2. The monster sentence. Begin with a simple short sentence—“I baked bread”—subject verb object—and then turn it into a “monster sentence” of at least 100 words. This exercise is straight out of Stanley Fish's playbook. Use every trick you know to ensure that the sentence is grammatically correct and not a run-on, use long dashes (em-dashes), semicolons, lists. Then explain what you’ve created, reviewing what you’ve written, phrase by phrase. NOTE: The explanation should be longer than the original sentence. Write nonfiction, then explain your work.

My assignment grew long, I mean reeeeealy long. I only needed 100 words and I have considerably more words… and that’s after I edited and carved it back a little. Then I revised and cut it back into shorter (but still with monster) sentences. And that’s when I found the point of it all.

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