Lesson 1: Writing by Ear

Lesson 1: Writing by Ear

Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. . . . The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive.

--Joan Didion

As Ms. Didion suggests, you do not need a comprehensive understanding of grammar to write well – but you do need to respect its power. These lessons are designed to teach you some of the basic elements and show how they relate to writing. I would also recommend reading voraciously and keeping a daily journal. These time-honored practices lead to a natural understand of grammar and usage, and will complement the lessons we review in class.
English grammar is a complex and challenging topic to master; if you are curious and want to deepen your understanding, you will have the opportunity to go beyond the basics in college classes.
In your groups, discuss what you know about grammar and give some examples; discuss how texting and the internet have affected your grammar and give some examples; and finally, discuss Ms. Didion’s opening statement. Are the rules important? Or should you just play by ear?

Lesson 2: Nouns

A noun is a word that names a person, place, thing or idea. Read the following paragraph and underline all the nouns. Then, count all the words in the paragraph, and all the nouns. Divide the number of nouns by the total number of words. This yields a percentage. What does the percentage of nouns in this paragraph – typical in length, but exquisite in form – tell you about nouns?

A solitary ant, afield, cannot be considered to have much of anything on his mind; indeed, with only a few neurons strung together by fibers, he can’t be imagined to have a mind at all, much less a thought. He is more like a ganglion on legs. Four ants together, or ten, encircling a dead moth on the path, begin to look more like an idea. They fumble and shove, gradually moving the food toward the Hill, but as though by blind chance. It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.

--Lewis Thomas

Total words______
Total nouns______
Nouns/Total______%

Comment on the percentage – what does it mean? Also, why is this excerpt from Lives of the Cell considered excellent writing?

Lesson 3: Active & Passive Verbs

Use active verbs unless there is no reasonable way to get around using passive verbs.

Examples:

"Joe hit him" is active and strong.
"He was hit by Joe" is passive and weak.

Use creative verbs rather than settling for ones that are merely serviceable.

Example:

"A red handkerchief was tucked in his pocket"
is weaker and less interesting than
"A red handkerchief blossomed from his pocket."

Stephen King, best known as a horror novelist, offers some excellent advice on active and passive construction in his memoir On Writing:

The timid fellow writes, "The meeting will be held at seven o’clock" because that somehow says to him, "Put it this way and people will believe you really know." Purge this quisling thought! Don’t be a muggle! Throw back your shoulders, stick out your chin, and put that meeting in charge! Write "The meeting’s at seven." There, by God! Don’t you feel better?

Rewrite the following passage using strong, active verbs. And don’t be a muggle!

Randy was the subject of discipline by his science teacher. It wasn’t the first time he had faced corrective action. In middle school, the record for detentions was held by him. This time, the options for Randy may be worse – he could even be expelled. Ten days at home were required for students who were expelled. Fun after-school activities like baseball wouldn’t be allowed, either.

Lesson 4: Modify in Moderation

The respected author of On Writing Well urges writers to be "intensely selective" with adjectives and adverbs. "If you a describing a beach," says William Zinsser, "don’t write that the shore was scattered with rocks or that occasionally a seagull flew over. Shores have a tendency to be scattered with rocks and to be flown over by seagulls."
Read the following insightful passage, which is from an autobiographical novel by a popular American writer.

I began my paper, but began it badly. I never began things well. The first sentence had too many adjectives. So did the second. Remembering that my professor in the modern novel, Colonel Masters, a shy and excellent teacher, had chided me gently about my irrepressible love of adjectives, I started again with clear simple sentences. Nouns and verbs, nouns and verbs, and occasionally, to satisfy my own simple lust, I would throw in a delicious, overwrought adjective or two.

--Pat Conroy

Many young writers develop a hard-to-kick adjective habit, particularly after realizing they have some descriptive talent. Adjectives, however, are more powerful when used sparingly. Cross out the modifiers in the following sentences and note how the flow improves.

It was very clearly apparent that the troublesome students would not stay serenely in the boring class.
I was on slippery ice and slowly and dangerously drifting toward a big truck at the busy and cluttered intersection.
A rampaging grizzly could use the hiker’s huge walking stick as a handy toothpick after he’d quickly dispatched with his meager and frightened human meal.

Lesson 5: Coordinating Conjunctions

Coordinating conjunctions connect individual words or groups of words. And and but are the most common coordinating conjunctions; the others are or, nor, for, yet and so. While most often used within sentences, coordinating conjunctions can also provide fluid transitions at the outset. Consider the following excerpt from a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer:

And there I sat, in my big, black, fat-cat car, with air-conditioning blasting, stereo playing and enough electronic doodads to do everything but blow my nose.
I had enough money in my pocket to buy that skinny kid a suit, pay his family’s rent for a month and maybe fill up their refrigerator and pantry.
But I hadn’t had the decency to let him squeegee the windshield, then touch the button that lowers a window and give him a buck and a smile. I had given him a scowl and a wave-off, gestures that said he was nothing.
And all the while, do you know what was playing on my stereo cassette? Peter, Paul and Mary singing that if they had a hammer, they’d hammer out love between their bothers and their sisters, all over the world – that’s what was playing.

