Articles, Definitely

Look at this pretty little sentence from Marrying Mozart by Stephanie Cowell.

Carnival time came to Vienna just before Lent, as it did each year, with its glittery masks, wild costumes, extravagant feasts, the parading whores, who revealed as much of their bodies as they dared to by law, the banging of drums, the playing of horns, and much dancing until dawn -- all to frighten winter away.

Long sentences fascinate me, especially long lists like this one, which uses some very interesting organizational techniques to make it easy to read.

Let's start by taking a look at the mechanics. The list portion is composed of seven items. Simplified, they are,

1. glittery masks
2. wild costumes
3. extravagant feasts
4. parading whores
5. the banging of drums
6. the playing of horns
7. much dancing until dawn

The general rule of thumb is that the human mind can grasp sets of three with relative ease. Once you get more than three, there are ways to manage the organization so that readers don't get lost in the details. But the key is, those details must be managed. You can’t just toss them on the page and expect the reader to catch them.

Here, the author creates two clusters of three items each at the top and bottom of the list. The middle item, the fourth item, separates these two groups of three. So the group of seven is actually broken out into a pattern of three, one, three.

The first group of three is linked by its reliance upon a common possessive pronoun.

its glittery masks, wild costumes, extravagant feasts

Its links all three of these items back to Carnival time, but that’s not a direct link. Consider how the pronoun reference would be confusing if we removed the intervening adverb clause, as it did each year.

Carnival time came to Vienna just before Lent, with its glittery masks, wild costumes, extravagant feasts,

(originally, Carnival time came to Vienna just before Lent, as it did each year, with its glittery masks, wild costumes, extravagant feasts,)

That phrase as it did each year is a cumulative modifier qualifying the time for arrival of Carnival, so the indefinite pronoun it must refer to Carnival time. Not to Vienna, and not to Lent. The it in that adverb clause links Carnival time to the its which the first three list items all rely upon. Carnival time - it - its, all working together like touchstones. Pretty nifty.

After that first clean and easy set of three items, things get even niftier. Items 4, 5, and 6 on the list each start off with their own definite article: the parading whores, the banging, the playing. But item 4 doesn’t form a set with items 5 and 6. It’s transitional, and it separates the first set of three from the final set of three. How do we know this? Two ways. First, the final three list items each follow the same structure: gerund, preposition, object.
banging of drums
playing of horns
dancing until dawn

But notice that with item four, we don’t get parading of whores (gerund, preposition, object). We get parading whores (adjective, noun), which is the same structure as the first three list items (also adjective, noun). Even though the adjective takes the present participial form, and thereby echoes the gerunds in the final three list items, that echo is imperfect. The sounds are similar, but the usages and structures are different.

I love it that she used a definite article for 4, 5, and 6, but dropped it for the adjective much in item 7. That was a master stroke, and that’s what originally made this sentence leap off the page for me. Another writer might have been tempted to use the same articles for 5, 6, and 7, and drop the definite article from 4. But Cowell enhanced the transitional nature of 4 by manipulating the pattern of the articles. Don’t believe me? Try this:

its glittery masks, wild costumes, extravagant feasts, its parading whores, who revealed as much of their bodies as they dared to by law, the banging of drums, the playing of horns, and the dancing until dawn

See the difference? Changing the articles sets those final three items so solidly together that the entire rhythm of the sentence is impacted. They sound isolated.

The second reason we know that item 4 is transitional is that intervening relative clause, who revealed as much of their bodies as they dared to by law. Hello, didn’t we just deal with another intervening clause used as a transition? Yes. Yes, we did. We’re in the hands of a masterful writer, folks. Look at the sentence structure:

• Main clause
• Intervening adverb clause used as a transition between the main clause and the list
• Three list items linked by common possessive pronoun and adjective-noun structure
• Fourth list item, transitional in nature, which follows the adjective-noun pattern of the first set of three, and which sets up the participle usage in the final set of three and which breaks the list’s reliance on a common article
• Relative subordinate clause modifying the transitional fourth list item
• Final set of three list items taking a gerund-prepositional phrase structure.
  

So gorgeous. This is the kind of sentence that makes my heart go pitterpat. And all because she knew how to use clauses as transitions and how to build a list by breaking it apart. Swoon!

Theresa

Breaking Rules

At some point earlier this year, Alicia and I talked a little bit about lists and series. We talked about different methods for organizing information in lists. We talked about how people remember list items. We talked about rhythm and parallel structure and ending on strong notes. (Did we talk about shortest-to-longest? I can't remember.) Useful editing tricks.

But, as with all rules, there is a point where art transcends form and the rule no longer matters. This point has been brought home to me recently in a book I'm reading which both follows and ignores ignores all of the organizational principles for items in lists.

