Writer's Instinct? #amwriting #amreading #StephenKing

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I have a confession to make. I've never read any writing how-to book from beginning to end. Years ago, I started Susie Bright's How toWrite a Dirty Story, but abandoned it about half way through, partly because I found the author's tone patronizing and partly because the smell of ink from that very early POD volume was giving me a terrible headache. The other classic writing texts that are supposed to be on every author's bookshelf – Stephen King and the rest – I've never even opened. I don't own a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style or Strunk and White, either, though my paperback Roget's Thesaurus is definitely the worse for wear.

Sometimes I feel rather creepy about my basic disinterest in studying the nuts and bolts of the writing craft. I recognized the validity of the concepts and the terminology – the narrative arc and the character arc, the “Coming to Death” moment. I know that the writing process should involve internal queries about what the character wants, where a story is going and how it should flower. These are the sort of things I think about when I'm critiquing someone else's work. When I'm writing my own stuff, though, nothing could be further from my mind. Intellectual analysis has little to do with the process. I write from instinct.

At this point you're probably snorting with disgust at my presumption. “She thinks she's got so much talent she doesn't need to study the masters,” you might be thinking. Or, “Right, she was born knowing about characterization and conflict, suspense and catharsis. A regular Mozart of the written word.”

Honestly, I don't think that at all. I do believe I'm moderately skilled at the craft aspects of writing, but that's not due to some fabulous genetic endowment. Rather, it's the product of more than half a century's experience, reading and writing – plus a certain amount of early education.

My life was filled with words from its very first months. Before I could talk (hard to believe such a time ever existed!), my parents read to me, both fiction and poetry. All through my childhood, my father concocted fantastic tales of ghosts and monsters and wrote delightful doggerel that he set to music. He and my mom taught me to read at four years old, and almost immediately I began creating my own stories. I was writing poems by the time I was seven. Nobody ever showed me how. I guess I must have been emulating what I'd read and heard. It just seemed a the natural thing to do.

Reading was my absolute favorite occupation throughout my childhood. My mom had to force me to put my book aside and go out to play. I continued to write all through elementary school, high school, college and graduate school. And of course, I continued to read.

I adored the literature classes I took. There, we undertook the sort of analyses that the how-to books talk about, dissecting tales ancient and modern to see what made them tick. Although I majored in science, I tried to balance my schedule with at least one humanities course each term. I still recall the intellectual thrill I derived from the Shakespeare seminar in which I participated as a freshmen, the high I got from Russian literature in translation course in my junior year.

I still adore a lively discussion about a great book. A few years ago I spent more than an hour Skyping with my brother (who lives half a world away) about Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. We specifically set up the call for that purpose, and I enjoyed every minute.

 

So even though I've never deliberately studied the art of narrative, at least as applied to my own writing, I seem to have acquired a significant amount of knowledge by osmosis.

When I sit down to write, I don't consciously identify the “MacGuffin” that drives my story, even though it must be there somewhere. I may or may not know at the outset when and where my characters will experience that moment of total despair, when all seems impossible. If I don't know, I simply trust that I'll recognize the crisis when I get there. The story unrolls in my mind, a journey along a road where some parts may be foggier than others, but with a structure that seems to shape itself around the premise, the setting and the characters, without much deliberate effort on my part.

I do spend a significant amount of mental and emotional effort on the prose itself, trying to capture the elusive nuances of experience in words. I'm also focused on the big ideas that underlie the action, trying to birth the sort of startling, original tale that transfixes me with admiration when I am the reader.

That's what I find most difficult about writing. All the craft in the world won't make up for a ho-hum concept. All too frequently, I have the uncomfortable sensation that the story I'm working on has been written a hundred times before – sometimes even by me. I listen to some of my fellow authors complain about their so-called lack of talent, even as they produces tales so wild, terrible and beautiful that they bring tears to my eyes, and I try not to be envious.

That's something no craft book can teach.

Still, discouraged as I sometimes am, I don't stop writing. Through the combination of nature and nurture, I've absorbed the so-called rules of story structure. They're part of me now. I probably couldn't prevent myself from following them, any more than the Canada geese could abort their annual flight south.

Pesky Participles - #AmEditing #WritingCraft #Grammar

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When I’m reading, editing or critiquing others’ work, improperly deployed participles are a pet peeve. I’m utterly incapable of ignoring them. Other readers notice comma confusions, tangled tenses, or missing modifiers. They might be especially sensitive to excessive alliteration. I can sail past a lot of nits without noticing, but an incorrectly constructed participle modifier will jump out at me like raincoat-clad pervert from behind a tree.

