Karen GoatKeeper's Blog - Posts Tagged "grammar"
What About Those Verbs?
Subjects and adjectives are important parts of a sentence. So are the verbs.
Take a look at a paragraph in your latest book and make all the sentences simple past tense. That means no helping verbs allowed.
We do use past tense a lot in writing books but not all the time. When all the sentences are in simple past, they become choppy. Past tense locks events into the past.
Helping verbs modify that time frame in the sentence. Consider how they change this sentence:
Joe ran across the field.
Joe was running across the field.
Joe had run across the field.
Joe did run across the field.
Joe can run across the field.
Each sentence seems much the same until you think about it. Then each becomes a different story. Which one do you want to write? What new plot ideas does each open up?
Helping verbs can do the same for present and future tenses.
Grammar seems so boring in school. Taking another look at it as an author seems a waste of time once you've got a book or two done.
Then again, look at all those possible story ideas.
Take a look at a paragraph in your latest book and make all the sentences simple past tense. That means no helping verbs allowed.
We do use past tense a lot in writing books but not all the time. When all the sentences are in simple past, they become choppy. Past tense locks events into the past.
Helping verbs modify that time frame in the sentence. Consider how they change this sentence:
Joe ran across the field.
Joe was running across the field.
Joe had run across the field.
Joe did run across the field.
Joe can run across the field.
Each sentence seems much the same until you think about it. Then each becomes a different story. Which one do you want to write? What new plot ideas does each open up?
Helping verbs can do the same for present and future tenses.
Grammar seems so boring in school. Taking another look at it as an author seems a waste of time once you've got a book or two done.
Then again, look at all those possible story ideas.
The Value of Antecedents
They walked to the neighborhood park. Maybe walk is too sedate of a word. They jogged, skipped or ran in circles on their way. Once in the park, they scattered, each to their favorite spot.
She watched them. Some cavorted in the water sprays. Others pumped their legs driving their swings ever higher. A few chased each other through the tangle of the bars of the jungle gym.
Who are they? Perhaps they is a group of children. Perhaps they are a group of teenagers. They could even be a group of young adults out for a fun evening.
Who is she? She could be a mother. She could be a child usually ignored by the other children. She could be a terrorist.
Each choice of who they and she are changes the entire passage. Why do so many writers assume mentioning a name at the beginning of a scene or chapter is enough?
Pronouns require an antecedent, a name to define who or what the pronoun refers to. This keeps the reader reading a particular story instead of wandering mentally off into another one. It keeps readers from getting confused reading dialog.
For the last few weeks I’ve been doing some editing for other writers. It’s taught me one thing for sure: I don’t want to be an editor for others except in special circumstances.
Editing is showing me so many little things I could work on. One is using antecedents. Another is improving the use of dialog. An unexpected aspect of this is how, sometimes, dialog is not separated from a paragraph, but is part of it.
Why, since editing is teaching me so much about writing, do I not want to do it? Simple. When I edit a piece of writing for someone else, that is all I work on. I am supposed to be editing “Mistaken Promises.” It languishes on my computer waiting for me to find the time to return to it.
For me the definition of a writer is: someone who writes. That is the definition I want to apply to me.
She watched them. Some cavorted in the water sprays. Others pumped their legs driving their swings ever higher. A few chased each other through the tangle of the bars of the jungle gym.
Who are they? Perhaps they is a group of children. Perhaps they are a group of teenagers. They could even be a group of young adults out for a fun evening.
Who is she? She could be a mother. She could be a child usually ignored by the other children. She could be a terrorist.
Each choice of who they and she are changes the entire passage. Why do so many writers assume mentioning a name at the beginning of a scene or chapter is enough?
Pronouns require an antecedent, a name to define who or what the pronoun refers to. This keeps the reader reading a particular story instead of wandering mentally off into another one. It keeps readers from getting confused reading dialog.
For the last few weeks I’ve been doing some editing for other writers. It’s taught me one thing for sure: I don’t want to be an editor for others except in special circumstances.
Editing is showing me so many little things I could work on. One is using antecedents. Another is improving the use of dialog. An unexpected aspect of this is how, sometimes, dialog is not separated from a paragraph, but is part of it.
Why, since editing is teaching me so much about writing, do I not want to do it? Simple. When I edit a piece of writing for someone else, that is all I work on. I am supposed to be editing “Mistaken Promises.” It languishes on my computer waiting for me to find the time to return to it.
For me the definition of a writer is: someone who writes. That is the definition I want to apply to me.
