Image by Yerson Retamal from Pixabay
I
wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a fellow author say,
“I’m not good at grammar.” I might even be able to afford a
trip to Eroticon next year! Seriously, it seems that many writers
find the entire question of conventionally correct grammatical
structure intimidating. Some of them simply give up, relying entirely
on their editors. Others try to convince themselves grammar doesn’t
matter, that a reader who’s thoroughly seduced by their great story
(or aroused by the amazing sex) won’t notice the blunders.
Alas,
I think this is far less true than these authors would like to
believe. Even if a reader doesn’t recognize an error as such, she’s
likely to have a vague feeling of discomfort, a sense that
“something’s wrong” with the sentence. Worse, a grammatical
faux pas may end up confusing the reader, pulling her out of
that zone where she’s connected with your characters to wonder
exactly what’s going on.
Grammar
is not just something dreamed up by high school English teachers to
torture their students. English (as well as most other languages)
relies on syntactic structure to convey meaning and resolve
ambiguities. Consider the following example:
Rick couldn’t believe how good it felt to drive his big rod into the brunette’s pussy. It has been so long since he’d had a woman. Now he had two! The blond bombshell massaged his balls as he fucked her harder and harder.
This
is adapted from a book I recently edited. The paragraph pulled me up
short. “I thought he was inside the dark haired woman, not the
blond,” I thought. “And how could the blond be fondling his balls
at the same time that he’s screwing her?”
Of
course, re-reading the paragraph made it clear that there was a
problem with a pronoun reference. Pronouns should refer to the most
recently mentioned noun with matching gender and number. That’s not
the case here. The problem could be fixed by swapping the clauses, so
the blond gets mentioned after the pronoun instead of before:
Rick couldn’t believe how good it felt to drive his big rod into the brunette’s pussy. It has been so long since he’d had a woman. Now he had two! He fucked her harder and harder, while the blond bombshell massaged his balls.
Another
solution would be to replace “her” in the original structure with
a noun phrase, e.g. “her girlfriend”. Now “her” does refer
to the most recently mentioned noun (the blond bombshell).
The
point is that by the time I figured out what the paragraph was trying
to say, I’d lost the thread of the scene. The heat had dissipated.
This is definitely not what you want if you’re an erotic author!
I’m
sure that some of you authors reading this post are rolling your
eyes. “Pronoun reference?” you may be thinking. “Matching
gender and number?” You’re being assailed by visions of fat,
grouchy Miss Mackleswain from tenth grade, the nasty old witch who
made you diagram sentences ad nauseum and memorize the names
of all the different tenses and constructions. “I couldn’t make
sense of it all then, when I was young and smart,” you’re
thinking. “I certainly can’t remember all those rules now!”
Relax.
Take a deep breath. I have some good news for you.
Grammar
is not about rules. It’s about relationships.
If
you’re an editor or a pedant (and I’m something of both), it’s
nice to be able to apply the correct term to a particular
construction. However, that’s not necessary in order to write
grammatical prose. You can produce beautiful, perfectly grammatical
sentences, one that would make even Miss Mackleswain weep with
delight, without having any idea of the so-called rules governing the
structure.
In
fact, so-called grammatical rules are nothing but abstractions
developed after the fact to try and make sense of the way language is
actually used. That’s one reason why there are so many exceptions!
Grammarians and high school teachers like to present grammar rules as
prescriptive (that is, as iron clad expressions of what you
should do), but in fact grammar is descriptive, an
attempt to systematize the complexities of linguistic structure.
And
why do I say that grammar is about relationships? Because that’s
what most constructions are trying to convey.
Consider
the concept of independent versus dependent clauses. An independent
clause expresses a single idea that can stand alone.
Louisa was desperately horny.Louisa’s boyfriend Jim had been in Hong Kong for a week.
English
allows you to use the conjunction “and” to combine two
independent clauses:
Louisa’s boyfriend Jim had been in Hong Kong for a week and she was desperately horny.
This
compound sentence states two facts of supposedly equal importance,
leaving the reader to figure out why they’ve been conjoined. In
this case, you might expect a further sentence explaining the
situation, for instance:
Normally, they met for sex every Tuesday and Thursday.