I know grammatical terms make a lot of people wince, so let me give you some examples from recent reads:

a) No longer aware of her physical surroundings, uncaring of the others watching them, he had become her world.

b) Nearly blinded, instinctively, Callie's hand went for the gun in her purse.

c) Measuring the length of his dick still waiting to ravage her burning cunt, Nina's eyes flew open.

Here are a few simpler, synthetic examples:

d) Panting with excitement, her heart pounded like a bass drum in her chest.

e) Entering the room unannounced, Joel’s attention flew to the naked woman sprawled on the couch.

f) Silenced by embarrassment, my cheeks flushed bright red.

I know some of you are probably thinking: What’s the problem? These are perfectly fine sentences. The meaning is crystal clear.

I beg to differ. The author’s intent is clear in most cases. However, if you apply the conventional rules of English to interpreting these sentences, you end up drawing some strange, even nonsensical conclusions. Silent cheeks? A blinded hand?

The complexities of English grammatical structures are the bane of many. There are dozens of different ways to express the same idea. A single sentence may consist of many clauses as well as modifying phrases.

In the face of this complexity, we fall back on the principle of proximity. When you have a modifier, that is, a phrase that describes some entity in the main clause of the sentence, we assume that the modifier is describing the subject of the main clause, which normally follows right after the modifier.

If the modifier is a participle (that is, a verb turned into an adjective by adding “ing” or “ed”), it is assumed that the implied subject of this verb is the subject of the following clause.

Here’s the crux of the issue in the ungrammatical sentences above. If we follow this convention in our interpretation, the results are silly or confusing.

In a), both the adjective (“no longer aware”) and participle (“uncaring”) modifiers clearly have a female subject. Yet the subject of the main clause is “he” - not the person who’s “uncaring”.

In b) the conventional rules would indicate that Callie’s hand was blinded.

Example c) is a bit more nuanced, since Nina’s eyes might well be what she used to estimate the length of her partner’s cock. More likely though, the true subject of “measuring” is Nina herself – not her eyes as suggested by the interpretation rules.

The three synthetic examples make the problem more obvious. In each case, the real subject is a person, while the implied subject is a part or aspect of the person.

Now at this point, you might be thinking: who cares?

Well, that’s your right. However, when I encounter this sort of ungrammatical construction, even in an otherwise well-written story, I cringe. Furthermore, my opinion of the author’s skill declines a bit. Perhaps that’s not fair, but I expect serious authors to be conscious of the rules of the language – implicitly if not explicitly.

Elitist? Maybe. However, I can’t help my reactions. I suspect I’m not the only reader who feels this way.

So – assuming you’re editing your tale, and notice one of these errors – what can you do about it?

There are three basic solutions:

1) Change the subject in the independent clause to match the modifier;

2) Expand the modifier into a clause that explicitly specifies a subject (which can then be different from the independent clause);

3) Make the modifying clause into a separate sentence.

Let’s look at example (b) and apply each of these solutions.

Solution 1: Nearly blinded, Callie instinctively reached for the gun in her purse.

Solution 2: As the flash nearly blinded her, Callie's hand instinctively went for the gun in her purse.

Solution 3: The flash nearly blinded her. Instinctively, Callie’s hand went for the gun in her purse.

The best revision depends on stylistic concerns, as well as on the specific sentence. For example (a), I think the sentence should be split, since the subject of the modifiers and of the main clause are totally different.

She was no longer aware of her physical surroundings, uncaring of the others watching them. He had become her world.

In addition to fixing the grammar problem, this revision (I feel) increases the impact of the sentences.

If you’re willing to admit that this sort of construction is a problem, how can you improve your ability to notice your own errors?

Alas, we’re all somewhat blind to our own faults. You can begin, though, by becoming more conscious of your choices when framing a sentence. Should you use a modifying phrase at the start of a sentence? A dependent clause? Would your ideas be better expressed by splitting the thought into two sentences?

Normally people use modifying phrases like this to convey a relationship. When you use a participle, you are implying a temporal relationship. A present participle (“ing”) indicates two concurrent actions. For instance, Joel noticed the naked woman on the couch at the same time as he entered the room. A past participle (“ed”, or “en” for some verbs) suggests sequential actions. A flash blinded Callie, then she instinctively reached for her gun.