-----

The things they carried were largely determined by a necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and the two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between 15 and 20 pounds, depending upon a man's habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he'd stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed 5 pounds including the liner and camouflage cover. They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots -- 2.1 pounds -- and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl's foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother's distrust of the white man, his grandfather's old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or ground sheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away.

From The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

-----

Is there an organizing principle to this list? Not really. There are lots and lots of beautiful things he does in the prose, but we can't say that this list is organized according to any sterile central rule. It has tremendous emotional impact, though, and that's really what I'm talking about when I say that sometimes art transcends form. Art speaks to our emotions. Form is the container that holds the art. Sometimes the emotions are too big for the container or don't fit comfortably in a standard container. In those cases, function should trump form, as it does here.

But, of course, there's always a danger in breaking away from established forms. It's a risk. The best way to minimize that risk is to really understand the rules and the underlying principles that create them. And then, with that understanding to guide you, look at successful instances where others have broken the rules and examine how they've made it work.

So let's talk about the paragraph from the Tim O'Brien piece. (This is an exceptionally good book, by the way. Well worth reading even if it's not one of your usual genres. I'm not a big fan of 20th-century war books, but my sister-in-law recommended this one, and I'm so glad she did.)

Tell me what you see him doing, and why you think it works. Yes, I'm going to make you think about this. Pay attention, and think it through. Notice things like word choice, repetition, and the points where emotion is introduced or eliminated. Tell me in the comments what kind of impact those things have on you as a reader.

By the way, in case you were wondering about my recent absence, I wasn't wandering England with Alicia. I wish I had been. My family owns a small construction company and we're in the process of moving to a new location. I'm not deeply involved in this business, but I am deeply involved in the move. And it's no fun at all. But we'll get through it. We're in the home stretch now.

Theresa

ps. Today is the birthday of P.G. Wodehouse, which makes me want to lay in bed, drink tea, and be silly all day.

One Other Point About Long Lists

I want to add only one point to Alicia's excellent post about lists.

When you have a list of a large number of items, the reader will almost always recall those items in this order:
Last item
First item
Second-to-last item
Third-to-last item

Then, if they remember more of the list -- and chances are, they won't -- the item remembered becomes more random.

Think I'm kidding? Without looking, try to recall the items in the long Don DeLillo passage she posted yesterday. (Was that from White Noise, btw?) I'll give you a couple moments to think about it. But no peeking!

If you remembered the Mystic Mints and the Dum-Dum pops, you remembered the last two items on the list. Those were the two I remember most clearly. I also remember stereos. And Kabooms and Waffelos. And other than that, I remember a generally confused impression of lots and lots of crap on a big yard.

What do you remember? Does your memory of the list resemble mine? The only way my recollection veers from expectations is that I remembered the stereos, but DeLillo actually wrote about stereo sets. And I missed the fruit chews and toffee popcorn, skipping right over those to recall the Waffelos and Kabooms. (I wonder if that's due to the brand names?)

Theresa

Author authority -- items in a series

Theresa and I talk about signs of "author authority." No, that doesn't mean your characters always do what you say, or you can command high advances! Rather it means that something in the voice tells us that this author knows what he/she is doing, knows (instinctively or no) how to get the desired reader effect. It's hard to define, but we know it when we read it-- it's like nervously sitting down in an airplane and looking out the window at the driving rain, and then hearing the pilot on the PA system, "Hey, folks, this is Captain Mason, and I know it looks like a muddy night. But don't you worry. Just sit back and relax. Me and the crew, we know what we're doin'." And you TOTALLY believe it, and you know that if you should turn out to be very pregnant and go into labor right there in the plane, the captain and his crew would deliver that baby just fine at 40,000 feet in the sky. (And, oh, yeah, he's got a slight West Virginia drawl, and sounds just like Sam Shepherd playing Chuck Yeager.)

Anyway, when we read the first page of a manuscript with "author authority," we can just sit back and relax and read, because we know-- this author knows what to do.

So how do we know that? There are a thousand indicators that let us know that this author is going to give us a good ride. But I'll just talk about one common one today, and no doubt we'll add more later.

Items in a series. NOT very exciting, huh? But for various reasons-- sentence balance, conveyance of trivia overload, conveyance of overwhelming force, all sorts of reasons dependent on context-- authors often like to list things. And HOW you list them tells me whether you have an ear for rhythm, a consciousness of significance, and an awareness of construction.

Here's a famous example, the characterization of Byron by Caro Lamb: "He was mad, bad, and dangerous to know," which is such a great capsule description of the dark hero. I love the interior rhyme there (mad/bad) and the last item's transfer of meaning from who he is (mad, bad, dangerous) to the effect on people (to know).

So some guidelines, just in case this doesn't come naturally to you.

