Tool of the Month: Complex Sentences
My mother, who is passionate about family history and is an indefatigable researcher, has enlisted my editing help for a host of books: two about my father, two collections of my grandmother’s letters (one between her and her elder relatives and another that depicted her courtship with my grandfather) and a tome about our polygamous ancestors. Still hungry for more, she asked me to help her with her own personal history.
She assembled mounds of material, including her travel journals, written correspondence, and papers she wrote as a maseter’s degree student. As we discussed what to include and how to organize and shape the material she had amassed, we had the same conversation many times. To her, the very fact that she experienced something merited its inclusion. Not so, I stressed in what I hope was a kind yet firm way.
To tell our stories well and engage readers, we can’t just list one event, person, or place after another. Rather, we must think critically about the narrative we want to tell and ask ourselves whether each element we want to include serves that narrative. It’s up to us as writers to then link the separate strands of our lives so that our readers see patterns and understand how we became the remarkable people we are.
On a micro level, writing in complex sentences is one of the ways we move from publishing an archive of information (imagine hundreds of compound sentences piled on top of each other) into an interesting story (imagine complex sentences elegantly woven together). The following lesson on complex sentences pulls examples from my mother’s personal history.
Compound Sentences
A compound sentence combines two complete sentences (aka independent clauses) with one of seven linking words. Called coordinating conjunctions, these words include “for,” “and,” “nor,” “but,” “or,” “yet,” and “so.”
[Independent clause A] I grew up in Blackfoot, Idaho.
[Independent clause B] I moved to Chicago in my mid-twenties.
[Compound sentence=A+B] I grew up in Blackfoot, Idaho, and I moved to Chicago in my mid-twenties.
Both sentences A and B tell us something about my mother. When they are combined with “and,” the result is a compound sentence. However, putting these two chunks of information next to each other does not connect them beyond proximity. We aren’t shown how one relates to the other. The two do not “talk to each other.”
Complex Sentences
Complex sentences do talk to each other. In a complex sentence, an independent clause is paired with a dependent clause (a clause that has a subject and a verb but cannot stand on its own as a sentence). Such a construction allows the writer to show cause and effect as well as comparing and contrasting.
[Dependent clause]: Because I grew up in Blackfoot, a small farming town in southeastern Idaho.
[Independent clause]: Moving to the Southside of Chicago in my mid-twenties was a very disorienting experience.
[Complex sentence=Dependent clause+Independent clause]: Because I grew up in Blackfoot, a small farming town in southeastern Idaho, moving to the Southside of Chicago in my mid-twenties was a very disorienting experience.
Combined together, the two clauses help us understand how growing up in one place and moving to another affected my mother.
As you write or tell stories about your own life, try your hand at complex sentences. Ask yourself how two different events are connected to each other. Draw lines from one feeling to another. As you do, your life will come into focus and your readers will be drawn into narrative.