Be sure that this implied temporal relationship makes sense, and is what you really want to convey.

You probably should not try to think about this sort of issue when you’re writing your first draft, or you’ll get bogged down. However sentence structure alternatives should be one of your considerations when you’re self-editing.

Of course, the best approach may be to have someone else read and critique your stories, helping to shine light on your blind spots. You can offer the same service to someone else, since their weaknesses are likely to differ from yours.

Sentence Wrangling - #WritingCraft #SentenceStructure #AmWriting

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This is a craft-oriented post I wrote a number of years ago for another blog. I thought some Beyond Romance readers might find it useful. My topic: making your sentences work to accomplish both your narrative and emotional goals.

Defining terms

When I teach writing classes, I begin by stating that, in English, the sentence is the basic unit of meaning. A (simple) sentence consists of a subject and a predicate. The former identifies what we are talking about, while the latter expresses what we want to say about the subject. 

A subject may be a noun (“spanking”), a pronoun (“she”), a simple noun phrase (“the riding crop”) or a noun phrase with modifying clauses (“the riding crop that dangled casually from her belt”) A predicate may specify an action (“heated his butt”), a relationship (“was his first Mistress”), or a state of being (“was obviously new”). 

Both subject and predicate are required in order to have a complete idea. The subject “spanking” may conjure a variety of theories regarding the point to be made, but we really don’t know what the author intends without the predicate.

Compound sentences combine two (or sometimes more) simple sentences using conjunctions or adverbs that specify a logical relationship between their components. English provides a wide variety of relationships including coordination (“and”), opposition (“but”, “although”), sequence (“before”, “during”, “after”), and causality (“because”, “if”). A compound sentence expresses a meta-idea that includes not only the individual concepts captured in the component simple sentences but also the relationship determined by the connector. Change the connecting words and you totally change the meaning.

Peter fantasized about spanking but he had never been to a BDSM club.

Peter fantasized about spanking because he had never been to a BDSM club.

Sentences – naive and experienced

We authors use sentences for both telling a story and for evoking specific emotional responses in our readers. When I wrote my first novel, Raw Silk, I was thinking mostly about the first goal, not the second. Certainly, I was trying to evoke various moods, but I didn’t consciously manipulate the structure of my sentences with that in mind. As a result, all my sentences tended to be fairly long and complex, regardless of what was going on in the story.

Paragraph from Chapter One:

Kate extricated herself from the car’s comfortable embrace. The house was small, almost a cottage, but had two stories, and was surrounded by lush gardens. A huge tree with gnarled, contorted limbs stood before the building, bearing drooping masses of vines and creepers. She breathed deep, savouring the sweetness of flowers she could not name. The humid air caressed the bare skin on her arms. She heard the chittering of insects, and softly, the music of flowing water. There must be a pool or fountain, she thought, smiling to herself. She noted a balcony on the second floor, overlooking the garden.

Paragraph from Chapter Four:

Somtow rocked his pelvis in time with her strokes, but otherwise remained still. He watched her as she rode him, harder now, grinding herself down on him, finding exactly the right position, the right angle, for her own satisfaction. Now he reached up and caressed her breasts gently, trapping the nipples between his first and second finger. Katherine responded by pinching his nipples, hard. His back arched, pushing his cock deeper into her.

Paragraph from Chapter Nine

The rubber felt foreign, solid and unyielding, no respite, no escape. Noi hammered into her, then pulled out slowly, so that Kate could feel each of the ridges as it caught and then released the edges of her hole. The huge dildo stretched her deliciously, but she wanted more. She pushed her hips back toward the woman fucking her, begging for deeper penetration, harder strokes.

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with these sentences, but they have a sameness, a similar rhythm and style even though they play very different roles in the story. In the sex scenes, the length and complexity of the sentences have the effect of distancing the reader from the action.

In the twenty years since I wrote this book, I’ve learned to use shorter sentences, even fragments, in sex scenes, to evoke a sense of urgency and breathlessness.

Here’s a bit from my 2014 novel The Ingredients of Bliss:

The sting dwindled when he nuzzled the sensitive spot just below my ear. As I’m sure he expected, my clit twitched in response. I arched up, trying to grind my pelvis against his bum. He raised himself to a half-kneel, breaking the contact between our skin, while still holding me more or less immobilized. His cock was now fully engorged. Barely a foot from my hungry mouth, it wept pre-cum onto my chest. I whimpered and struggled against his inexorable grip. I really didn’t want to talk anymore. I just wanted him to fuck me. Again.

