We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive. …” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.

That’s the opening of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, and this is one hell of an opening.

That first sentence starts calm, almost conversational — but then it goes straight to: “when the drugs began to take hold.”

That turn comes FAST, and then everything unravels after that.

We go from a dizzy aside (“I feel a bit lightheaded…”) to full-on spiraling: “…a terrible roar all … and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car…”

What’s cool is the chaos doesn’t come from short, frantic sentences. It actually comes from a long sentence that just runs and runs and runs and stretches out and builds up speed like the car itself. And the rhythm mirrors the drug trip. It’s disorienting and fast and packed with tons of sensory details.

So here are 3 takeaways you can try in your own writing:

#1. Start with dissonance. A calm tone followed by something jarring (“We were somewhere around Barstow”… “when the drugs began to take hold”).

#2. Use long sentences to simulate momentum. If your character’s spinning out, let the sentence spin with them, AND…

#3. Let your rhythm reflect the experience the character’s going through. Here, the writing feels like a bad trip that’s spinning out and being processed in real time.

Watch the video for the full visual breakdown 👇

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