Technique

In “To Build a Fire,” Jack London uses varying sentence lengths to set the story’s pace.

The story’s opening paragraph features a combination of long and short sentences that signal pace changes based on the narrative focus. When the focus is on the male protagonist, the sentences are short and match his realistic actions, and when the focus is on the landscape, they’re long and sprawling to describe the scene. Look at the first three sentences:

“Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland.  It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch.  It was nine o’clock.”

The first sentence describes the landscape (setting) and it’s the longest of the three. London repeats that the day is “cold and grey” twice, signaling to the reader that the landscape is long and unforgiving, and then stuffs multiple descriptions of the landscape into the same sentence: the Yukon trail, the bank, another trail, and spruce trees. When the focus shifts to the protagonist reaching the bank and checking the time, the sentence shortens. Then it shortens even more to the time because that’s the protagonist’s only focus.

In the paragraph’s final five sentences, the sentence length shifts again based on the narrative focus of landscape versus protagonist:

“There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky.  It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun.  This fact did not worry the man.  He was used to the lack of sun.  It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the sky-line and dip immediately from view.”

The focus quickly shifts back to the dark landscape in the leading sentence. As the landscape is further described, the second sentence grows longer, emphasizing the unforgiving and sprawling scene. Then the focus shifts back to the male protagonist, leading to a very short third sentence before lengthening again in the final two sentences.

London builds and slows the story’s pace through varying sentence lengths, decreasing with long sentences that describe the scene and increasing with short sentences of the protagonist’s actions.

Use

• Write short and direct sentences built around verbs and not adjectives to emphasize quick actions.
• Slow the story and reader pace with long, adjective-laden sentences that focus on close observation. The five senses are an easy way to extend sentence length while relating to the reader.
• The story’s overall pace should build toward the climax or conclusion. For example, Jean Racine created a vortex of emotions by stacking active verbs toward the end of Phaedra. By contrast, George Moore wrote long descriptions of the countryside to match the slow lifestyle in Ireland and short descriptions that collapsed time when describing the fast lifestyle in America.