Notice the difference? I’ve deliberately chosen shorter sentences and more concrete nouns. The paragraph feels more immediate and intense than anything in my first novel.

The style in the passage above isn’t necessarily typical of all the prose in the book. Here’s a bit of description:

Buildings of brick, stone and stucco made the street into a shadowy canyon. Overhead there were decorative cornices and wrought iron balconies, remnants of another, more prosperous time, but at the ground level, most had roll down metal shutters, locked tight. Neon-hued graffiti decorated the blank steel panels. Fast food wrappers and crumpled newspaper stirred in the gutters. The temperature had remained balmy but fog had crept in from the harbor, bringing the smell of rotting kelp and giving halos to the scattered street lights.

As I’ve become more aware of my sentence structure, I believe that my writing has improved. I have more control over the reactions I’m trying to elicit from my readers.

Tips for more effective sentences

I called this a craft article, so I suppose I should try to distill my own strategies into a set of recommendations that might help other authors. So here goes!

Comprehensibility comes first. 

Before starting to play around with sentence structure in order to achieve particular effects, be sure that the literal meaning is clear and easy to grasp.

Avoid using complex noun phrases as sentence subjects since they burden the reader’s memory. Here’s a sentence from a story I recently edited for another author.

But what had been a nice little itch to scratch in private had bloomed within me and grown as uncontrollable as my hair.

This sentence is completely grammatical, but struck me as awkward and confusing because of the long subject – especially since that subject begins with a pronoun.

I suggested revising it as follows:

But the little itch I’d scratched in private had bloomed and grown as uncontrollable as my hair.

Multiple pronoun references in a single sentence that refer to different individuals can reduce clarity. Words that can act as both nouns and verbs (e.g. “present”, “market”) sometimes cause problems. Finally, cognitive research has shown that long sentences are more difficult to comprehend, regardless of their structure. I am not suggesting that authors “dumb down” their prose, but complexity must be weighed against comprehensibility.

I’m sure the average length of my sentences has declined as I’ve gained in skill, even as the variation in length has increased.

Match the pace of your prose to the pace of the narrative.

I’ve already addressed this issue above. Brief, concrete, punchy sentences work well for action scenes (including many sex scenes). Longer, more intricately structured sentences are more appropriate for description and thematic explication. Also, you may want to use more complex sentences for flashbacks than for live action. Recollection does not generally have the same intensity as experience, unless the character is lost in fantasy.

Use sentence fragments with discretion.  

A sentence fragment is a bare subject or bare predicate, or else part of a complex sentence – a dependent clause without the corresponding independent clause that controls it. Without context, a fragment does not express a full idea, and strictly speaking, fragments are not grammatically correct. However, a partial sentence can be highly effective in the right circumstances, particularly inner dialogue.

Sympathy welled up inside me. I pushed it aside. I had to be strong. Stern. Maybe even cruel.

In their ice-blue depths I saw a flicker of something—something that both warmed me inside and turned up the volume on my arousal. Gratitude, maybe? Or complicity?

If you’re deliberately using sentence fragments, don’t let some over-zealous editor cite rigid grammar rules to red-pencil them out of existence. At the same time, be aware that overusing fragments can render your prose much harder to understand.

Avoid joining clauses with “and” unless they are logically equivalent and have strong semantic links.

Compound sentences are powerful tools for expressing subtle connections between concepts. However, the “coordination” relationship, using “and”, is the weakest way to join two ideas.

Authors often use “and” when they are actually trying to convey temporal sequence:

She landed another stinging slap on my bare ass and I cried out in agony.

This sentence might be more effective if the clauses were split apart:

She landed another stinging slap on my bare ass. I cried out in agony.

Alternatively, you can make the temporal relationship more explicit:

When she landed another stinging slap on my bare ass, I cried out in agony.

Reserve “and” for cases where there’s a strong connection between concepts expressed in the joined clauses:

He’s my beloved Master and I’m his devoted slave.

Vary your sentence structure and length within a paragraph.

