and her sparse white hair short and straggling over her brow.” From Spark’s book, Momento Mori.
3. Joan Didion: “Mysteriously and rather giddily splendid, hidden in a grove of sycamores just above the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, a commemoration of high culture so immediately productive of crowds and jammed traffic that it can now be approached by appointment only, the 1-million-dollar villa built by the last J. Paul Getty to house his antiquities and paintings and furniture manages to strike a peculiar nerve in almost everyone who sees it.” From Didion’s book, The White Album: Essays.