Category Archives: Grammar Tips
Lawson Writers’ Academy
I’m not sure what happened to July, but it seems that I’ve missed it. August is fully upon us and school starts next week–yikes. I do have a pretty good excuse: I moved. After a year on the market, my house finally sold (for much less than we paid, but sold is sold). And we’ve been settling into a new house.
But I don’t want to yammer on about my house. I wanted to share with everyone a resource. This past week I attended an immersion class with Margie and Tiffany Lawson, a dynamic mother-daughter editing team. It was FABULOUS! I can’t say enough about this workshop. My brain felt like mush after the week, but I learned so much (check out my rewrites). I met some awesome people and actually feel a little bit more like an actual “writer.” Hopefully, this will get me one step closer to publication.
If you are interested in taking a workshop or class with these dynamic people, read on…
Margie is a psychologist/professional editor. She has developed an editing system which allows writers to see into their own patterns and vices. She pushes us to go beyond our clichés and comfort zones to push our writing right to the top of our ability.
Tiffany is an actress turned editor. Her unique background helps writers look beyond what’s on the page. She forces us to work on body language, emotions and cause-effect relationships, resulting in strong, believable worlds full of real people. Tiffany took my writing from blah to a lesson in excitement.
If you want to get your writing published and you’re getting mixed reviews from agents, take a class with Margie or Tiffany Lawson. They are well worth every penny.
Check out the Lawson Writer’s Academy HERE.
Helpful Writing Sites
**Last day to enter my contest for a free set of Mortal Instruments books**
Earlier this week a fellow writer shared an editing site called AutoCrit with me. Now I’m hooked. You can sign up for a full subscription, but it also has a free feature where you can submit a chunk of your work and it will scan it for overused words, nasty adverbs and repeated phrases. Because this was such a find I thought I’d share some of my favorite writing sites.
TheNextBigWriter is a site where writers can get together, critique each others’ work and generally chat about writing. It is a paid subscription, but well worth it.
PlotWhisperer offers tips and advice for one of the most important elements of any story, the plot. It also holds December’s PlotWriMo where participants of NaNoWriMo can follow a structured program that helps edits the novel’s plotline.
Once your novel’s complete, QueryTracker is your next stop. This site offers (for free) a place to find agents who are accepting queries, but it also allows you to check out who is more accepting versus more likely to reject. The best feature is the ability to track your own queries, who you’ve sent to and their response.
Writer’s Toolbox Wednesday: Sentence Variety
Last post quote–”Enter Sandman” by Metallica (a classic)
Tonight’s song quote was inspired by the weather outside. It’s snowing here and I’m not looking forward to the drive to work in the morning, so…
And it’s off to the morning and back again.
Same old day, same situation…
I wanna stay home today (don’t wanna go out)
The weather aside, I thought we’d continue the topic of sentences and why we need all these rules. The point of all of these rules really comes down to simulating spoken language. Gary Provost does and excellent job of showing what I’m talking about in his book, 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing. The paragraph below is an excerpt from his book which illustrates how punctuation, specifically sentence breaks create art with the written word…
This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals—sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
So write with a combination of short, medium and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader’s ear. Don’t just write words. Write music.
–100 Ways to Improve Your Writing by Gary Provost
What’s the best paragraph of writing you’ve ever heard sing?
Writer’s Toolbox Wednesday: Rule of Opposites
Last week we talked about sentences and the purpose of fragments. To recap it works like this—the purpose of grammar isn’t to torture poor kids in school (that’s just an added bonus); it’s to guide readers so they understand the writer’s message/story. Punctuation is a reader’s speed map. Commas are yield signs (slow down—I’m going to give you some more information); semicolons are speed bumps (really slow down—I’m going to give you another clause that relates to what I’m talking about); periods are like stop signs (we’re done with that sentence, moving on); and fragments are similar to a writer throwing himself in front of your car (STOP this is really important).
Today’s tip: The Rule of Opposites
If punctuation help control the reader’s speed, then as a writer, it’s your job to use that power wisely. Don’t just randomly throw punctuation around. When you have heavy pieces of information you need to get across, help your readers out by slowing your sentences down (use short, simple sentences). On the other hand, if the writing is light,go ahead and speed things along with longer sentences.
Caution: Be careful when using short sentences in actions scenes.
Recently I read that whenever a writer wants to write action packed scene, he should use short sentences. True, writers shouldn’t bog down their actions sequences with long, drawn-out prose. On the other hand, those periods tend to stop the action, too.