A paragraph in which every sentence has a similar structure quickly becomes boring. Erotic books are full of passages like the following:

Now he sipped at my mouth rather than swallowing me whole. He feathered his tongue over my lips, coaxing me to let him enter. He breathed into me, warm and sweet, gentle as drifting clouds on a spring day. He held me close, so close I could feel the heartbeat under his sweat-damp shirt, and bathed me in his devotion.

Every sentence in this brief paragraph has “he” as the subject. I revised the passage as follows:

Now he sipped at my mouth rather than swallowing me whole. His tongue feathered over my lips, coaxing me to let him enter. He breathed into me, warm and sweet, gentle as drifting clouds on a spring day. Holding me close, so close I could feel the heartbeat under his sweat-damp shirt, he bathed me in his devotion.

Now the sentences have a more varied structure. One technique for achieving this variety is to use modifying phrases (like “holding me close”) to introduce some of the sentences. Another technique I’ve employed here is to use what some editors would label as an “Independent Body Part” (“IBP”), using “his tongue” rather than “he” as the subject in the second sentence. Like any other construction, IBPs can be over-used, but in fact they are an example of a type of figurative language called synecdoche , which involves using a part of something to represent the whole, or vice versa.

An exercise in wrangling sentences

Just for fun, I decided to take one of the passages from Raw Silk I quoted at the start of this post, and revise it according to some of the recommendations above. Here’s the result:

The rubber felt foreign, solid and unyielding. No respite. No escape. Noi hammered into her, again and again. With each invasion, the ridges on the obscene toy caught then released the edges of Kate’s hole. The huge dildo stretched her to the limit, but Kate wanted more. Shameless, she arched back toward the woman fucking her, begging for what she craved. Deeper penetration. Harder strokes.

This still isn’t great literature, but are the sentences more effective? Is the tone more urgent, more involving? I’d argue that it is.

Summary

The structure of your sentences impacts the effectiveness of your prose. Work to create sentences that are easy to understand, that match the pace and tone of the narrative, and that use devices like fragments and figurative language to add variety and spice. Be deliberate in your choices. You have more control than you may have realized.

Grammatical Intuition - #amwriting #craft #grammar #ForWriters

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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.

Point of View and Viewpoint: How Hard Can It Be?

By Catherine E. McLean (Guest Blogger)

A couple of years ago, author and writing instructor Tim Esaias calculated there were 9,720 variations of Point of View (POV) and Viewpoint. I've seen the calculations. He's right.

It's also a fact that POV and Viewpoint are the most critical aspects of storytelling. So, if there's one piece of advice I would shout— no yell— to novice writers, it is to stop writing and take the time to read about, learn, practice, and master— yes, MASTER— Point of View and Viewpoint.

Why go to all that trouble? Because mastering POV and Viewpoint means fixing ninety percent of the problems in a manuscript. Doing so also means readers will turn the pages because they are engrossed and enjoying the story.

The second piece of advice, but which I would whisper to a novice writer, is the secret to comprehending POV and Viewpoint is realizing they are two separate things (despite the "experts" using the terms synonymously). Here are the simple and straightforward definitions:

POINT OF VIEW is the Storytelling Narrator at work relating the story to the reader. It answers the question: Through whose eyes is the story (or the scene) being observed?

Did you notice the words "narrator at work?" That's because when a reader reads, they hear a voice coming off the page, which is the "narrative voice." That voice will often be the story's "focal character," also known as the protagonist. Yet that narrator's voice could be the author's, one of the other major story characters, the story's storyteller (the voice-over guy), or omniscient (as either "god" or the "fly-on-the-wall"). In all instances, that Storytelling Narrator has a "very distinct voice" due to their diction, vocabulary, and syntax, which the reader hears when reading the story.

VIEWPOINT is how that narrator characteristically filters information and sensory perceptions, either consciously or unconsciously, while observing what's happening.

That narrator is highly opinionated. They can be accurate or inaccurate. Their judgment may be subjective or objective, or it may fluctuate between the two extremes. This makes the narrator of the story or scene open-minded or closed-minded, ethical or unethical— a coward or a hero.

Which means the narrator's opinions about other people, and how the narrator deals with those people in any given situation, will be compounded by the narrator's biases and personal prejudices. For example: Characters A, B, C, D, and E look at a glass of water on a table. Because the five can see that glass, they will report what they observe— they will narrate— but look HOW they relate what they observe:

A - "It is half full of water." (Optimist)

B - "Don't be an idiot, it's half empty." (Pessimist)

C - "That's just a glass with water in it." (Realist)

D - "Why do you humans concern yourself with a glass containing water?" (Baffled Alien Being)

E - Marsha couldn't believe the conversation had deteriorated to analyzing a glass of water. (Omniscient)

Each of the examples has a distinct voice because the writer conveyed the narrator's voice onto the page. If you didn't hear the differences that means you need to cultivate a better inner ear, which is another reason to master POV and Viewpoint.

