An epigraph, likely chosen with care, though it is not impossible that it is the product of a last-minute Google search; a place setting and an empty chair; the expectation of an explanation, somewhere down the line. —A Name, Possibly Prominent.
To begin, an anecdote, a gentle easing into things. Personal in nature and recalling, let’s say, adolescence. Something mildly, but not explicitly, sexual, in order to pique the interest of a fast-browsing reader. After the setup, the setting—a place and time evoked in a long and rolling sentence, with parentheticals, to set the context of the coming scene, which is childhood, or close, in childhood’s long shadow. A humorous detail (a man, his dog, an accounting of their antics) to keep things rolling and then the crux of the matter comes suddenly into focus. A happening. Unclear, at first, what the resolution will be; unclear until the very moment of its unveiling. What follows are clipped sentences, for emphasis. The breathlessness of youth. Of remembering it. At the close of the scene a lesson is learned, or else, conspicuously not. And then comes something analogous. A situation which the anecdote speaks to in a tertiary way—the same human tic, forces meeting in opposition at the same angle—something with which you are familiar, staying in touch, as you do, with today’s news and culture (the latter of which seems, always, slightly lacking).
An intellectual, a name you should have heard before at least in passing at a party, or skimmed over in the introduction of a book, if you are not already quite familiar. Here, the presentation of a piece of information culled from their work, a short quotation, a self-important paraphrase, supplied in a vacuum. A nibblet of something you should be familiar with (to your shame, if you are not; to your satisfaction, if you are), taken from an original context as one would pull a cube of meat from a skewer, carefully but with bared teeth, and set here, cleverly, so that the issue in question might take on a glow (if a reflected one) of its own. The issues of the day are timeless, and other timeless issues will speak to them. It is implicit that you must make a note of the work the quotation came from, and find a used copy online, or at your local bookstore. Then a short sentence. To bring you back.
It is noted that there was a time, and this is true, when the issue in question was handled in a less ignoble way, and here that way will be described. First in broad strokes; here is the mastermind, here her origin, and here the inspiration that led her on to greatness. Here are the steps she took. The first, halting, uncertain, but with great promise. Then the accomplishments begin to accumulate, each leading into the next. It must be acknowledged that there were a few duds, which may have been the product of mere misinterpretation, scattered along the way. The details now, sanded down to their thinnest and most glossy, so as not to be obtuse. To wit, here:
An excerpt from the notable work in question. A particularly elegant piece of prose, speaking to the human condition and all of its pitfalls, oddities, and opportunities for transcendence. Or rather, speaking to the possibility of doing so, as part of a larger whole; being so limited in scope, as a brief excerpt, there can be only the tip of what, presumably, is a very large iceberg.
And here is a connection to what seemed before an inaccessible giant—the surviving family, the proud friend. A private moment of weakness or vice, recalled within a broader context of respect. Adulation, even. There is an aftertaste of—could it be?—a budding cult of personality. But then it is abandoned.
Now a rolling-up of sleeves. A workmanlike sentence, to bring us back to the present and establish for the moment the idea that there may be, in the present, only the legacies of past greatness. But then a qualification. All is not lost—something may be afoot, somewhere.
A young gun, young being a relative term, is here introduced. A summary of their work, culminating in its latest, most promising iteration. A summary of that latest work, and a brief rundown of its strengths: the one, the other, a final. A longer sentence, designed to make its point not only in content but in form, which makes the case that each individual is fundamentally interconnected, the past bleeding into the present, in the process of being remade, with a quote, “indicating in the younger’s words the influence of the older.”
And now, case closed, there is satisfaction, and resolution, culminating in this, the prescribed eight-hundredth word.