Building Great Sentences (11 page)

The Final Modifying Phrase as a Comment on What Has Come Before

But adding a third cumulative modifying phrase also gives us a chance to use that phrase as a comment on or a summing-up of the previous two phrases, as we can again see in these examples, provided by Carl Klaus:

Before the bonfire, she dips and sways to the talk of the bongos, long skirt swirling, snapping castanets in time to the beat of the drums, a frenzied rhythm sweeping her far into the night.

I walked with him hand-in-hand down the quiet neighborhood street that spring evening, the air heady with the scent of lilacs, past lawn sprinklers that sounded like gentle waterfalls, in love for the first time.

One of the most effective moves writers can make in cumulative sentences with three or more modifying phrases is to make the final phrase a kind of summation, or a simile or metaphor that nails down or drives home the idea the preceding phrases build toward. Consider these examples, each of which uses that final modifying phrase to comment on or characterize earlier phrases:

The small girl rose from her seat, determined, head held high, demanding attention, expecting it like a queen expects the attention of her subjects.

It was a heartbreaking moment, both lovers feeling deep emotion, a combination of bewilderment and sadness, a time when words are no use at all, the awkward silence marking a final farewell.

More Familiar Modifying Patterns

Now that we've looked at a number of coordinate cumulative sentences, I'd like to briefly consider a couple of the distinctive forms they take, with which most of us are already familiar, although we may not have previously thought of them in quite these terms.

The first is a pattern we hear particularly during political races, since the coordinate cumulative sentence has both the repetitive parallelism and the insistent repetition favored in political rhetoric. I bet you'll recognize this pattern, or you may want to think of it as a distinctive rhythm:

(1) I am proud to place in nomination the name of one of Iowa's native daughters,

(2) a woman who has served this state in various public offices for over fifteen years,

(2) a woman who attended the University of Iowa and then Drake Law School,

(2) a woman whose name has become synonymous with working to keep Iowa green,

(2) a woman who has fought tirelessly to protect the rights and livelihood of Iowa farmers,

(2) a woman who stands for all that makes Iowa great,

(2) a woman who will never forget her Iowa roots or her Iowa values . . .

And so on, and on, and on, and on.

Here's another pattern or rhythm I bet will sound familiar:

(1) He raced through the airport,

(2) running faster than he ever had before,

(2) dodging slower-moving travelers,

(2) weaving around baby carriages and wheelchairs,

(2) trying to listen to departure announcements,

(2) hoping against hope that his plane was still boarding,

(2) wondering what had possessed him to have that second margarita.

Virginia Tufte offers another and distinctly more literary example of this coordinate pattern, featuring a string of second-level modifying phrases, all beginning with an
-ing
participle:

(1) Their trim boots prattled as they stood on the steps of the colonnade,

(2) talking quietly and gaily,

(2) glancing at the clouds,

(2) holding their umbrellas at cunning angles against the few last raindrops,

(3) closing them again,

(2) holding their skirts demurely.

You undoubtedly noticed that this example from James Joyce's
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
actually sneaks in one subordinate third-level modifying phrase, “closing them again,” which can only make sense if it refers to the umbrellas in the preceding phrase. This is a good time for me to stress that writing pure coordinate sentences, in which there are only second-level modifying phrases, all modifying the base clause, is almost never the best approach, based on pattern rather than purpose—just a reminder that the intrinsic strengths of the coordinate form are most pronounced when that pure form is achieved. A brief digression from the pure coordinate structure, as we see in Joyce's sentence, makes more sense and works better than would the sentence without that fleeting third level.

As is always the case in writing effective sentences, specific context is much more important than following a blueprint for a particular syntactical pattern. In the case of Joyce's sentence, as Tufte points out, all those
-ing
participial phrases have “a vigorous narrative impact,” building our sense of “an ongoing feeling or process.” We might think of the coordinate cumulative sentence as establishing a sense of what Gertrude Stein called “the continuous present,” describing a process that we know must unfold in time, but presenting it as a series of components or constituent actions that are themselves free from time markers that would impose chronological order on them. In this way, coordinate cumulative sentences slow readers down, forcing them to pause as a process or action is broken down into discrete parts, the sentence lingering to deepen detail, going back to elaborate the base clause, rather than moving on to completely new propositions.

Christensen offers us another example of this effect, citing a sentence from Walter Van Tilburg Clark, best known for writing
The Ox-Bow Incident
, that memorably describes a flying predator:

(1) He could sail for hours,

(2) searching the blanched grass below him with his telescopic eyes,

(2) gaining height against the wind,

(2) descending in mile-long, gently declining swoops when he curved and rode back,

(2) never beating a wing.

Without making too big a point of it here, I'd note that the coordinate form also lends itself to the description of rhythmic processes, as the above sentence itself seems to follow the rising and descending motion of the bird flight it describes. Its sense of a kind of continuous present, composed of actions of searching, gaining, descending, and never beating also tends to add a kind of experiential or visceral dimension to the flat statement of the base clause that this bird “could sail for hours.” We have long recognized the ability of poets to have their poems seem to do what they are about, but it is equally the case that fine prose writers routinely and largely unconsciously craft sentences whose rhythms reinforce the propositional content of the sentence, adding to its impact.

Don't Forget Left-Branching Phrases, Even Though It May Seem I Have!

Before we move on to subordinate and mixed cumulative sentences, I need to offer one important reminder and one small caveat. The reminder is that while the examples of coordinate structure I've offered in this chapter have all been of right-branching sentences, where the modifying phrases all come after the base clause, coordinate cumulatives can also be left-branching, where the modifying phrase comes before the base clause, or mid-branching, where the modifying phrase interrupts the base clause, coming between its subject and its verb. Of course, all kinds of mixes of these structures are also possible. I've limited myself to right-branching examples just because they're easier to follow, easier to diagram, and, I hope, easier to remember.

