Tag: Great Sentences

Ruminations on Kafka

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Reading Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis story is akin to eating a delicious sandwich. As with a couple of great sentences, one delicious slice of salami can define a sandwich. Others rely on the relationship fresh, crisp cuts of lettuce have with the other ingredients. As with a great sandwich, we can almost taste the craftsmanship of a great story. Those of us who never worked in the sandwich industry, don’t know the symbiotic relationship these ingredients should have with one another, but we know it when we taste it. Those of us who worked in the industry, and have an intimate level of familiarity with the art of the sandwich, know that even the perfect symbiosis of the freshest, most delicious ingredients don’t matter without great bread. The quality of the bread is the great divide between an average sandwich and a delicious one.

The consensus on author Franz Kafka is that his craftsmanship did not involve writing great sentences. His prose was characterized by a Stanley Corngold as “luminous plainness”. I understand the ambiguity of that description, but while I concede that there were very few, some of these were great ones. Anytime we read a great story, like Metamorphosis, our inclination is to add some “could’ve been, should’ve been” lines. Maybe that’s the egotistical writer in me, but I do that with most stories. Yet, every time we think of a great line, it doesn’t seem to fit quite right. Where would we add, what would we delete, and how would any of it improve the prose, the rhythm, and the setting of Metamorphosis? In the course of our imagined efforts, Kafka is unveiled, his economy of words, and the meticulous choreography of his story.

I would love to see some early drafts of Metamorphosis, just to see what Kafka added and deleted in the course of his revising and editing. Did he have great sentences in the first draft only to realize they damaged the otherwise “luminous plainness” feel of the story? Did Gregor Samsa’s family have greater, more comedic reactions to Gregor transformation into an Ungeziefer ‘a beast unfit for sacrifice’? Did he vie for greater entertainment in the story, or did Kafka have a religious zeal for the story’s mundane feel? My guess is that in the early drafts of this story, Kafka had to battle with an egotistical need to add something more to Metamorphosis to make it more, because we all live by the credo that more is always more. Did he initially have one of the characters make an incredibly insightful comment about humanity that illuminated us on how insightful Kafka was? Most authors cannot avoid the conceit of informing their readers how smart and brilliant they really are, and they do so by creating hyper intelligent, incredibly insightful, and unbelievably brilliant characters. In lesser hands, the characters always know, because the author knows, and we know, and neither of us wants to think anyone involved is dumb, uninformed, or stupid, because that might reflect poorly on us and the author. In the context of the lesser stories, some characters know things they couldn’t possibly know, but the author has spent so much time helping us relate to and identify with their character that if she doesn’t know it’s an incriminating comment from the author on her, and everything she’s about. It could also be twisted and mangled into the author’s thoughts on us. Is the author talking down to us, no, that character “only be playing” because it’s later revealed to us that she knew all along, because she’s an anointed intellect just like us, and the author. 

Most people aren’t hilarious, charming, and wonderful people, yet we don’t really want to read about the characters who aren’t? We know this to be true, but in the ever-changing mind of the great author, some of the times story is sacred. 

Were Kafka’s characters funnier, more charming, more compassionate, more wonderful, or more something that every author wants their readers to think of them in those initial drafts? My guess is that Kafka probably had hundreds of versions before it reached final form, and that final form of Metamorphosis we know today is an exhibition of ego-less restraint.

Great writers work through their strengths and weaknesses in pieces no one will ever see. Some of them learn that their path to a great story hinges on great sentences. Others find that the devotion to ideas and style pays greater dividends. Some might suggest this is an author finding their voice. They do so in the course of reading others, trying to duplicate them, and eventually realizing what their own greater strengths and weaknesses are.

I might be wrong, but I don’t think any reader will finish Metamorphosis with a “Holy Crud!” reaction. The reader might start the story in that vein, but Kafka diminishes the shock of a human transforming into an Ungeziefer with a level of choreographed reality the reader might find mundane. Thus, when we finish the story, it sits on a shelf in our mind like preserved meat, until we process and digest it, in the manner we will a great sandwich. It might take a while, it might take an incident, but at some point concept of the story will hit us, and we’ll realize what a unique, and uniquely crafted story it was.

Whenever we read a great story, like Metamorphosis, we seek a reference point, a doorway into the mind of the author. Most great stories are about us, in some tangential manner. Some stories are so foreign to our experience that we cannot find our point of reference, because we can’t possibly find ourselves in such a ludicrous story. The brilliance of Kafka is that his writing relies on an axis of narcissism and objectivity. Is it narcissist to believe that every story is about us, or is it narcissist to believe that none of them are? How do we define a great story? How does a great story define us? Do we know someone for whom the author speaks, and do we wish they would read Kafka to understand themselves a little better? How would they do that, what do we hope they might understand, and are our answers to those questions autobiographical?

To paraphrase author David Foster Wallace, readers should imagine a door when they approach a Kafka work. We seek a doorway into Kafka’s mind so that we can understand his works a little better. We seek a reference point, a point of entry. When we think we’ve found the doorway, we start “pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it, we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and pushing and kicking, etc. That, finally, the door opens … and it opens outward: we’ve been inside what we wanted all along.” 

One of the primary duties of every writer is to elicit emotion in the reader. How well they do this defines them. For one writer, it might be about the sentences, and for another it might be the idea that story is sacred. Some stories elicit instantaneous reactions, and some require some slow roasting. Some people don’t want to think too much. They want instant stories that provide a clear path from clear A to Z that culminate in an exciting conclusion. Millions of these books move from writer to reader, and the readers love them. Some of us prefer stories, like the ones Franz Kafka wrote, that reach in and fiddle with some different switches embedded deep in our psyche.

Kafka was an impersonal writer who chose to ground his greatest fantastical tale in reality. Prior to Kafka, and since him, most writers felt a need to form the basis for the fantastical with the fantastical. It just doesn’t seem realistic that something so uncommon should happen in a common home of common people. Kafka doesn’t fight against commonality in the manner some will by suggesting that the common can become uncommon. He chose to wrap his ingredients of “luminous plainness” in the idea and style, two slices of bread that made his story Metamorphosis historic.  

The Quest for the Great, First Sentence

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This sentence, right here, is so difficult to write that it’s been known to cause stress, anxiety issues, depression, alcoholism, and in some prolonged cases even suicide. Why is the first sentence so important to writers? If that first sentence wasn’t intriguing or alluring in anyway, you might not be reading this sentence. The subject matter, combined with a great title, are vital to attract, developing a level of consistency will keep them coming back, but they might not read an article from the greatest writer who ever lived if their first sentence isn’t engaging enough to keep them wanting more. 

I wrote a great sentence once. After I wrote it, I couldn’t believe I wrote it. I kind of wrote it on auto-pilot, but when I was done, I took some time out of my day to stare at it and appreciate it. I was so proud. Wow, I thought, what a great sentence, and I wrote it. It can take writers hundreds to thousands of words to say what we want to say. Every once in a great while, we do it in one clear and concise sentence. When that sentence falls out of our head, no matter how hard we worked to achieve it, it almost slips out the witty womb.

The problem, I realized soon after I spent a minute appreciating it for what it was, was that that great sentence didn’t happen until I was all but done writing that article. I put in so much work into writing the article, that when the sentence arrived, I was mentally exhausted. Nearing the end of an article gives the writer as much a sense of completion as reading it does the reader. I’ve said what I wanted to say, and now…I’m…done with it. Wait a second, that was pretty good. That’s really good! 

As great as it felt to write such an incredible sentence, I felt like I was wasting it by putting it in the conclusion. Writers know that if we’re lucky enough to have a reader click on my article, most of them aren’t going read all the way through to the conclusion. With that in mind, I tried something revolutionary, for me anyway. I put that glorious sentence in the intro, and I rewrote the entire article to retrofit it. I rewrote an entire, 2,000 word article to show some sense of appreciation for whatever forces led me to create one great sentence. I also did it because great sentences don’t come along every day, and when they do, we need to build a proper shrine to them. Even though I worked my damn tail off to showcase this sentence, I’m still not sure if I paid it proper homage.  

***

Wait a second, I know what you’re saying about the difficulty of finding Great Sentences and all that, and the glory that follows, but you’re suggesting that I put a conclusion into the intro? “Is it a Great Sentence?” I understand, but don’t you agree that intros and conclusions have decidedly different feels and beats. “Is it a Great Sentence?” Yes, but certain beats and feels have a welcome mat feeling to them, some act as a quality bridge from on paragraph to another, and others just have a wrap up, parting feel to them. “Is it a Great Sentence? Just answer the question. 

“You get what I’m saying here, but your internal struggle will not permit you to put a conclusion into an intro.” It just feels like it would be breaking some kind of cardinal rule of writing to do so. “You don’t waste a Great Sentence by putting it in the back nine, and to every question you ask now, until the end of time, I’ll put, “You don’t waste a Great Sentence!” on repeat, in the manner of the refrain Chuck Palahniuk built for Fight Club: “You don’t talk about Fight Club!”    

The basic definition of a sentence is a string of words used to express a complete thought. There are only so many words an author can use in the English language an author can use to express a thought, some guess that that number is somewhere below 800,000. So, how does a writer achieve the difference between a proper sentence and a great one? It’s an impossible question to answer, as it’s so relative to the subject matter, the goal of the piece, and the manner in which we build a shrine to it after it occurs to us. The difference, in my humble opinion, is more clever than humorous. Humor is great, and it makes your article engaging and memorable, but clever, unique, insightful, and provocative are the crown of the realm. If you can achieve all that with a sharp level of brevity, the world will click a path to your door. “Brevity is the soul of wit,” as the bard once wrote. Seven words is better than eight, and if you can accomplish a profound, provocative point in fewer words all the power to you.  

Your definition of a Great Sentence you wrote is no better than mine, and vice versa. It’s not a competition. It’s an internal excavation process. As opposed to most other areas of life, I don’t view the creation of a Great Sentence in terms of competition. The best, and somewhat flawed analogy, I have for this is golf. 

I don’t know how anyone else analyses their frustratingly infrequent great shots in golf, but I don’t watch my shot thinking that, right there, was so much better than Larry’s. I just wallow in the glory of my great shot, and all of the horrible shots I took prior to that one won’t permit me to view that shot with any level of arrogance. All of the horrible shots I’ve taken in life have also beat me down to the point that it would be almost silly for me to think I might be a good, competitive golfer. I have had some really good shots though, and when they happen I might take a second to admire them, internally reward myself for finally getting one right, and I will then relive it as often as I can. 

There might be some level of competition in golf when it comes to comparing scorecards, but there are no members of a defense trying to curve that golf ball on the tee before we hit it, no one is trying to block our shot, and depending on how we golf, no one will try to tackle us to prevent us from getting to the ball. As with writing the Great Sentence, golf involves the struggle to synthesize the mind and body for the perfect hit. 

No matter how much experience, or training golfers and writers have, a great drive or putt, like a great sentence, surprises us as much as it does everyone else. We know when we hit it perfect, but if we knew how to perfect the mechanics of the shot, we’d do it every time out. 

A great sentence is a relative term, defined by the writer, as the perfect way of summarizing and synthesizing everything we want to say in a few words. It is also the payoff for all the hard work we’ve done leading up to it. When we put in all the hours of reading others’ works and writing our own, we hope that there will be some kind of payoff, or an ultimate clarification. Writing, or at least my writing, is as much about discovery as it is for readers, and the payoff for all the hard work I put into writing the article is that one Great Sentence that clarifies everything I was trying to convey, wraps it up, and puts what I consider a not too tart, not too sweet, Goldilock’s strawberry atop the pie.   

