How Scott Russell Sanders Can Help Improve Your
SENTENCE FLUENCY
The following information uses “Under the Influence: Paying the Price of My Father’s Booze,” by Scott
Russell Sanders, to illustrate good examples of sentence fluency and style in first person narrative. It is
especially useful for students attempting to improve their scores in original composition narratives for
provincial exams.
S. R. Sanders is a master of the turn of a phrase. He purposely manipulates specific structures in order
to achieve desired effects.
EARLY in a first person narrative, just like in any short story, it’s important to grab attention. Sanders does this
in a few ways:
1. He begins with a short sentence: My father drank.
Notice how direct and to the point this statement is. A nice, concise statement (ten words or fewer)
can give a good, snappy, quick start to a composition. Never forget the value of a short sentence to
grab attention.
2. He uses figurative language (simile, in this case) to paint a picture in your mind:
He drank as a gut-punched boxer gasps for breath, as a starving dog gobbles food…
There is yet another technique he makes use of, especially early in this composition, to get a great amount of
detail into the writing. It’s called
3. The rule of 3. Because of the conventions of use in the English language, readers often expect lists to
have three parts to them. Sanders makes use of this expectation in the beginning part of his
composition in order to add to the details he gives readers. Here are some of the many early examples:
Paragraph 1:
…as a starving dog gobbles food—compulsively, secretly, in fear and trembling.
…heart bursting, body cooling, slumped and forsaken on the linoleum of my brother’s trailer.
Paragraph 2:
…the flat green bottles of wine, the brown cylinders of whiskey, the cans of beer disguised in paper bags.
… he stashes the bottle or can inside his jacket, under the workbench, between two bales of hay….
Paragraphs 3, 4, and 5
[Notice how here, he uses exactly three paragraphs of dialogue to break up the exposition.]
Paragraph 6:
… we children interrupt our game of catch, our building of snow forts, our picking of plums, to watch in
silence.… [Like the wine, whiskey and beer, and the jacket, workbench and hay examples, the rule of three is
used here to condense time. His drinking is NOT a one-time occurrence; it happens with many kinds of alcohol,
in many different places, at any time of the year.]
AFTER HE CLEARLY ESTABLISHES THE SETTING, and has successfully created the pictures he wants in the minds
of his readers, he shifts technique. You don’t notice him employing the Rule of 3 as much, but instead, he
begins to purposefully employ another technique in order to drive home the seriousness of the situation:
REPETITION
Poets and short story writers don’t often repeat themselves. When they do, it’s a signal to pay attention –
something is being emphasized and the authors clearly want their readers to sit up and take notice. Here’s how
Sanders uses it, in a single paragraph:
…I lie there hating him, loving him, fearing him, knowing I have failed him.
I tell myself he drinks to ease the ache that gnaws at his belly, an ache I must have caused by disappointing him
somehow, a murderous ache I should be able to relieve….
He would not hide the green bottles in his toolbox, would not sneak off to the barn with a lump under his coat,
would not fall asleep in the daylight, would not roar and fume, would not drink himself to death, if only I were
perfect.
Notice the word that begins the very next paragraph: “I.” He has gotten attention, given details, emphasized
the seriousness of the situation through repetition, and now that he has us, he gets into his personal story.
When it becomes too painful, he backs off into exposition (paragraph 9 and 10) and then gets back to his own
story in paragraph 11 (ebb and flow, ebb and flow…)
It’s impressive to see the purposeful manipulation of craft. Here then, there are some other techniques used
throughout the writing that are equally as masterful.
THE LINK/ THE CIRCLE
Often, Sanders will use an image or a phrase that he will later link back to. Depending on the strength of the
phrase, he will either link it fairly quickly (if it is a weak image) or later on (if it is a stronger one).
WEAKER IMAGES, connected to each other fairly quickly:
Paragraphs 1 and 2:
I use the past tense not because he ever quit drinking but because he quit living… In the perennial present of
memory, …
That is how the story ends for my father…. The story continues for my brother, my sister, my mother, and me,
and will continue as long as memory holds.
STRONGER IMAGES, many paragraphs apart:
Paragraph 6, linked to paragraph 16:
All evening, until our bedtimes, we tiptoe past him, as past a snoring dragon…. The mints he chewed to
camouflage his dragon’s breath.
Paragraph 44, linked to a brilliant final line in paragraph 55:
I watch the amber liquid pour down his throat, the alcohol steal into his blood, the key turn in his brain…. I
listen for the turning of a key in my brain.