--Mike Royko

Some English teachers have preached against using coordinating conjunctions as openers. I would challenge you to find a novel in the library or bookstore that does NOT have dozens of sentences beginning with these words. And if our novelists – our finest writers – use coordinating conjunctions to begin sentences, why can’t students? Still, be aware that some teachers will mark you down for opening with coordinating conjunctions, particularly in formal research papers.
Reflect on this controversy. Have you been taught to avoid and, but, etc. at the beginning of sentences? Why? Do you feel comfortable using these words as openers?

Lesson 6: Simple Sentences

A simple sentence can have single or compound subjects and predicates. It has only one independent clause, and no dependent clauses. And a simple sentence can contain one or more phrases.
Usually, simple sentences are short. For this reason, they are generally preferred for young writers, because short sentences are easier to control and easier to read. Perhaps the most famous writer of short sentences was Ernest Hemingway. He also wrote many sentences that were moderately long, but his short, staccato sentences are part of his legacy. Consider the following passage from The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, about a man finding his courage on a safari after an embarrassing display of cowardice:

Beggar had probably been afraid all his life. Don’t know what started it. But over now. Hadn’t had time to be afraid with the buff. That and being angry too. Motor car too. Motor car made it familiar. Be a damn fire eater now. He’d seen it in the war work the same way. More of a change than any loss of virginity. Fear gone like an operation. Something else grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear.

The sentences in this passage average fewer than six words. Hemingway also used sentences fragments, and while students should generally avoid these, they can be effective in experienced hands. This short style looks easier than it is. Give it a try yourself. Assemble the following items into a paragraph in which you write sentences no more than eight words in length. You can use all or some of the items listed.

An island . . . a family . . . a storm . . . treasure . . . rescue . . . sharks.

Lesson 7: Compound & Complex Sentences

A compound sentence consists of two independent clauses. A complex sentence contains one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses. And a compound-complex sentence carries two or more independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses. Whew! That’s more clauses than in a mall on Christmas Eve.
Bad jokes aside, compound and complex sentences are moderately to very long. While long sentences can be elegant and a pleasure to read, they are more difficult for young writers to control. Read the following long sentence (52 words), which is always under control.

I spent several days and nights in mid-September with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time, more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting.

--E.B. White

E.B. White is perhaps the only writer who can make me care about pigs. This seemingly effortless sentence is a model of elegance. Try to write three elegant compound/complex sentences of your own about school.

Lesson 8: Periods and Commas

Punctuation plays an important role in a writer’s style. Writers are concerned with sound and flow, and punctuation affects both of these key elements. Let’s look at two popular writers, Cormac McCarthy and Garrison Keillor. McCarthy rarely uses commas in his writing. Consider the following passage from his novel (which later became an Oscar-winning film) No Country for Old Men:

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. I don’t know what them eyes was the windows to and I guess I’d as soon not know. But there is another view of the world out there and other eyes to see it and that’s where this is going. It has done brought me to a place in my life I would not have thought I’d of come to. Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I don’t want to confront him.

Next, read the following passage from Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Days, about a fictional town in Minnesota that features women who are smart, men who are good-looking, and children who are all above average:

The first white folk known to have spent time in the Wobegon area were Unitarian missionaries from Boston, led by Prudence Alcott, a distant and wealthy relative of the famous Alcotts of Concord, a woman who sent a stereopticon and a crate of boysenberry jam to Henry Thoreau at his cabin by the pond, although he never mentioned her in his book.

Compare and contrast the two passages. What difference does the punctuation make in the sound and flow?

Lesson 9: Logic & Questions

While most students understand that writing can be creative, the logical aspect of the craft is often overlooked. A logical thread connects sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph. And one of the best ways to check both your content and grammar is to read over a paragraph and ask, "Does this make sense?"
Which brings us to questions. Questions that arise during the writing process often work effectively on the page; they add variety and can help the reader understand the point you are making. Consider the following humorous passage, which contains nine questions.

But the Easter Bunny is so unsatisfactory a holiday icon that no one even knows what he does. Does he color the eggs? Lay the eggs? Hide the eggs? What is his visual image? Is he a human-sized rabbit (terrifying) or an average-size rabbit (well, then, how does he carry baskets)? Some people imagine him wearing a pale blue velvet jacket. This is in fact Peter Rabbit, not the Easter Bunny; the confusion is a function of the fact that people think all rabbits look alike. A few people imagine the Easter Bunny wearing a top hat; these are the readers of men’s magazines. . . . What about transportation? Santa has a sleigh, the Tooth Fairy has wings. How does the Easter Bunny get from house to house? I have a child here who thinks the Easter Bunny drives a pickup truck. What kind of holiday symbol could conceivably drive a pickup truck? The Easter Bubba?

--Anna Quindlen

Write a paragraph about an animal in which you pose several questions.