Friday Catalyst: When Flat Sentences Sharpen the Blade Exercise

Friday Catalyst: When Flat Sentences Sharpen the Blade Exercise

The discipline you are avoiding is usually not complexity but restraint; originality arrives faster when you allow yourself to write sentences that risk being dull long after enough for the necessary ones to become dangerous.

This exercise treats the sentence as the primary unit of craft. Character exists only as a byproduct of linguistic choice, not as a subject of exploration.

1. Key writing practice development techniques

Sentence contrast as engine. Momentum emerges from adjacency: heightened sentences gain force when placed beside restrained or ordinary ones.

Purposeful flatness. Unglamorous sentences operate as structural supports, not filler, shaping rhythm and reader attention.

Transformative imitation at the level of syntax. Borrowing occurs in sentence moves, not tone or voice, and is dismantled through revision until unrecognizable.

2. The 500-word writing prompt

Write a 500-word prose passage focused on a single continuous action: a sequence of movements, procedural steps, or repeated gestures carried out in real time. No named characters. No backstory. No stated emotions. No explanation of significance.

The passage advances through sentence construction alone.

Requirements:

– Each sentence must differ in length, rhythm, or structure from the one before it.

– Insert three deliberately plain sentences that do nothing but report physical fact.

– Insert three sentences that stretch syntax, compress time, or bend expectation.

– Place at least one plain sentence immediately after a heightened one.

– Revise until no sentence feels replaceable.

End the passage without closure. Stop mid-motion.

3. Evaluation criteria for success

Sentences create propulsion independent of content.

Plain sentences feel intentional and stabilizing rather than inert.

Heightened sentences feel earned through contrast, not decoration.

No sentence announces importance through emphasis or abstraction.

The passage could not be summarized without losing its effect.

Strong response example:

A passage where a simple procedural sentence cools the reader just enough to make the following syntactic risk land with precision.

Weak response example:

Uniform lyricism, ornamental phrasing, or consecutive sentences that perform the same job with different words.

4. Follow-up questions for workshopping and revision

Which sentence does the passage rely on too heavily?

Where does rhythm flatten, and is that flattening useful or accidental?

Which sentence survives only because it sounds good?

What happens if the most elegant sentence is replaced with something blunt?

Where could a boring sentence do more work than a clever one?

5. Recommended published example

Nicholson Baker, an excerpt from The Mezzanine. Focus on how procedural attention, digression, and tonal flatness generate momentum. Notice how sentences accrue pressure through accumulation, contrast, and placement rather than plot or character revelation.

Optional comparative reading:

Jon McGregor, an excerpt from Reservoir 13, paying attention to how ordinary reporting sentences gain force through repetition, modulation, and restraint.

AI Disclosure Statement:

This writing prompt was created in collaboration with ChatGPT, an AI model by OpenAI, to support creative practice. ChatGPT assisted with idea generation and drafting; the final text was edited by the author. The illustration was created using Google Gemini.