One more thing: technically, free modifiers can be placed in any order around the base clause. The caveat is that not all coordinate modifying phrases work exactly in the way grammar tells us they can or should work. Even though coordinate modifying phrases are technically free modifiers, meaning we should be able to move them around in any combination, not all of them are completely free, being tied to a specific place in the sentence by the logic of their propositions. Given the sentence “Rubbing his hands together, running his hungry eyes over the steaming food, he sat down, anticipating the feast, savoring its aromas, stunned by his good fortune, realizing an opportunity like this might never come again,” we know those six coordinate second-level modifying phrases can be shuffled and reshuffled into any order around the base clause, “he sat down.” We can write the sentence, making it entirely left branching: “Rubbing his hands together, running his hungry eyes over the steaming food, anticipating the feast, savoring its aromas, stunned by his good fortune, realizing an opportunity like this might never come again,” until we finally get to the base clause, “he sat down.” We can make it completely right branching: “He sat down, rubbing his hands together, running his hungry eyes over the steaming food, anticipating the feast,” and so on. Or we can do anything in between.

When “Free” Modifiers Aren't Entirely Free: Temporal and Sequential Logic

We can mix and match coordinate cumulative phrases, scrambling the modifying phrases in the above sentence in any order. That's the way free modifiers are supposed to work. But so-called free modifiers can be stuck in particular places in the sentence by the needs of spatial, temporal, causal, and agential logic. Here's what I mean. Consider this sentence:

(1) He got up early,

(2) waking long before sunrise,

(2) always looking for an edge,

(2) always trying harder than anyone else,

(2) believing sleep a waste of time,

(3) motivated by insecurity and greed.

And another version:

(1) He got up early,

(2) waking long before sunrise,

(2) going for his daily two-mile run before breakfast,

(2) usually limiting his morning meal to coffee and a single piece of toast,

(2) showering and dressing quickly,

(2) leaving for work shortly before 8:00 a.m.

In the first sentence, we might find some orders of those coordinate modifying phrases more effective than others, but the phrases are indeed free and they can be written in any order. In the second sentence, the coordinate modifying phrases are grammatically free, since each of them could be placed immediately after the base clause, but they are not free to be shuffled around because they're logically tied to a chronological order. The subject can't leave for work before his morning run, before breakfast, and so on. Accordingly, we need to be sure that our coordinate cumulative modifiers always make sense in the order we place them, honoring progressions or sequences in time and space, their order tracking through time, from large to small, right to left, cause before effect, tying agent to action.

Yet Another Pesky Caveat: Too Much of a Good Thing

As we've just seen, coordinate cumulative modifying phrases can be quite powerful, returning again and again to the base clause to add detail or explanation, offering a kind of continuous present where the sentence seems to linger on a statement, trying to get it fully detailed, almost as if the writer keeps remembering one more important thing to say before moving on. One of the strengths of the coordinate cumulative form is that it suggests a writer who is very concerned with the reader, and who wants to give that reader a satisfying amount of information in a sentence form that makes a lot of information easy to process.

One drawback of the coordinate form, however, is that it calls attention to itself through its pronounced repetitions and parallels. Writers must be careful not to rely too heavily on the form. The repetitions in a single coordinate cumulative sentence focus our attention on the base clause in a way that makes the sentence stick in our minds, but, as is always the danger with repetition, using too many coordinate cumulative sentences runs the risk of becoming boring.

Fortunately, cumulative syntax provides us with almost unlimited patterns of modification, so we can avoid relying too heavily on any single pattern or rhythm. If the coordinate cumulative form represents one extreme of the cumulative syntax, the extreme where the sentence seems to run in place, then the subordinate cumulative pattern represents the opposite extreme, where the sentence seems constantly moving forward, leaving the base clause in the dust.

Subordinate modifying levels move the focus of the sentence forward, moving from general to specific, zooming in like a movie camera. They can also break a whole into its constituent parts—as a colon can do. Subordinate levels can also lead us into new thoughts, nudging us to be ever more specific, to refine and/or detail whatever we've just written. The subordinate cumulative construction can advance the sentence into new territory, making it particularly effective when used to describe a process or to follow something that unfolds in time.

The subordinate cumulative sentence seems able to ramble, moving almost randomly to new information. Thus, we can get a sentence like “He drove carefully, one hand on the wheel, the other hand holding a sandwich, a fossilized ham and cheese, a strangely colored lump made three days before by his sister, a simple, trusting woman, who deserved a better life than fate had dealt her, a life of happiness if not of success, the basic happiness of feeling loved and needed.”

We can easily see the movement of this sentence if we diagram its levels:

(1) He drove carefully,

(2) one hand on the wheel,

(3) the other hand holding a sandwich,

(4) a ham and cheese fossil,

(5) a strangely colored lump made three days before by his sister,

(6) a simple, trusting woman,

(7) someone who deserved a better life than fate had dealt her,

(8) a life of happiness if not of success,

(9) the basic happiness of feeling loved and needed.

Sure, that sentence is a stretch. It's on the edge of being out of control. It's hard to imagine a writing situation that would call for such an extended subordinate form, but it is good to know that the subordinate form can make any single sentence tell a story, moving the action of the sentence forward. The identifying characteristic of the subordinate cumulative sentence is that
none
of its modifying phrases after the second level will make sense if placed directly before or after the base clause. It doesn't make sense, for instance, to write “He drove carefully, a ham and cheese fossil.” We can't write “He drove carefully, the other hand holding a sandwich” and we can't write “He drove carefully, the basic happiness of feeling loved and needed.” The above subordinate cumulative sentence moves through eight levels of modification and clearly pushes the form to, and probably past, a point of diminishing effectiveness.