An Exercise of Great Length
February 1, 2008 · Written by Melissa Donovan
This is a writing exercise I did once in school, and I found it to be fairly challenging:
Write one sentence that is at least one hundred words long.
Trust me, it’s harder than you think. It has to be a good sentence. You can’t use unnecessary, superfluous adjectives and adverbs. It has to make sense, and sound right when you read it out loud. It can be about anything, but it has to meet the word count.
Are you up for the challenge?
If so, post your sentence in the comments section.
And when you’re done, if you still have any writing power left, try to rewrite that same sentence in under ten words.
Good luck!
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In the moments after the words were spoken – “And you are?” – my heart skipped a beat; my own mother no longer recognizes me, all because of the Alzheimer’s.
While I held for a moment the complex fragrance that emanated from the plants surrounding Hanging lake, I contemplated the intricacy of our situation, because even though I understood that this trip through the canyon could have been disastrous, I believed that the fragrances, the majestic views, and most importantly, the effort we shared to make it there, would ultimately be the seed of happiness that you would base your recovery on, because in that experience, a promise is implicitly made, and I wish that I could have kept that promise to you, instead of having sex with your mom.
Wow! That’s a hard challenge. Writing a proper sentence of that length is difficult enough, but then to make it a proper sentence (not a run-on or anything) without any unnecessary words is darn near impossible. It can be done.
Maybe I’ll give it a try while I’m stuck in the snow. If I do, I’ll post the sentence in another comment here.
Great post!
Ooh, fun! Let’s see:
“And then she decided after all that it was not a good idea because, of course, how could she possibly love a man—no matter how good looking, rich, intelligent, funny and, naturally, sexy as the day is long—who thought her dog was just, well, a dog, instead of the funny, lovable, loyal, entertaining little person in a furry body that every normal person admitted that he was–especially since he was such a cheerful dog and so obviously meant to be with her since they even had the same hair and fur color, for heaven’s sake, with the same kind of curls, even, and any person who couldn’t see that was clearly not meant to be with either of them– although, she had to admit, he had never actually said he didn’t like her dog, just that he preferred that he be someplace else when they were in bed together, and maybe, in retrospect, that’s not so bad?”
(160 words)
Which, boils down to:
“Despite his not adoring her dog, she loved him anyway.”
(10 words)
Sometimes it’s a good thing to be able to ramble aimlessly around a sentence (grin).
In considering the challenge put forth by Melissa Donovan today to write a clear, well constructed sentence without using any unnecessarily superfluous adjectives and adverbs, I was struck by the virtual impossibility of such a challenge given that the standard English language sentence usually only consists of perhaps ten to fifteen words and attempting to extend that general, if not strictly enforced, limit to one ten times greater than the average could only result in a confusing jumbled sentence that only Gabriel Garcia Marquez would be able to parse correctly as he was responsible for some very long sentences in his day.
It’s not actually very good, really. But a fun exercise!
@cardiogirl, I don’t know… I think you’re a few words short…
@skipgang, Love the twist at the end! Very nice.
@Brad, I hope you give it a go! Do come back and post your sentence
@Deb, Wonderful! Wow, you got up to 160 words. That’s crazy!
@Drew, Not good? Not good? It’s excellent!
These are fun. I hope a few more folks stop by and join us. I think I’m going to have to tackle this one over the weekend myself, even though I did this exercise back in school once already.
Immediately upon receiving the stimulus—which I suspected was either a refined form of nitrous oxide or perhaps even an unrefined form of cannabis—my brain issued swift orders to activate the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, producing a surge of endorphins, followed by the involvement of my amygdale and hippocampus, all of which signaled to my diaphragm that it should spasm erratically and also strongly encouraged my lungs to intake large gulps of air only to evacuate them in audible and culturally framed single-syllable exclamations that everyone in the room, being familiar with such fits, immediately recognized as a joyful expression.
***
I laughed.
Oh, bravo!
Wow, this was harder than I thought. I found myself getting nearly as wrapped up in this single sentence as I have in some short stories. Here goes:
My feet kicked wildly, thrashing under their own power, groping for the feel of solid stone that was now out of reach as the rising pool of fetid water buoyed me higher in the blackness of the vault until I felt the awful graze of the mossy concrete roof against my skull arriving in time with the cool, seductive waterline that crept like a lover’s fingers up my chest, encircled my neck, lapped at my chin, and sang a soft lullaby of “give in, let go,” that calmed the panic rattling in my skull to a single silver thread of resolve, writhing with a bright, frantic quivering as the last of the air was pressed from my lungs, and blooming into a single, perfect thought: live.
(126 words)
I nearly succumbed, only deciding in the last moment: no.
(10 words)
@Mark, That is just priceless. LOVE IT!!!
@Deb, Well said!
@Bill, What a wild scene. Nice job.
These are all fantastic!
The other Deb. I think long sentences have been weeded out permanently. I keep hearing these voices from writing classes in the past. Either that or it’s one of those “at last” things rather than at once. But everyone else’s has been fun to read.
My seven year old is a pro at sentences that go on and on forever. She’s been learning about joining words and uses them all the time now.
Ok, should I try this? I can ramble so it shouldn’t be TOO hard, should it?
I never did like the way she flung her hair over her right shoulder, turned her hips and wiggled, just slightly, so that her mile high legs flexed beneath a skirt two sizes smaller than her rounded, lissome curves - a plastic surgeon couldn’t improve on those and indeed perhaps a plastic surgeon had created them along with her amble cleavage, the perfect curve of her nose, and the even-sided lobes of her ears - then smiled at the boys, who swooned more than the giggling teenage girls watching from a grated window above the boys locker room after sports.
This is a perfect example of why you should NEVER try to force too much information into a single sentence.
You know, when you feel happy and want to show it to everyone - to your friends, your family and all the ones you meet in the street, men, women, big, small, children and old people - there is always the temptation to put on colourful clothes, sing silly songs, wear funny hats, make jokes and laugh, but watch out my friend and take great care, because even though you might feel that your joy is endless, and that your happiness grows when you share it, it has been scientifically proven that there is not enough joy to go round and that for every single smile you waste on a perfect stranger, you will receive on average two smiles less when you enter your home in the evening, when anyway the colour will have faded from your clothes and your cheeks, your funny hat will have lost its feathers and your voice will be hoarse from singing.
Or in ten words… Hm.
Don’t spread happiness - you might need it yourself.
When I first read the challenge, my concern was that writing a sentence that contains 100 words would be not only possible, but unfortunately is probable in the world of academia, where people think in sentences that are actually much longer than 100 words, and in turn “bless” the world at large their colleagues with these word burdened sentences that seem to go on and one forever without adding much to the general well-being of any one or even clearly expressing the initial thought that the individual had spun into this convoluted rat’s nest of words that trips lightly off not only their pens but also, sadly for their audience, off their tongues in mind-numbing conversational gambits.
Whew! That is about 116 words. That was surprisingly (and scarily) easy -