The best sentences use words to paint a scene

Delightful sentences abound — in books, newspapers and magazines, and also in internet newsletters that invite readers to submit favorites.

A year ago, when I invited readers to do so, compelling examples flooded in, like this line from the TV drama "Downton Abbey," in which the actor Maggie Smith, as the Dowager Countess, taunts a political rival: "Does it ever get cold on the moral high ground?"

So now, I present three of my new favorite sentences, just written by a reader of this column, Sharon Wagner, a Minneapolis artist and writer who reports with glee that her first magazine article was just published.

Delight hardly describes my elation at her skill. In a travel magazine, Wagner described her experience of ambling along a Costa Rican beach:

"You may find an old boat abandoned on the sand, filled with nets and anchors, set against a vast stretch of coastline. Or a weird bone, leftover coconut, smooth stone, or seashell at your feet. At low tide, big rocks dot the sand, like the surface of a chocolate chip cookie, and overhead, inaudible trails of pelicans skim the sky."

To my mind, she meets the lofty standard that the master writer Joseph Conrad set: "My task, which I am trying to achieve, is by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, above all, to make you see. That — and no more — and it is everything."

Surely, we can see that beach. Can't you feel the ocean air? And though we can't hear those pelicans, we can imagine their sound aloft.

Now look at the verb she so carefully chose in "trails of pelicans skim the sky."

It all reminds me of a line from the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem "God's Grandeur":

"There lives the dearest freshness deep down things."

Wagner captures that freshness, with originality, as in this simile: "At low tide, big rocks dot the sand, like the surface of a chocolate chip cookie ..."

I wrote to congratulate Wagner, and she replied:

"Thank you for your feedback! It fortified my heart. I have a novel under consideration by a publisher and your feedback made it seem like a yes is possible."

She set a great example. Let's follow it as we cheer her on.

Twin Cities writing coach Gary Gilson, who teaches journalism at Colorado College, can be reached through writebetterwithgary.com.