Stunning Sentences

Articles

The Paradox of Images

1 week ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. In this short story, the narrator explains how to write a true war story but within this expository structure, there’s a recurring story about the Vietnam war and the death of Curt Lemon. Every image has a built-in paradox, writes Catherine Brady in Story Logic and the Craft of Fiction. An image focuses the reader’s attention in a highly specific way and also generates a profusion of implications and associations.
Swimming in Style in May-Video

2 weeks ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

Subscribe to Stunning Sentences to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
The Art of Funny

2 weeks ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. In this short story, Joanna and her son, Leo, have gone to Denmark, ostensibly to give her common law ex-husband (or is he a “ex-common-law husband”) a wristwatch from Joanna’s deceased father. She’s also there to see if there’s still a spark, a little fire between them. But nine-year-old Leo wants to do other things.
Swimming in Style in May-Zoom Link

2 weeks ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

Subscribe to Stunning Sentences to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
The Delightful Digressive Sentence

3 weeks ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

This semester, I’m teaching alternative plots, and I recently introduced the digressive plot, or to use Daniel Mendelsohn’s terminology, rings, in which a plot deviates from the strict, straight line of causation. Then I was driving along, listening to Ross Gay on City Arts & Lectures podcast when he began talking about the digressive sentence and how he loves them.
The Exuberant Sentence

4 weeks ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. The narrator’s mother climbs the ladder above the Gator Pit in her green two-piece bathing suit and stands on the edge of the diving board, no spotlight shining on her—at least not yet. The narrator thinks this unlit entrance was probably her father’s idea and she blesses it as a good one.
The Art of Page One

1 month ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

I’m thrilled to share that Holly Payne, host of The Page One Podcast, has invited me to join her monthly for a granular look into the most powerful part of any novel—its opening lines.
The Simulating Syntax

1 month ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

The narrator, Kyungha, and her friend, Inseon, are out walking in the snow, and Inseon is telling the narrator a story about the time when she was 17 and almost died. It’s a long sentence, made lengthy because of the two dependent clauses, each beginning with the subordinate conjunction ‘as.’ Each clause is further elongated by a simile.
Swimming in Style in April--Video

1 month ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

So much amazing prose was written today! I introduced the lyrical plot, which is a rhythmic repetition of a key image or cluster of imagery, a key event or group of events, or a central idea…
The Raucous Tales of Teens

1 month ago | ninaschuyler.substack.com | Nina Schuyler

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. The narrator and her friend are 15 years old, working at a theme park called Storyland. The narrator is a ticket taker and Sils is Cinderella, and they deal daily with the mobs of tourists.