Sentence Composing #5-Delayed Adjectives- Practice 4 and 5

Practice 4: Imitating

Directions: Identify the delayed adjectives in the models and sample imitations. Then write an imitation of each model sentence, one sentence part at a time.

1. Dumpster diving is outdoor work, often surprisingly pleasant.
--Lars Eighner, "On Dumpster Diving"

Sample: Doing homework is necessary discipline, sometimes incredibly helpful.
Example: Running a marathon is very hard, but incredibly satisfying.

2. The baby's eyes were the shape of watermelon seeds, very black and cut very precisely into her small, solemn face.
--Anne Tyler, Digging to America

Sample: The unspoken pain was the weight of river rocks ,very heavy and embedded most certainly into her aching body.

Example: The unfathomable aching was from being hit in the arm, repeatedly and accurately into the same spot on the body.

3. I shivered as he tossed the feathered corpse of the dead chicken, limp as a cloth, into the back of the truck.
--Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Sample: I stared as he threw the battered ball from the garbage can, smelly as a foot, into the field of the pitcher.

Example: The crowd looked on as she ran around the field, fast as the wind, around each base.

Practice 5: Expanding

The delayed adjectives are omitted at the caret mark (^) in the following sentences. For each caret, add a delayed adjective or adjective phrase, blending your content and style with the rest of the sentence.
1. The man topple to one side, crumpled against the railing, ^unconscious.
--Robert Ludlum, The Prometheus Deception

2. The spiders like of their sides, ^calm and ^unmoving, their legs drying in knots.
--Annie Dillard, "Death of a Moth"

3. He was twenty-sex, dark haired ^handsome, ^strong, ^smart, and ^friendly.
--John Steinbeck, Cannery Row