A
dependent clause, like an independent clause, has a subject and a
verb, but the idea it expresses has some logical relationship to
another clause. The nature of the relationship depends on the words
used to join the two clauses into a single sentence.
Louisa was desperately horny because her boyfriend Jim had been in Hong Kong for a week. (Causality)By the time her boyfriend Jim had been in Hong Kong for a week, Louisa was desperately horny. (Sequence)Louisa was desperately horny long before her boyfriend Jim had been in Hong Kong for a week. (Also sequence, but with a somewhat different meaning.)Louisa was desperately horny even though her boyfriend Jim had been in Hong Kong for a week. (Contrast/conflict)
This
last, somewhat peculiar, example suggests that maybe Louisa has
somebody on the side, but that she hasn’t been able to hook up with
him or her!
Verb
tenses are another example of grammar constructs that are used to
establish relationships, in this case relationships related to time.
You don’t need to know the names of the verb tenses to understand
the temporal relationships in the following sentence:
(1) Genevieve was still a virgin, even though she had slept with several men.
The
whole narrative is in the past, but it’s clear that the sleeping
with several men occurred before the time of the story.
It
would mean something different to say:
(2) Genevieve was still a virgin, even though she slept with several men.
This
is also grammatically correct, but implies that Genevieve continues
to sleep with the men at the time of the story, that it’s an
ongoing state of affairs.
Contrast
the previous examples with the following:
(3) Genevieve is still a virgin, even though she has slept with several men.
In
this case, we’ve pulled the story into the present, but the time
relationship between the events hasn’t changed from sentence (1).
Her experiences with men still occurred before the main time of the
story. However, we have to use a different tense to express that
relationship, because we’ve changed the first clause from past to
present.
To
extend this further:
(4) Genevieve is still a virgin, even though she has slept with several men. Her mother had told her to keep her pajamas on until she was sure she’d found the right guy to be her first lover.
Now
we have three points in time, neatly signaled by the verb tenses:
Present:
Genevieve is a virgin.
Past:
She has slept with several men.
More
distant past: Her mother had given her instructions about staying
dressed in bed.
Actually,
this example actually includes a fourth, more complicated point in
time, the hypothetical time when Genevieve is sure she’s in bed
with Mr. Right. As far as we can tell, this event hasn’t happened
yet. English has clear ways to grammatically mark this sort of
hypothetical statement. (Not every language does.)
If
you’re a native English speaker, you will have no difficulty
understanding the relationships in sentence (4), despite its
complexity. Furthermore, you’ll know something is wrong if you read
a sentence like this:
Genevieve was still a virgin, even though she sleeps with several men.
The
relationships in this sentence don’t make sense. The first clause
already happened, while the second is happening now.
The
key to writing grammatical prose resides in that feeling that
“something is wrong”. You don’t need to know the grammatical
terminology or the rules, but you do need to develop your grammatical
intuition. You need to learn how to evaluate your sentences based not
only on the basic content, but whether the relationships are sensible
and have the intended meaning.
How
can you do this? By paying closer attention when you read, both your
own work and work by other people.
Try
to notice when you get that niggling feeling that something’s not
quite right. Reread the sentence or paragraph that’s bugging you,
considering the implied relationships between clauses, sentences and
events. If you can’t figure out the nature of the problem, ask for
help, but don’t just ignore that slight discomfort so you can get
on with the story. (Don’t be lazy!)
Furthermore,
you can strengthen your grammatical intuition by reading authors who
produced really clear, well-structured prose. I recommend reading
works from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Literate
prose from that period is often far more complex than would be
appropriate for modern readers, but Jane Austen, Wilkie Collins,
Edith Wharton and Henry James were grammar virtuosos. Educate your
ear to the nuances of tense, the layering of logic. Notice how a
sentence with five or six clauses can still be immediately
comprehensible. You don’t have to study the structure, or figure
out how it works. Just allow these exemplars to sink into your brain.
Don’t
worry about the rules, just the relationships.
Of
course, you also need to practice improving the grammar of your own
work. Learn to recognize the mistakes you commonly make. Sensitize
yourself to grammar gaffes. Finally, don’t become discouraged.
Improving one’s writing craft is a lifelong process—one that can
bring great joy and satisfaction.
2 comments:
This was such a helpful post. Thank you for sharing it.
Thanks, Lydia!
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