Then, And Then

Sadly, today my Uncampaign Mismanager and I decided to throw in the towel on our attempts to buy the open Illinois Senate seat from almost-ex-Governor Blagojevich. I so wanted to be Senator and dedicate my mighty clout to repealing the sales tax on chocolate, and we were only $27,999.68 short of the half mil we figured it would cost us. But what are ya gonna do. We knew we were racing the clock to satisfy the Guv's wild greed, and we lost to some other guy with quicker cash. Oh, well. Looks like I'm destined to be an editor, after all.

So, with my short and doomed campaign behind us, and with the refunds nearly complete to those who so cheerfully donated their Monopoly money, poker chips, and Chuck E. Cheez tokens to Our Noble Cause, I will bury my disappointment in work.

We'll start with a quick peek at the word then, followed by a caution about rules.

Technically, the word then is not a conjunction. It can be used

• as an adverb (to clarify the time at which a verb occurs, as in, "Blagojevich extorted payola, got caught, and then was forced to resign.")
• as a noun (to refer to a specific time, as in, "Since then, Blagojevich has resorted to taking bribes from his family members to get a haircut.")
• or as an adjective ( as in, "the then Governor Blagojevich remained unaware of how permanent the damage to his reputation would be.")

Sometimes, we see writers skip conjunctions when using then before a final verb in a series.

She stopped, dropped, then rolled.

And I must admit, even though this sort of thing will always jump off the page for me, I sometimes let it slide. Emphasis on sometimes. What that means is that in the vast majority of cases, I will insert the conjunction for clarity and rhythm.

So, I was thinking about Alicia's posts on compound predicates with missing conjunctions, and it made me think of the rash of manuscripts lately with faulty then constructions in just about every other paragraph. And I thought I would post this reminder that then is not a conjuction, but there's a bigger point to be made about both Alicia's and my posts.

In responding to Alicia's post, several of you raised examples of highly regarded authors who occasionally drop the conjunctions in compound predicates. I'm sure you can all find examples of authors who use then as an adverb without a conjunction, too. They're out there. I know it, and Alicia knows it, and you all know it, too.

So here's the thing. We say, here's the general rule. And we're right. And you say, but so-and-so breaks it. And you're right. But it's not enough to know the rule, and know that it can be broken. We have to also understand the effect to be created by breaking the rule in different circumstances or in different ways.

Because that's where precision lies. When a word is used with forethought and deliberation in an unexpected way, when a faulty construction is left to lie on the page like a painted whore, when a rule is quietly broken or forcefully shattered, then is a precise effect being caused upon the reader.

When you chain predicate verbs without a conjunction, you can create an impression of speed, or chaos, or actions that build in sequence to a pinnacle. The effect may vary from usage to usage, because this sort of thing is case specific. When you insert a then into such a chain, you might gain control over the sequence of events without sacrificing the effect of the dropped conjunction. So there are times when these things work, and I believe Alicia also recognized valid exceptions to the rules.

What we've been seeing lately, though, is a conjunction dropped for no apparent reason. There is no sense of a meticulous author controlling her prose by artfully breaking a rule. There is, instead, a sense of abandon. And not in a good way. It's not being done here and there for precise effects, but four or five times per page, almost like a nervous stutter in the written speech. The overall impression is one of sloppiness and disrespect for the language.

The next time you notice a published work breaking a rule, I want you to do two things. First, take a moment to congratulate yourself for recognizing the breach. You've worked hard to gain the knowledge and sharp eye that allowed you to do so, and that's a good thing.

Second, I want you to step back from the page for a moment. Appraise it as neutrally as possible. Ask yourself, why is the rule being broken here? Why here and not there? What effect is being created? Try rearranging the words to "fix" the prose, and see how the effect changes. Take the time to figure it out. It will be worth it in the end.

Theresa

Less is more. Rinse and repeat.

Re: doubling predicates without and and other cute prose tricks: If it's effective, it's good. I think it isn't necessary most of the time, and the writer needs to consider whether it's necessary here-- because if there's a grammatical break and the editor deems it unnecessary, there it goes. Out, out, damned break!

Less is more. "When it is absolutely necessary" is the amount any "clever" formation should be used-- only when it adds far, far more than breaking grammar detracts.

I don't think it NEVER works. But I do think the more a writer uses such formations, the less effect it has (beyond annoying). In fact, if you want such a formation to have an actual effect, you should never use it except the two or three times in a book it works. Maybe more than two or three times... as I said, it can be effective in conveying fast, simultaneous action. But if a writer uses it whenever there are two actions, then the reader will have no way of knowing that this moment is different, that these are simultaneous, not sequential or causal, actions.

Sometimes, I think, writers fall in love with certain constructions and forget why they exist, and use them as if they are in fact the standard.
Alicia

New trends in prose I'm going to edit out...

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's "my voice". But any idiosyncrasy is going to lose all claim to power the story or to reflect the character (or author) voice, if it is used constantly as if it's standard English. Less is more, for cripes' sake. LESS IS MORE!!!

