How to deve­l­ope sen­tences in the style of David Fos­ter Wal­lace (visit Jason’s post to see an exam­ple of how pow­er­ful this can be for prose):

  1. Begin with an idea, a string of ideas.
  2. Use them in a com­pound sentence.
  3. Add rhythm with a depen­dent clause.
  4. Elab­o­rate using a com­plete sen­tence as inter­rupt­ing modifier.
  5. Append an absolute con­struc­tion or two.
  6. Paralell-o-rize your struc­ture (turn one noun into two).

STOP HERE IF YOU ARE A MINIMALIST, WRITING COACH, OR JAMES WOOD

  1. Adjec­ti­val phrases: lots of them. (Note: apprx. 50% will include the word ‘little’).
  2. Throw in an adverb or two (never more than one third the num­ber of adjectives).
  3. Elab­o­ra­tion — mostly unnec­es­sary. Here you’ll turn nouns phrases into longer noun phrases; verbs phrases into longer verb phrases. This is largely a mat­ter of syn­onyms and prepo­si­tions. Don’t be afraid to be vague! Ide­ally, these elab­o­ra­tions will con­tribute to voice — for exam­ple, ‘had a hand in’ is longer than ‘helped’, but still kinda voice-y — but that’s just gravy. The goal here is word count.

STOP HERE IF YOU ARE NOT WRITING PARODY

  1. Give it that Wal­lace shine. Replace com­mon words with their oddly spe­cific, scientific-y coun­ter­parts. (Ex: ‘curved fin­gers’ into ‘fal­cate dig­its’). If you can turn a noun into a brand name, do it. (Ex: ‘shoes’ into ‘Hush Pup­pies,’ ‘cam­era’ into ‘Bolex’). Finally, go crazy with the pos­ses­sives. Who wants a tri­pod when they could have a ‘tunnel’s locked lab’s tri­pod’? Ahem.
  2. Prac­tice. Take one sen­tence — any sen­tence — and Wal­la­cize it. Turn ten bor­ing words into a hun­dred good ones.

I sup­pose you could say that this tech­nique is almost the antithe­sis of William Zinsser’s style.