SOUND DEVICES
Good writers also pay attention to how their words sound when read aloud. Here are a few of the sound
devices Sanders makes use of:
ALLITERATION:
Paragraph 2: In the perennial present …
Paragraph 12: …could transform … a buddy into a bully …
ONOMATOPOEIA:
Paragraph 6:
Eventually he wakes up with a grunt, Mother slings accusations at him, he snarls back, she yells, he growls,
their voices clashing.
Paragraph 7: ...turning the pages of the newspaper with a savage crackle…
CACOPHONY / DISSONANCE:
Paragraph 14: The secret bores under the skin, gets in the blood, into the bone…
PARALLELISM
Paragraph 8: What had seemed to me a private grief is in fact, of course, a public scourge.
Paragraph 50: I failed of perfection; he succeeded in dying.
Paragraph 55: I still do—once a week, perhaps, a glass of wine, a can of beer, nothing stronger, nothing more.
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Figurative language is not simply for poets; good writers make use of it… period. We’ve seen how
Sanders used simile early on in his writing. Here are a few more examples of his use of figurative language:
SIMILE:
Paragraph 12: Like a torture victim who refuses to squeal…
Paragraph 52: Guilt burns like acid in my veins.
PERSONIFICATION:
Paragraph 2: …his bloodshot gaze bumping into me…
Paragraph 7: …the ache that gnaws at his belly…
ALLUSION:
Paragraph 11: Over the grinning mask of Dionysus, the leering face of Bacchus, these children cannot help
seeing the bloated features of their own parents.
Paragraph 12: No dictionary of synonyms for drunk would soften the anguish of watching our prince turn into a
frog.
EXTENDED METAPHOR:
Paragraph 15:
For a long stretch of my childhood we lived on a military reservation in Ohio, an arsenal where bombs were
stored underground in bunkers and vintage airplanes burst into flames and unstable artillery shells boomed
nightly at the dump. We had the feeling, as children, that we played within a minefield, where a heedless
footfall could trigger an explosion. When Father was drinking, the house, too, became a minefield. The least
bump could set off either parent.
HYPERBOLE:
Paragraph 7: The roof might fly off, the walls might buckle from the pressure of his rage.
UNDERSTATEMENT:
Paragraph 8: …I am still ten years old…
PARTICIPLE PHRASES:
Sanders uses participle phrases, at times in combinations with other techniques, to achieve a variety of effects.
To include a great amount of detail:
Paragraph 7:
…our father prowls the house, thumping into furniture, rummaging in the kitchen, slamming doors, turning the
pages of a newspaper with a savage crackle, muttering back at the late-night drivel from television.
To prove a meaningful link:
Paragraphs 6 and 7:
Shaking her head, our mother…
Left alone, our father…
[I also find it interesting how the writer works in a present participle for his mother, alive at the time of this
writing, and a past participle for his father, who had died by then. Coincidence?]
To use, in combination, with the Rule of 3:
Paragraph 1: …heart bursting, body cooling, slumped and forsaken on the linoleum…
VARIETY OF SENTENCE LENGTHS:
Note the writer’s ability to grab attention with both long and short sentences.
LONG SENTENCE
Paragraph 6:
In memory, his white 1951 Pontiac with the stripes down the hood and the Indian head on the snout lurches to a
stop in the driveway; or is it the 1956 Ford station wagon, or the 1963 Rambler shaped like a toad, or the sleek
1969 Bonneville that will do 120 miles per hour on straightaways; or is it the robin’s egg-blue pickup, new in
1980, battered in 1981, the year of his death.
Short sentence:
First, read paragraph 10:
It is a mostly humorous lexicon, as the love that deals with drunks – in jokes and cartoons, in plays, films
and television skits -- is largely comic. Aunt Matilda nips elderberry wine from the sideboard and burps politely
during supper. Uncle Fred slouches to the table glassy-eyed, wearing a lampshade for a hat and murmuring,
“Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.” Inspired by cocktails, Mrs. Somebody recounts the events of her day in a
fuzzy dialect, while Mr. Somebody nibbles her ear and croons a bawdy song. On the sofa with Boyfriend,
Daughter Somebody giggles, licking gin from her lips, and loosens the bows in her hair. Junior knocks back some
brews with his chums in the Leopard Lounge and stumbles home to the wrong house, wonders foggily why he
cannot locate his pajamas, and crawls naked into bed with the ugliest girl in the school. The family dog slurps
from a neglected martini and wobbles to the nursery, where he vomits in Baby’s shoe.
Now look at the short sentence that follows it:
It is all great fun.
Sanders sets up the reader with a lengthy paragraph full of stereotypes, then comes in for the kill with a short
sentence that is highly sarcastic.
Also note the short first sentence and short final sentence that the narrative begins and ends with. It makes a
nice connection, a well-finished piece of writing.
Chuck Baker
The Writing Coach