So if you're doubling predicates (without an AND) every paragraph or so, do not be surprised when your grumpy editor edits almost all of them back to standard English. Is this some new trend? I'm seeing it all the time in submissions and contest entries (almost never, nota bene, in published fiction). Here's an example I'm making up:

He reached out, touched her.

Oh, another-- these never come as singlets. They are usually throughout the whole chapter, regardless of POV character (that is, we can't blame the character voice).

Gilead climbed, clambered up the wall.

And yet another:

Her head ached, reeled with pain.

You know, this is actually one of those times you can use a participle! (Theresa said memorably that three things can happen when you use participles, and two of them are bad-- well, here's the good one.)

Her head ached, reeling with pain.

Well, I don't know if a head can reel, but that is actually part of the problem with this doubling of predicate. You have two predicates. Do they actually both use the same subject? Sometimes the sloppiness of this construction means that the first predicate is actually an action of the subject, but the second predicate applies apparently to some missing subject that I guess the reader is supposed to supply, like:

His hand itched to smack the kid, welled up with anger.

Well, the hand didn't well up with anger, so is it the kid welling up? The "he" that owns the hand? Predicates and subjects need to match. If you disagree with that, please find another language to write in.

(Oh, sure, you can occasionally, for some effect you can identify, break the rules. But if you do it all the time, it's you establishing a new rule, not breaking the rules. And if you want to define a rule -and abide by it-- wherein you have doubled predicates with one subject that connects directly with only one of those predicates, well, go ahead. Elucidate. Explain your logic, when the rule applies and when it doesn't, and give examples. If you don't want to do that, don't expect me or the reader to do your work for you.)

Another problem is that the practice leads to redundancy.

Gilead climbed, clambered up the wall.

I see this one a lot, where the writer apparently can't decide between two synonyms and so uses them both. (The former trend, fortunately lost in the mists of time, was to put a slash mark between them: Gilead climbed/clambered up the wall.)

Sin boldly. Choose. Climbed, clambered-- which fits better here? CHOOSE. You are in charge.

There's a great way to handle sentences where one person commits two actions, and yes, it uses two predicates. It also uses a handy little word, sometimes called a "conjunction" because it conjoins two like things (for example, actions). Conjunctions are useful because they not only show that two things are related, but HOW they are related (so "but" shows they are related by contrast or conflict). So:

He reached out and touched her.

Does that sound trite? Yes? Well, maybe it IS trite. Maybe it's too trite to write. Maybe you should make that sentence do more than repeat a long-distance commercial, huh? If you make a grammatical sentence and it says nothing of import, it's not going to suddenly become meaningful because you make it an ungrammatical sentence. Concentrate on saying something that matters.

Something to keep in mind is that editors get everything amplified. What seems to you to be a trendy or clever opening is, by the time you send it to us, rather hackneyed-- twenty other writers have already thought of that and sent it to us. So your clever opening-- oh, like the hero and heroine colliding in the corridor, my favorite clever opening that I've only seen 10K times-- isn't going to seem too clever. And how unique and true will your story seem, if it's opened in a way that opens so many other stories?

I digress. What I meant was-- if the editor has seen your "voice" thingy so much it's become annoying and has its own unflattering moniker and yahoogroups list, maybe it's not the best representation of your voice, and maybe this aspect of your voice is not actually so representative of your uniqueness.

Does that mean you should never break the rules, never listen to your inner rhythms, never try to replicate the character's voice? Of course not. It just means that you shouldn't choose one transgressive technique and use it over and over and over again. Your voice is more than one lapse in grammar, one used, moreover, by a lot of other writers-- and, uh, one that your editor is likely to "fix" anyway.

What are other "transgressive" but common techniques? I think one is the breaking up of perfectly nice sentences into one sentence and a series of fragments, like:
He knew. Knew her. Her perfume. Her perfidy. (Hmm. I like that ... perfume, perfidy. I like it a lot better in one sentence. :)

Again, I don't mean that you should never break rules of grammar and syntax. But there's not power in breaking the rule if you ALWAYS break the rules. We're likely to assume that you just don't know the rules.

Alicia

Back again...

Well, have a few minutes between papers and manuscripts. All day I've been working on writing something to help students understand what a sentence is and what a fragment is, and everything seems confusing and unhelpful. I mean, just about all the characteristics of a sentence can be replicated by a fragment ("A sentence has a clause, subject/verb"-- well, so does "Because I wanted to"... "A sentence states a complete thought"== Oh, yeah? How about "I'm not?" And lots of fragments are complete thoughts plus a word like "which" that diminishes it syntactically)...

The last straw was an otherwise helpful grammar website which defined clause as "A syntactic element that has both a subject and a predicate." Okay, let's move right past that "syntactic element" thing. "Predicate" was hyperlinked to its own definition. Yeah. "Part of a clause." Clause was, of course, hyperlinked to the original definition. Nothing like circularity. Oh, also, apparently a predicate "says something about the subject." (So does an adjective.)

