Cole starts her sentence with a name: Nya Jerami. Both the first name and the last name fall outside the naming traditions I've seen the most of. That suggests Nya Jerami comes from a different world or culture. By starting with a name, Cole places that person at the center of her story.
Next, we see Nya take action: "returned her ... seat ... pushed aside her braids." She controls her situation, in at least these small ways. A character who acts is more appealing than one who passively suffers from outside forces.
The trappings of these actions begin to outline Nya's world. Her seat is "obscenely comfortable," suggesting great wealth. She has "wireless earplugs," suggesting modern technology. "Seat to the upright position" is a phrase belonging to airplane travel. Nya is traveling in style.
Notice how the punctuation makes this sentence easier to read. The comma separates Nya's two actions, and with "then" clearly shows that Nya completes one action before starting the next. The dash makes a more emphasized break in the sentence. After the dash, Nya is no longer acting – we are seeing the reason for her actions: "no amount of relaxing meditation music was going to make her feel better" so there is no reason for her to leave the ear plugs in to continue listening.
The very last phrase shows what she is stressed about "returning home to Thesolo." This shows the conflict. Home is often a place of comfort, but Nya feels bad about going there. Where is Thesolo? The specific technology of our world – reclining seats and wireless earplugs – meet the name of a place that doesn't exist in our world. We are in a slightly different world, with elements of fantasy – great wealth and an unknown place – beside elements of reality.
The strong, final word both shows us that this is an alternate reality and completes the sentence's description of Nya. She is a woman with braids from Thesolo.
The sentence contains character, world, and conflict, action, feeling, and description.
Cole could have broken it into three sentences: "Nya Jerami returned her obscenely comfortable seat to the upright position," "She pushed aside her braids to remove the wireless earplugs from her ears," and "No amount of relaxing meditation music was going to make her feel better about returning home to Thesolo." That would have felt like these three concepts were less tightly tied together, and it would also have slowed the readers' arrival at the conflict, as we pause longer at periods than we do at commas or dashes. If the first sentence stops at "upright position," Nya has fewer dimensions. We've only seen her comfort at that point – not her braids, her home, or her sadness.
The choice to combine those three sentences works here, and Cole's punctuation supports that choice beautifully. The rhythm of the sentence, with mostly one or two unstressed syllables between stressed syllables, also makes the long sentence easier on the ear.
I have extra admiration for sentences that open a story well in few words. To use this greater number of words, and keep the sentence clear and smooth, and capture this many story elements, is also good writing.
Graphic elements by Ken Silbert