Building Blocks and Stumbling Blocks.

The Writing Process

Newsletters 17 & 18

(NB.Two in one week as I am off to write and draw in France   for three weeks).

Building Block or Stumbling Block?

Despite my enthusiasm last week about good syntax I do realise that an over-awareness of the significance of syntax can be a stumbling block. This happens when you - the newish writer -  perhaps because of an officious schoolteacher  school or a clumsy and thoughtless editor – become frozen, like a rabbit in headlights, at the embarrassment of being seen as stupid when at first you don’t quite get the difference – for instance -  between verbal storytelling and storytelling on the page.

          There were times when editors would work with very promising writers who were not quite there in terms of their syntactical skills. But nowadays they are very busy – even exhausted - with their corporate strategies and business models.

            So you have to do so much more of it yourself!

           The point is, you shouldn’t let this part of writing your story be a stumbling block for you. If you edit yourself with a more certain knowledge of syntax, the manuscript you present to others for appraisal or publication will not have laughable flaws that could blind the readers to a wonderful story.

            This process of ultimate self-editing is even more crucial in these days of indie publishing and eBooking. One of the biggest criticisms of the contemporary flood of self-published eBooks is the variable standard of editing without the filter of a tribe of publisher’s editors to catch the flaws.

          You should realise that, while attending closely to your own syntax can be intricate, in the end it is relatively easy and - dare I say it? -  it is fun. Every writer should be the master of his or her own language. Grammar stands there alongside originality, vision, vocabulary, narrative skill as a crucial tool for the successful writer, whatever their approach to publishing.

Focusing on Valuable Building Blocks

The first crucial building block for a you as a writer is your ability to create a world, to build a narrative, to have an extensive vocabulary (all that reading!) and a mind that sees the world afresh –dreaming dreams and having visions.

           A second building block consists of your innate sense of story imbued with the magic of your own unique sense of language so that you become comfortable when you get to the stage of completing your initial charge of pure creative writing and reach the point when you start editing your own work. Here, as I have been saying I reckon there is value in seeing your own prose more objectively in terms of your unique use of grammar and syntax

        Once you begin to know just how the rules of syntax work then you can choose, if you want, to break them. But that will then be a knowing process.  You will know what you are doing.

        And, as you clarify and edit your own prose, as a natural writer and a good storyteller you can comfort yourself in knowing that there are some individuals out there who know syntax up to their eyeballs but could never pen an original, good story in a hundred years.

Let’s have a quick look at some basics to start out on this process.

In my workshops, when they begin to trust that I won’t laugh at their innocence, some new writers will ask crucial questions what seem to be the arcane mysteries of  grammar and syntax and these questions are the key to their further writing development.

Among these questions will be:

1.     Just what is that makes a proper sentence a sentence?

2.     What is it that constitutes a paragraph?

3.     What’s the difference between dialogue told and dialogue said?

For the Record:  A Simple Definition:  A sentence expresses a complete thought and must contain at least a subject (a noun) and (a verb).  A sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark.

Click HERE for a good place to explore further the grammatical nature of sentences, paragraphs and dialogue

A Quick Thought about Paragraphs

The rules on paragraphing can be ambiguous. I suggest that a paragraph is a whole idea, a piece of speech or an aspect of the whole setting, building up the climax of the narrative within the chapter or the short story. It promotes the transparency of the narrative. It does not get between the reader and the narrative.

        Look at the paragraphing   on any page. Notice that white space on the page promotes space and clarity; it allows the reader to breathe his own way into your narrative.

Top tip. When the idea, the speaker, the setting changes, embark on a new paragraph.

Ursula le Guin on The Significance of Sentences

The other day I was reading again

Click Ursula 

Ursula le Guin’s seminal ‘Steering the Craft’. I was excited again when I came across her chapter Sentence Length and Complex Syntax.

In this chapter, among other wise advice, Le Guin comments: 

The basic function of the narrative sentence is to keep the story going and keep the reader going with it.

And

But for the most part, prose states its proper beauty and power deeper, hiding it in the work as a whole.

         It is a creative writing truism that modern prose tends towards the greater use of shorter, more journalistic sentences to roll a story on faster, in the manner of a film, flashing from scene to scene. This could be how your ‘hear’ your story as you are writing it. It will have an effect on your writing style. It’s useful to be conscious of this as you are editing your own work.

         However in her compelling chapter Le Guin recommends a combination of short and long sentences for the most successful prose:

‘To avoid long sentences and the marvellously supple connections of complex syntax it to deprive your prose of an essential quality. Commenctedness is what keeps a narrative going.’

         In the chapter she quotes examples from a wide field of writers who use the balance of long and short sentences:  Jane Austen; Harriet Beecher Stowe; Mark Twin; Virginia Woolf

Best Advice

It’s not a bad idea to read two pages of their work and note what how grammar and syntax works in the case of these great writers – and of any great modern writers whom you admire.

       For me, page-long paragraphs – acceptable in nineteenth century and early twentieth century novels - will give a modern novel a dated feel. Language and grammar are dynamic forces in prose; they change through time. They evolve.

