Writing Gaps

Issue 238

SoHo, New York 2016

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Because there are countless ways to write a sentence, language is often a matter of choosing what to select and what to forget. You either put the verb at the beginning or toss it at the end. You either craft a complicated structure with relative clauses and rhetorical techniques—an opulence, incidentally, that I salute—or you craft incisive, blunt, and efficient phrases.

None of your choices can ever be described as correct, just as you can’t describe a hammer as correct even though it happens to be the right tool for some jobs. With language, you might describe a sentence as effective, but that’s probably the closest you’ll come to a verdict: a judgement on whether the structure and vocabulary achieved what you desired.

But you never really know. Nobody can give you proof. A review of the rules: You have unlimited options, no way of assessing your choices beyond effectiveness, and another court date once the next sentence begins. The jury deliberates without reaching a verdict, once again, on whether you have effectively achieved your goal, whether that’s description, persuasion, interestingness—or anything else that might prompt you to write. The litigation continues until you reach the bottom of the page.

Now let’s consider how you might approach these choices in a narrative. We can start by crafting a simple description in multiple versions. Here’s the first attempt: