One Great Sentence

“He was followed by 30 seconds of silence, during which every sigh toured the walls of the church.”

By Jacqui Banaszynski• One Great Sentence• May 3, 2019

Now and again, in the wonderful world of reading, you stumble across a sentence that not only evokes a response or feeling because of what it says, but because of how it says it. This is one of those sentences. Read more

“She stares at me, but it feels like she’s looking at who I used to be, her little girl with ponytails and a snaggletooth who swore she was a Powerpuff Girl.”

By Jill U. Adams• One Great Sentence• March 20, 2019

This sentence contains everything that good narrative writing should. There’s the specific detail of the narrator, and there’s universality — the wonder we humans experience when faced with a child growing up. It seems remarkable to me that we … Read more

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!'”

By Curt Brown• One Great Sentence• March 13, 2019

Why I like it: I imagine my high school grammar teacher, Ms. Weiner, trying to diagram this sentence. We all seek characters to drive our stories. Here, Kerouac lists requirements for the characters that attract him — … Read more

“I’m thinking longer term, in geologic time, doing just what I can each day and not putting it off because it won’t be brilliant.”

By Jill U. Adams• One Great Sentence• February 20, 2019

When I encountered this sentence, I took it personally. I like being brilliant. I like it so much that I don’t write as much as I should. It’s uncomfortable to start writing, to try to flesh out a thought, … Read more

“I work like a watchmaker or an old-fashioned silversmith: one eye screwed up, the other fitted with a watchmaker’s magnifying glass, with a fine tweezers between my fingers, with bits of paper … in front of me on my desk on which I have written various words, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and bits of dismantled sentences, fragments of expressions and descriptions and all kinds of tentative combinations. Every now and again I pick up one of these particles, these molecules of text, carefully with my tweezers, hold it up to the light and examine it carefully, turn it in various directions, lean forward and rub it or polish it, hold it up to the light again, rub it again slightly, then lean forward and fit it into the texture of the cloth I am weaving.”

By Curt Brown• One Great Sentence• February 13, 2019

As journalists, we strive for terse, pithy sentences. Then comes this sprawling description of writing in which the writer becomes a silversmith, watchmaker, weaver and, ultimately, a chemist. Using the word “carefully” twice, Oz takes this … Read more

“There’s a story he’s waiting for, long before he comes across it.”

By Jacqui Banaszynski• One Great Sentence• January 16, 2019

In the original context of “The Overstory,” this sentence applies to a young man — a teenager, actually — who tumbles into the little-known language of coding and programming in the nascent days of computing. The … Read more

“Everyone likes to reminisce, but no one wants to listen, and everyone feels annoyed when someone else tells a story.”

By Jacqui Banaszynski• One Great Sentence• January 1, 2019

There is much to consider in “The Three-Body Problem,” the first in a trilogy by Chinese science fiction novelist Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu). Much of it – physics, astronomy, technology – is beyond my … Read more

“We don’t carry that brand, but I think Gimbel’s does.”

By Jacqui Banaszynski• One Great Sentence• November 28, 2018

If this choice for One Great Sentence seems odd, rest assured we’re not going to go all holiday sappy on you. That’s what the Hallmark holiday movie channels are for. Instead, when this line zipped by in my annual … Read more

“…readers want to feel secure in the hands of the author.”

By Jacqui Banaszynski• One Great Sentence• November 21, 2018

This simple statement stands as a truism for all storytellers, regardless of platform or genre. Every writer, filmmaker, photographer, illustrator, podcaster, editor and teacher of same should keep some version of it close at hand. Have it cross-stitched and framed … Read more

“And a lean, silent figure slowly fades into the gathering darkness, aware at last that in this world, with great power there must also come – great responsibility!”

By Jacqui Banaszynski• One Great Sentence• November 14, 2018

 That’s how Stan Lee introduced Spider-Man to Marvel Comics readers in 1962. The narrator pronounces these words, which so many of us have heard so many times, in the last panel of Amazing Fantasy #15. They … Read more