If you are a reader or a writer or both, I’m sure you have come across sentences that make you pause and re-read them, not because they are confusing, but because they are so beautifully crafted you couldn’t take it all in the first time. I have a journal in which I copy sentences from the masters to read over and over, and attempt to imitate in my own writing. When I taught College Writing to first-year students, we would look at and discuss specific sentences in their assigned readings. What word choices are most effective? Why does a short sentence work so well? What effect does a long, winding sentence have on the meaning of the work? Students would then write similar sentences in their papers. Their choices had to be deliberate, and impact the work as a whole. There would be specific points in the grading rubric to account for those sentences.
In reading Kate Morton’s The Lake House, almost every sentence qualifies as a ‘sensational sentence.’ Here’s one I liked in particular that I added to my journal: “Even the birds were more brazen than before, criss-crossing the hazy clearing with calls that sounded like laughter, and the insect choir was growing louder with the day’s expanding heat.” {swoon} The alliteration (criss-crossing, clearing, calls, choir), the simile (sounded like laughter), and the figurative language (insect choir) all add to the beauty of the sentence. We can hear and see the birds; we can hear the insects; we can feel the heat.