Some call the quest for the great first sentence, The Blinking Cursor Syndrome (cue the foreboding piano keys), others call it conquering the blank page and punching the plain parchment. It is a block, but I think it differs from the infamous writer’s block. I think writer’s block is more a movie contrivance, a trope if you will, than a reality. It portrays the character of the story, who happens to be a writer, as a complicated genius, or someone who’s lost it. We do have to be sympathetic to moviemakers for it wouldn’t be very interesting to watch a writer write. It’s much more dramatic, complicated and intriguing to watch a writer who lost it or can’t find it. True writers, I think, write through blocks, but the difficulty of finding that great, first sentence is real.

The quest for a great first sentence proved humbling for even the best writers. They sorted through hundreds to thousands of words to find the best combination of words before they find something they think hits it just right. Some of the most seasoned writers talked about the difficulty of writing great sentences, and how if they write one great sentence a day, it’s a good day, and most of them figure that about 1% of the sentences they write are great sentences. If that’s the case, what percentage of that percentage proved great enough to be a provocative, engaging first sentence? Some of the most famous writers have admitted that they spent so much time trying to find that perfect combination of words to start a new book that they turned to chemical enhancement as an aide. Before we condemn this for what it is, it does make sense in that they’re trying to approach the material from a fresh perspective, even if it is an altered state. By doing so, they’re also admitting that they couldn’t find it in their normal state, something with which we can all empathize, so they sought the altered state for assistance. They must have had precedent for this, or why would they continue to do it?  

Even for them, the greatest writers who have ever lived, I suspect that the Great Sentences did not arrive in the early gestation periods of the birthing process. Every writer has probably arrived at a great sentence or two in the first draft, but it happens so rarely that they can’t remember it.

Great sentences, in my experience, arrive after the framework is complete. In the beginning, we’re reporters. “Just the facts ma’am.” We’re reporting research, or just reporting our idea. There’s very little room creative writing, until we reach a point where we’re somewhat satisfied with the foundation we’ve laid for our story. This part of our process involves self-imposed stress, anxiety, and whatever we have that drives us to get it right. Once that is accomplished, and we start the cumbersome, and never-ending process of editing, revising, deleting, and rearranging, we relax into a more creative and more emotive state of mind, until we achieve a perfect conjugal symbiosis of a physical and chemical peak that  produces life.

In the final stage, we’re done with all the work, and we think, “What’s the perfect way of wrapping all this up?” That search is so much more relaxed, and when that “Aha!” moment finally arrives, and the writer writes a sentence that could be one of the best lines they’ve ever produced, it can change the theme and the entire scope of a project. It can also lead us to believe that every hour we spent writing to that point was a waste, unless we use it to help us find a better story or article than the original one we wrote.

“Was it a Great Sentence?” I know it when I see it, and yes, that was a great sentence. “Then rewrite the whole article accordingly.” I was done though, or so close to done that I felt done. Now, you’re saying I should rewrite everything? “If you write it, they might read.”

The internet is a blessing and curse for modern writers, as we now have greater access to more readers than anyone in history. The curse is that everyone else knows that same luxury. How do we separate ourselves from the pack, that overcrowded pack, and write a quality article that attracts some attention? A remedy, as opposed to the remedy, might be to take that one Great Sentence you wrote and worked your tail off achieve and put it into the most attractive spot in your article, the beginning. 

The problem arrives after we supplant that first lede with the original conclusion, and we need to create a new conclusion. What would happen if we arrived at a better sentence in that second conclusion, better than the first? Should we supplant the new lede with this second conclusion? Should we rinse and repeat, in other words, and keep repeating this cycle until we have a 2,019-word article of overlapping conclusions? I’ve yet to encounter such a problem, but if my next, edited conclusion is better than my first, I would go back and do it all over again, as often as it works. This process doesn’t always work, of course. As I wrote, some conclusions assume too much to be quality intros, but I think that in the age of hyper AD-HD, internet readers, writers have to do whatever we can to attract readers and keep their attention, and this was but one way I found to do it when I was writing an article and I created one beautiful and intoxicating Great Sentence.