Fear Not the Long Sentence
Cumulative syntax can make your words sing
How many times have you heard, “Write short sentences!” Writing coaches tell us long sentences create confusion and make us sound befuddled. To avoid length, we break our sentences into wee chunks, hoping to maintain the reader’s attention. Morsel by uninspired morsel.
But wait! How many times have you heard, “Vary the length of your sentences!” Those same coaches tell us that short choppy sentences bore the reader, especially when they appear in groups. So now what? How do we write short sentences of various lengths?
Length is not the problem
The problem with long sentences lies in the execution. In a well-written sentence, the length is rarely a problem. Ambiguity and frustration arise from long, poorly written sentences, not because they are long but because they are poorly written.
For example, confusing sentences often contain subordinate clauses that begin with who, which or that. “The girl who was lonely cuddled the wet dog.” We can make this easier to read by getting rid of the subordinate clause “who was lonely” and using an adjective instead. “The lonely girl cuddled the wet dog,” is clear and even shorter.
Cumulative sentences enrich and enhance
Cumulative syntax provides another way to add depth to a sentence but still maintain clarity. Although the term “cumulative” is offputting, it merely means “increasing by successive additions.” Depending on how many additions you attach to it, a cumulative sentence can be any length from fairly short to absurdly long. It accumulates information as it moves along, providing more detail with each new phrase.
All cumulative sentences start life as an independent clause — a clause that can stand alone as a sentence or become part of a longer one. Because it can stand alone, an independent clause is easy to recognize. Here is a simple example:
Sarah walked in the park.
This sentence is short, clear, and boring. So Sarah walked in the park, so what? Now, let’s change the period to a comma and add information with a modifying phrase:
Sarah walked in the park, wishing she were home.
Those four extra words tell you a lot about Sarah. She is conflicted, doing one thing while preferring to do something else. Why is she in the park if she’d rather be home? What’s stopping her from leaving? What’s happening at home? Let’s add another phrase:
Sarah walked in the park, wishing she were home, wondering if she turned off the iron.
Now more questions come to mind. A hot iron could be dangerous, so why doesn’t she go home and turn it off? What made her stop ironing and go to the park in the first place? And who irons these days?
Get Rusty Burlew’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
As you can see, each additional phrase raises more questions about Sarah and her frame of mind. Yet each phrase is easy to understand because the sentence structure is simple. With any luck, your reader will continue to read, wondering what’s up with Sarah.
The structure of a cumulative sentence
As shown above, you can construct a simple cumulative sentence by adding modifying phrases to an independent clause. Modifying phrases usually take one of three forms.
- Modifying phrases may begin with a participle, such as running, cleaning, or hoping.
- They may begin with an adverb, such as quickly or secretly.
- Or they may begin with a possessive pronoun such as his, her, or its.
In the following example, the modifying phrases start with a participle, an adverb, and a possessive pronoun:
The bee flew to the flower, landing softly, barely moving the petals, her antennae probing for pollen.
In a slightly more complex construction, a modifying phrase may begin by naming an element within the independent clause and then describing it. Unless the thing being modified is clear from context, the naming helps to guide the reader along. In this example, since color and pattern could apply to either the flower or the insect, we must clarify:
The bee alighted on a dahlia, the bee striped like a tiger, the flower as red as a raspberry.
How many modifying phrases are best?
When I write cumulative sentences, I usually add two or three phrases to the independent clause, but some writers add six, seven, or more. The number should fit your style and audience.
Cumulative sentences often appear in lists of literary devices, so we associate them with fiction. But they work anywhere, and I use them frequently in science writing. The following sentence is part of an article I wrote for a print magazine last spring:
The meadow grasses grew tall, arcing above my head in graceful swags, mingling with wildflowers in a riot of canary, peach, porcelain, and blue.
I began with an independent clause, “The meadow grasses grew tall,” and added a pair of observations to bring the scene to life. Here’s one from a different article:
As the ascending sun warmed the garden, a stranded bee awakened from torpor, stretching her legs, grooming her damp fur, her buzz faint against a backdrop of birdsong.
The position of the independent clause
You will sometimes hear writers say the independent clause must come first, but that’s unnecessary. It can go anywhere that makes sense. For example, here it is in the middle of a sentence:
Wishing she were home, Sarah walked in the park, wondering if she turned off the iron.
And here it’s at the end:
Wishing she were home, wondering if she turned off the iron, Sarah walked in the park.
In these two cases, no adjustments to the phrases were necessary other than punctuation. Because it is easy to move the phrases from place to place, they are sometimes called free modifying phrases, as in free to move.
However, when you use a phrase that modifies only part of the independent clause, the position of the phrases is less free. In my previous sentence about the bee and the dahlia, note how the position of the modifying phrases is restricted:
The bee alighted on a dahlia, the bee striped like a tiger, the flower as red as a raspberry.
Mastering the steps
Cumulative sentences can get much more complex than what I’ve shown here, including subordinate forms where additional phrases modify the preceding phrase instead of the independent clause.¹ But learning to write simple cumulative syntax will give you many options for lengthening a sentence gently and clearly. Well-written cumulative sentences can pull readers into your story, one simple phrase at a time, without the trauma of full stops.
If you are new to writing cumulative sentences, start slowly. Cumulative sentences have a distinct rhythm that shouldn’t sound forced or formulaic. Assure your long sentences flow naturally into your usual style and don’t draw attention to themselves. Like a new dance step, the timing will get better with practice.
Reference:
¹For a comprehensive review of cumulative sentences and their many variations, see Building Great Sentences by Brooks Landon. Plume, 2013.