Talent will take a writer only so far. It is craft that enhances and liberates talent. Best of all, craft can be learned. So, take the time to master POV and Viewpoint. Your readers will appreciate it.

And now, a bit about my latest book...

Hearts Akilter by Catherine E. McLean

Applicable genres: fantasy/sci-fi romance, romance, humor (lighthearted)

Length: Novella

Coming soon from The Wild Rose Press

Visit my website (http://www.catherineemclean.com/) to enter to win a $50 gift card as part of the book launch.

Love, vengeance, attempted murder, and a bomb...No reason to panic.

When a medical robot insists he's having a heart attack, Marlee Evans, a pragmatic maintenance technician, has every reason to panic. There's a bomb inside him. Since Marlee can't risk the bomber discovering she's found the device, her only option is to kidnap Deacon Black, an unflappable bomb expert, and secretly convince him to disarm it. Things go slightly awry when Deacon sets a trap for someone who is trying to kill him, and inadvertently captures Marlee instead. Instantly intrigued by her refreshingly forthright and gutsy attitude, he's smitten. Unfortunately for Deacon, Marlee recently hardened her heart and swore off men, especially handsome ones with boy-next-door grins. But as Marlee and Deacon attempt to identify and prevent the bomber from detonating the device, they discover that love may be the most explosive force of all.

Available for Pre-Order Now

Amazon: http://amzn.to/1faTnHp

Nook: http://bit.ly/1HDMrii

The Wild Rose Press: http://bit.ly/1HDhwAT

Excerpt

The bomb. Right. Dismantle the bomb. In this lift? No, that was insane. “Marlene, if the bomb goes off accidentally—”

“It’ll blow the station to kingdom come?”

He nodded.

“Not to worry.”

She said that with such nonchalance that he found himself speechless. He cleared his throat. “Why not? Did you snatch the portable Bomb Disposal Unit, too?”

“Better.”

“What’s better than a BDU?”

“Garbage incinerators.”

“What?” He glanced out into the darkness beyond the lift.

Giant machinery stood silhouetted and veiled in shadows. “Where are we?”

“Deck forty-three, Ring D zero three. Relax. Don’t panic. They once accidentally incinerated a torpedo in number four, over yonder.”

She pointed to the left. “Nobody heard or felt it explode, and there wasn’t even a drail’s worth of damage done to the incinerator, or anything else.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It happened three years ago. I was there, a deck above.

Never mind.”

Henry manipulated his finger appendage, grabbing and briefly tugging the shirt sleeve of Deacon’s good arm. “Marlee would never lie about anything so important.”

“Does she lie about unimportant things?” He instantly regretted his caustic remark.

“I do not know.” Henry spun sideways, facing Marlee. “Do you lie about unimportant things, Marlee?”

“I have been known to tell a white lie now and then to spare someone’s feelings, but on the whole—” She looked away from Henry.

As her blacker than black eyes met his gaze, Deacon felt pinned to the wall.

About Catherine E. McLean

Besides Catherine being a wife and mother, she has ridden and exhibited Morgan Sport Horses. She's an avid clothing and costume designer, an award-winning amateur photographer, a 4-H leader, and a Red Hatter who loves bling.

She lives on a farm nestled in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains of Western Pennsylvania. In the quiet of the countryside, she writes fantasy, futuristic, and paranormal stories where a reader can escape to other worlds for adventure and romance.

Her short stories have appeared in hard-copy and online anthologies and magazines. Besides having two novels published, soon to be released is her lighthearted fantasy/sci-fi romance HEARTS AKILTER. Catherine also gives writing workshops, both online and in-person. A schedule is posted at http://www.writerscheatsheets.com/workshops.html

Catherine's website for writers is http://www.WritersCheatSheets.com and she blogs at http://writerscheatsheets.blogspot.com/

Hub Website: http://www.CatherineEmclean.com

Connect with Catherine at: http://www.catherineemclean.com/contact-me.html

 
And don't forget to enter her release contest for a $50 gift certificate at her website!