No wonder students have so much trouble recognizing sentences and fragments. (Well, the major reason is, and here's where I get thrown out of the Teachers of English groups, kids don't grow up diagramming sentences. Weird that it's considered useless, when I took advanced grammar in grad school, and what was the main exercise? Sentence diagramming.)

So I decided to make my own schemata for clauses and sentences. And I'll share it with you. :) I'm trying to keep it simple, and trying not to despair ("There's no way to explain this! And they don't care! And anyway, everyone uses fragments all the time now!") and trying not to use complex terms. Just keep in mind, this is for students who don't understand sentences -- that is, not writers who occasionally choose, for effect or emphasis, to use fragments.

If you have suggestions, let me know. I'm going to post this to a couple of my classes later in the week. What has helped you know what a sentence is? How do you deal with all those existential questions? I mean, one of the definitions was that a sentence "states a proposition". Huh? It's like they're only talking about certain types of sentences.

(This had a box around it in Word, but apparently the lines disappeared into the ether. AND there were pretty colors distinguishing the subject and predicate. Sigh.)
Clauses
A clause is a unit of grammar that has a main subject and a main predicate combination. It is the essential building block of a sentence, expressing something about an object or person (the subject).


The subject is an item in the sentence that either acts:
• Paul hit the ball.
Or is acted upon:
• The ball is hit by Paul.
Or just exists in some state of being:
• Paul is good at hitting the ball.
The subject is usually a noun (thing-name) or pronoun (he/she/it/they/this/that—replacement for noun), or a combination phrase that centers on a noun or pronoun, but includes modifying words or phrases, like:
The dirty old baseball
The old baseball sailing into right field

The predicate is always a verb or verb phrase which identifies the action of the clause's subject:
• Paul hit the ball.
An important group of predicates identifies a state or condition of the subject. The two most common of these "stative predicates" are is and have.
• Paul has a lot of experience playing baseball.

The predicate phrase can have auxiliary verbs like was and could, which express tense or some other aspect of the action:
• Earlier, Paul was hitting the ball over the fence.

It can also have adverbs which modify the action somewhat.
• Paul hit the ball weakly.

Clauses and sentences:
A clause then combines a subject (the actor or acted-upon, usually earlier in the sentence) and the predicate.

A clause can be either independent (subject-predicate):
• Schools should not require the driver's exam.

or dependent (subject-predicate with a diminishment like a dependent conjunction):
Although schools should not require the driver's exam,

Independent clauses can be full sentences on their own, even if they are very short:
• I run.
Dependent clauses, no matter how long, cannot be full sentences on their own.
They must be attached to an independent clause to make a sentence:
• Although schools should not require the driver's exam, students should be encouraged to take the training course.


The best way I've found to learn how sentences work is to diagram sentences. This gives you a graphic and hands-on way to analyze what roles different words and phrases play. Here's a great site with lots of sentence diagramming exercises. Be sure and find the "Enter" button in the middle of the front page to get access to the exercises. Really, this is fun! Trust me!

Fixing Your Nasal Passages, Part Two: Changing Predicates

As you may have noticed in the first post about fixing nasal passages, sentence combining sometimes requires a bit of finesse to achieve good results. And it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.


Not all nostril-plugging sentences will be immediately followed by an action which results from the scent. Sometimes, other material will interrupt the stimulus and the response, or maybe the scent is purely descriptive and there is no response.


The scent of fresh-brewed coffee permeated her nostrils. Could it really be six a.m. already? She opened her eyes slowly.


In this case, the order of the sentences could loosely be labeled as: description, interior monologue, action. The rhythm of this paragraph is better than our original example from the other day, but it still contains the problem of the permeated nostrils. In this case, to preserve the rhythm, I might connect the scent to a different action and forget about combining sentences:


The scent of fresh-brewed coffee teased her awake. Could it really be six a.m. already? She opened her eyes slowly.


Now the order is: action, interior monologue, action. The paired actions highlight her resistance to getting up and, as an added bonus, bracket the related complaint in her interior monologue. This is a paragraph with some integrity, but it still keeps moving forward with new actions.
It’s worth noting that the new predicate describes a response to the subject. The scent causes her to wake up. As we’ve mentioned before, one of the most effective ways to leverage the sense of smell is by linking it to a chain of causation.


One other thing I have to point out here. We’ve replaced a sentence of description, which is passive, with a sentence of action, which is, well, active. There’s a body in motion now, a character whose physical state is changing from asleep to awake.


What we had before was an intangible (a scent) permeating a hole (nostril, from the Old English, literally means nose hole). (Side question: is it even possible to permeate a hole? Doesn’t permeate imply some intermingling of elements, such as water permeating a cloth or chemicals permeating a membrane? I don’t know -- just thought I’d throw that question out to the wordsmiths.) You might think that the first sentence was actually an action rather than a description, but I think that if you have a non-object in an empty space, it’s a stretch to call it action.


In any event, the best storytelling focuses on bodies in motion, people and things caught up in a chain of actions and reactions, stimuli and responses. So as a general rule, you’re better off with more action and less description.


So change your predicate to something more active, and then you can leave the rest of the sentences alone.

Theresa