            One evolution is the way some writers may have a very clean and naturalistic almost film script way to present dialogue which can make. This can make some purists tut-tut.  Modern writers are making their own choices. So now you as a writer can break the rules in this evolving form, as you look for the best way to engage your readers, make them commit to your narrative.

As always my very best advice is to read more, and more regularly - both classic modern well-written novels. With your writer’s cloak on you can look at how sentences, paragraphs and dialogue presents themselves on the pages of modern novels and short stories.

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Newsletter 18

Why does Syntax become a Stumbling Block?

This happens when you – perhaps from school or a clumsy and thoughtless editor – become frozen like a rabbit in headlights at the embarrassment of being seen as stupid when you don’t quite get the difference between verbal storytelling and storytelling on the page.

           At one time editors would work with very promising writers who were not quite there. But nowadays they are very busy, exhausted with their corporate strategies and business models, so you have to do it yourself,

          So don’t let syntax be a stumbling block. If you edit yourself with a clear knowledge of syntax the manuscript you present will not have laughable flaws that could blind the readers to a wonderful story.

This assiduous process of ultimate self-editing is even more crucial in these days of indie publishing and eBooking. One of the biggest criticisms of the flood of self-published eBooks is the variable standard of editing without the filter of a publisher’s editor to catch the flaws. I know this as it has happened to me.

       In any case, while syntax is intricate, it is relatively easy and - dare I say it? -  it is fun. Every writer should be the master of his or her own language. Grammar stands there alongside originality, vision, vocabulary, narrative skill as a crucial tool for the successful writer, whatever their approach to publishing.

Great Syntax at work

Ursula Le Guin also showcases the work of  

the immaculate Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby

‘Fitzgerald shows great skill in character and plot development by employing surging breathless ragged, choppy sentences…’

“We went upstairs, through period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender silk and vivid with new flowers, through dressing rooms and poolrooms and bathrooms, with sunken baths…”

“They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity”  

‘This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.’

Look at these Fitzgerald examples and turn to a few pages of your own manuscript. You will probably see some good, effective sentences and paragraphs there and say to yourself ‘well done!’ 

If not - being the all-powerful writer – you can get to work and make some.

Happy writing, happy editing

Wendy

Writing Process 16  
Scintillating Syntax: Part One

‘How do I know what I mean till I see what I say?’

In earlier Newsletters here I recommend that you should forge ahead with your narrative, trusting your intuition and your innate linguistic ability to say what you think and feel. 

There comes a point – possibly we have finished the story, or we are a good half or three quarters of the way through - when we all pause and look at what we had written in a more objective way. Clearly this is part of the creative editing process.

This is when we come to marvellous issue of scintillating syntax.

Just as oral storytellers naturally speak in paragraphs and dialogue, we who write our stories down have this facility at our fingertips. In a post in 2013 I told the story of how I discovered that I was using syntax in my writing before I knew just what syntax was.

Here’s how it happened

'[…] When I was in my second year at grammar school, aged twelve, I handed in a composition (called now a piece of creative writing…) called The Fox. My English teacher - a magisterial, handsome figure of a man - returned my story to me with a high mark. I treasured this, having learned very quickly the high gold-standard currency of high marks in that school.

But much more important, in the margin he’d written in his fine, flowing hand ‘Good Syntax!’

So, what was this thing I was good at?

I hod never heard this word before. I daren’t ask my teacher.  I had to go to th ebig doctionary, one of the two big books in the house. 

There I read:

Syntax 

·        The study of the rules whereby words or other elements of sentence structure are combined to form grammatical sentences

·        The pattern of formation of sentences or phrases in a language

·        A systematic, orderly arrangement of words

So, it seemed, this is what I was good at!

I was very pleased by this revelation that I had, unknowingly, been good at this thing

More books now...

called Syntax. I reckon that was the point when I actually decided I could be a writer, even though I’d never met a writer and had actually never met anyone (except my teachers) who wore a white - not a blue - collar to work.

The rules of good syntax were only peripherally taught at that school; despite the fact that it was called a grammar school. There I only really learned the nature of syntax and grammar when I started to study French and German.  I had to do this in order to get to grips with languages whose grammatical structures were different from (different to?) my own. I still remember the exotic feeling of getting to grips with the subjunctive form in French and than realising that the subjunctive form exists in English. I had been using it for years and never realised it.

So how, you might say, did this little girl who lived in a small crowded house that had only two big books on its shelves get be the mistress of very good syntax at twelve? 

I did it the way we all do. I’d been using and speaking my own language since I was nine months old  -  talking,  listening and arguing in a verbally oriented  family for nearly twelve years.  Very importantly though, thanks to the library at the end of the street, I had also been reading my language for nine years and was now reading up to five books a week.  

          I now feel certain that reading all kinds of material voraciously when young is the key to the high literacy necessary if you are to be a writer. This visual, aural and intellectual process embeds grammar and syntax deep in your psyche – to become available to you when you need it to write your own stories. This is so even when you have not articulated the fact that you are using them. It is initially an unconscious process.