Many authors who want to avoid the choppy sentences, tend to serialize scenes they really want to speed up.
Example: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
**Spoiler**
She survived because she was sitting in a basement reading through the story of her own life, checking for mistakes. Previously, the room had been declared too shallow, but on that night, October 7, it was enough. The shells of wreckage cantered down, and hours later, when the strange, unkempt silence settled itself in Molching, the local LSE could hear something. An echo. Down there, somewhere, a girl was hammering a paint can with a pencil.
In this scene, we learn that the bombs rained down over Liesel’s head and the periods, the simple sentences are sparse. Why? The stop the action.
Zusak uses a series of events strung together with commas to rev up the action. This happened, then this, then this…creates an urgency to the moment and allows the readers eyes to zoom across the sentence.
Writer’s Toolbox Wednesday: Sentence Basics
In my endeavor to help out my fellow writers, here’s the first of my Writer’s Toolbox Wednesdays. Today’s topic: the sentence.
What is a sentence?
In a nut shell, they give a reader the most essential information: who and what’s happening. Example: John sleeps. Yup, that’s it—two words, a subject and a verb.
What’s the point of a sentence?
Leithart.com gives an interesting history of the sentence, even going so far as to say that our current grammatical structure mirrors society’s preference for prose over poetry. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But I prefer a more simplistic explanation.
Most people are social creatures who like to know what’s going on with family, friends or even the criminal on the TV. Humans need to know “who”, but a subject all by himself is boring, so add action. Even the ancient cave dwellers, drawing on rocks, understood this. They drew people and action (spearing a mammoth). The other journalistic questions (when, where and how) come only after those two essential points are clear.
But authors use fragments all the time, don’t they?
Sure they do, but it creates a specific effect. Remember, don’t go breaking the rules until you know the consequences.
Take a look at one of my favorite authors, Stephen King, and his use of a sentence fragment…
Further up, seemingly set directly into the slope itself, she saw the grimly clinging pines give way to a wide square of green lawn and standing in the middle of it, overlooking all this, the hotel. The Overlook.
Workshop Time:
- What’s the effect?
- Why is a fragment here better than a full sentence?
- Your turn—pick up a novel you have lying around. Skim until you find a fragment. What’s the effect? How would the meaning/cadence change if the author used a full sentence instead?
Rules, I don’t need no stinkin’ rules…
As another semester starts, I’m faced with the ever impossible task of explaining to my students why writing rules are important. They want to know why we have them in the first place. Isn’t writing subjective? What about author’s choice? These are all questions that come up every year. And I sympathize, really, but there is method to the madness.
When I was in school, I didn’t get the rules either. But the grammar gods have shared a bit of wisdom with me (not much, but a smidge). As far as I can tell, there are two main reasons to follow writing guidelines, especially as a beginner:
- Communication. The whole point of writing, any writing, is to communicate a thought with readers. By following the rules, you help ensure that what you want to say won’t get mixed up in the translation.
- Ethos. The Greeks knew early on that people are more likely to believe you, thus listen to what that you have to say, if you are credible (ethos). Example: read the two sentences below…
- See what were gonna do now is operate on you’re brain if ya survive without complications you should recovers fully.
- Mr. Brown, we must operate before the tumor in your brain causes permanent damage. We have every hope that you will make a full recovery, but there are certain risks of which we need to make you aware.
I don’t know about y’all, but there is no way I’d let writer number one operate on brain no matter what kind of credentials he had.
As far as author’s license, and stifling creativity, a writer has to know the rules before s/he can break them. Stopping for a red light happens to be a law in our country. Only people who know the law (and the reasons for its existence) can determine whether or not they are willing to deal with the consequences that go along with ignoring it. Writing might not create such devastation, but then again history shows how much power words have.
I’ve been blogging for over a year now, but the subjects of my posts have been random and a bit flighty while I try to find my niche. My goal for 2010 is to create a site that’s helpful to people who want to better their writing (while I throw in an occasional movie review or random thought). Like I said before, I’m not a grammar god, far from it. But hopefully what I do know (and learn as I continue my own writing process) will help some fellow lost soul.
Join me tomorrow for writing rule number one.
Seven Bad Writing Tips You Learned in School
Ot Oh,
I found this article by Jonathan Morrow on Copyblogger. While I’m not sure I agree with everything, I mean English teachers can’t be blamed for all the world’s evils, he has some interesting advice on writing…