1) Think about your numbers here. How many items are you putting in there? The Byron example uses the magic rule of three. This rule, which isn't a rule but an observation, follows the notion that that triangle is at once the most stable and most conflict-filled situation. Mom, Dad, and me = three. Red, white, and blue= three. Three strikes. Three outs. Three point play (just cuz it's March Madness. :). Three-time loser.

Two's a coincidence... three's a pattern.

Notice that Caro Lamb knew that we respond instinctively to three items. We feel a completion with three. With "mad and bad," we would be left waiting for the punchline. (Notice how many jokes are "three"-- A rabbi, a priest, and a minister walk into a bar.)

Our expectations, however, mean that you can play with that rule of three. If you put only two items in a series (AND, and this is a big AND, you've given us reason to think you haven't just screwed up, that you've done this to some purpose), then the sense of suspension, of waiting, can make us wait-- subconsciously we're waiting for something to happen. That's actually a good way to set us up for some disaster, and thus is an important component of suspense-- make us wait for that third item.

And using more than three can make us laugh and then make us annoyed, which is great if that's what you want. Notice that standup comedians often start with a list of three, and then pause, and start adding to it, so it's kind of like this (I'm not very funny, so don't expect to laugh):

So I ate the peach. And then I ate the pasta salad. And then I ate the burger. (Long pause.) And the five-bean salad. (Pause.) And the baked beans. (Pause.) And the scalloped potatoes. (Pause.) And the au-gratin potatoes. (Pause.) And the tablecloth. And my nephew. He got in the way.

The repetition (and the...) adds to the accumulation and sets us up for the punchline.

Going on beyond three is a way to really pound home a point. Here's an example from a Don Delillo novel:
As cars slowed to a crawl and stopped, students sprang out and raced to the rear doors to begin removing the objects inside; the stereo sets, radios, personal computers; small refrigerators and table ranges; the cartons of phonograph records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth control pills and devices; the junk food still in shopping bags—onion-and-garlic chips, nacho thins, peanut creme patties, Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic mints.

That's a critique of capitalist society, in case you didn't notice, but for those of us with kids in college, it seems pretty true to life. Yes, it's annoying, and even gets a bit boring there at the end, but see how visual the scene becomes, as we imagine all that junk coming out of the car and piling up on the sidewalk.

But breaking the rule of three only has the effect of transgression because inside each of us is that expectation of three. So start with that, and then decide if you want to bust that expectation. But authority lies in your knowing WHY-- what effect this will have on the reader. You don't have to know this consciously, but your readers can tell if you know instinctively what you're doing and why.

2) Start with parallel structure and violate that at your own risk. Parallel structure is the expectation that all items in a series will have the same grammatical form, that is, they'll all be adjectives (mad, bad, dangerous) or all nouns (the stereo sets, radios, personal computers). If they are phrases or clauses, they are all the same type (participial, relative). And all the items in the list should follow from the sentence root, so for example, if the sentence is structured if the sentence is Subject-Verb- LIST, every item in the list should be structured to follow the verb.
So:
NOT:

I want to know everything. I want to know how the sun rises, and why the sky is blue, and tomorrow's lottery winner.

BUT:

I want to know everything. I want to know how the sun rises, and why the sky is blue, and who will win tomorrow's lottery.

(Emphasis added.)

3) Rhythmic balance is important. Lists are really poetic devices, and you're using them for poetic effect, so go for rhythm rather than clunk. That usually means putting the shortest item first, and the longest last. Look again at "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," and read it aloud. Hear yourself drawing out that last item so the list comes to a conclusion right at the right instant? (The interior rhyme helps by pairing the first two, so that the three-word last item is still longer, but only just enough.)

4) Also try and end on the most important item:
He was tried for usury, embezzlement, and high treason.
(I'd suggest adding something to "high treason" so it's also longer than "embezzlement," say, "rank high treason" or "attempted high treason," but I'm compulsive.)

If the last item is more than one word, try to end it on the word you want to linger in the reader's mind. "Treason" is a strong word, and if you had, say, "... a high treason attempt," you'd be ending instead on a weak word (attempt means he didn't manage it!). Think of where the conflict is, which item opens to a story better, and it's not always what you might think. After all, torture is worse than temptation, right? But look at this: The devil specializes in torment, torture, and temptation. Temptation is the one that will open up story/scene possibilities, right? Torment and torture are solutions, however nasty. Temptation is an open question-- will the victim resist or succumb?

Again, at any point, you can defy reader expectation for comic or suspense effect. They'll expect, for example, that the last item will be the most intense or important, so if you put something trivial there, it will be amusing:
He was tried for high treason, murder, and spitting on the sidewalk.

5) As I said, the list is meant to be poetic and rhythmic, so if you have a secret hankering for alliteration (torment, torture, temptation) or anaphora (Churchill: we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.) or rhyme (mad, bad), go for it. Don't go for it too much, but this is precisely the place to have some fun.
Alicia