Proper language is already there, deep inside.  I well remember a child in a class I was teaching, saying to me ‘You mean I already talk in grammar, miss?’

Early in my studies for teaching career I remember reading that by the age of five normal children child will have incorporated into their individual brain structure all the rules of grammar of their own language. Children don’t have to learn it, they speak it, they talk it, they dream in it. It may later be useful for them to learn the rules they already operate at some later point - for example when they learn a foreign language.             Or when they so a linguistics or literature degrees.

          And of course we know it is useful when you become a writer and have to edit your own work…

I know from my workshops that some writers get jumpy and defensive about grammar and syntax.

Either they’re hide-bound by the memory of an opinionated or aggressive teach or a clumsy editor. Or they are terrified of looking stupid. Or - however good a storyteller they are - they are innocent of grammatical conventions in written language and fear that very innocence could send their work flying onto some editor’s floor.

This is a pity -these natural storytellers can make very good fiction writers. They have the most important qualities - a feeling for the trajectory of a story, an ear for dialogue and a fresh world view.

Good, self-developing writers such as readers here will appraise and creatively edit their own writing, and recognise the syntactical virtues of their own prose, eventually incorporating more of the magic of Scintillating Syntax, absorbing it and incorporating it into their own intuitive prose writing.[...]'

If you are becoming fascinated by the formal intricacies of our own language you might like my 2009 post on The Semi Colon.  Also remember Strunk & White's Elements of Style, the simplest reference for issues of grammar and syntax 

A later note:  These points above have been enhanced by my experience in writing my newest novel The Pathfinder, where the main thrust of my research was into the non-literal, artistic, complex, story telling culture of the Celts of West Britain, surviving under the literate dominant culture of the Romans in the dying stages of their Empire.

 This extract might go towards explaining it.

‘[…] That was the time my father went on to tell Pendragon and his listeners of a dream he’d had the previous night, where plucky battles and heroic charges were replaced by circuses of talk and the exchange of great ideas and of fine and necessary goods.
 'This was in a golden, happy place, where words sustained more benefit than rattling swords,’ he says. ‘And when I awoke, I realised that this is the pathway we should take ourselves. We’re half way there after all. Haven’t we always by custom welcomed into our halls strangers who are storytellers, music-makers and craftsmen? On the other hand, don’t we make warriors – high and low – wait at our gate?’ Because surely it’s talk and exchange that keeps the peace, not battle.’[…] 

Next Week: Newsletter 17

Scintillating Syntax Two: Long and Short Sentences.

Catching Cobwebs with Diana Athill

Newsletter 15:Thursday 4th June2015

  NB This Newsletter is also featured on my blog lifetwicetasted 

as the theme fits both blogs/

‘Where do you get all the ideas for your stories?’

 I’m frequently asked this question as I go about my writer’s business.

My usual answer is that they pile the door of my imagination, emerging from my memory, my reading, my acquaintances and all my daily life. They hang around like cobwebs in the air ,catching at me almost without my knowing.

I have just been reading the Persephone 2011 edition of Diana Athill's short story 

Diana Athill

collection entitled Midsummer Night in the Workhouse. . 

In her Preface, Diana Athill describes very precisely how she came upon her very first short story. In it she says: I can remember in detail being hit by my first story one January morning in 1958. Until that moment I had been handmaiden, as editor, to other people’s writing. Then, at nine o’clock one sunny morning, I was taking my Pekinese across the Outer Circle of Regent’s Park when a car pulled up and its driver beckoned. I thought he was going to ask the way somewhere but what he said was: ‘I am Mustafa Ali from Istanbul – will you come and have coffee with me?’ At nine in the morning - What an optimist! I thought as I went away laughing; and how odd that someone who looked so very like a man I had once knows, a diamond merchant from Cape Town called Marcel, should behave in such a Marcellish way. And I began to remember Marcel.

All through that day Marcel kept popping up in my head and with him came an oddly gleeful sensation of energy. When I got home from the office I thought: ‘I know what – I’m going to write a story about him,’ and down I sat at my typewriter…

’

There is much more to this wonderful Preface. Any aspiring writer would enjoy this book for the Preface alone. And then the great Preface is followed by Athill's  artful, beautifully written short stories - each one of them a fine example of the Short Story form: much to learn here too.

It is refreshing in the frantic modern forward-rush of writing and publishing to pause to catch our own accidental cobwebs and to recognise the cobwebs of other fine writers whom we can admire, and form whom we can learn.

Persephone describes the collection: A selection of short stories mostly written in the late 1950s: some are set in England and describe incidents from Diana Athill's girlhood; one or two describe holidays abroad, almost all are seen fron the woman's point of view. 'In this terrific collection female characters are sexually adventurous, introspective and enjoy a drink or three,' wrote the Daily Mail. 'A cheating wife, back with her boring husband, is wracked with agonising love for the unavailable partner of her brief fling; a writer seeks inspiration at a writers' retreat whilst avoiding the group seducer.' 

A great holiday read for anyone and  everyone.

Happy reading. Happy wrting.