WEEK 44: LAY DOWN A BEAT...AND THEN BREAK THE RHYTHM

Easy Peasy
by Valerie Ipson

This might be the easiest lesson to blog about. Basically, it reminds us of what we learned about rhythm over the last several lessons (all those interesting Greek words known as schemes)and then says, don't overdo it. Whether you're using epistrophe,anaphora, or anadiplosis a little goes a long way.

Here's an example from the book, actually one taken from another book, Flood: A Romance of Our Time:

"The big sycamore by the creek was gone. The willow tangle was gone. The little enclave of untrodden bluegrass was gone. The clump of dogwood on the little rise across the creek--now that, too, was gone,"1

Here the author, Robert Penn Warren, uses epistrophe (repetition) to create a rhythm and then alters the beat at the end for a pleasing effect.

So, the moral of this blog post is: Establish a rhythm in your writing, then vary it because too much of a good thing is, well, too much.

1 MTC, pg 248

WEEK 41: CROSS THINGS UP WITH ANTIMETABOLE AND CHIASMUS

Improve Your Writing, You Will 

by Valerie Ipson

If you thought your high school English teacher taught you everything you need to know about good writing, think again. Have you considered employing the use of antimetabole, chiasmus, anaphora, epistrophe, anadiplosis, and isocolon? 

Apparently these are real things...called tropes and schemes. They're techniques used in writing to create a particular cadence or rhythm. (The names are Greek.)

Some definitions: "Departures from literal meaning such as metaphor and simile are called tropes." (Who knew?) "Departures from normal word order are called schemes."1

We've all imitated Yoda's speech pattern a time or two. He employed a "scheme of inversion." 

There are also schemes of repetition and two of these are discussed in this week's lesson. I've actually heard of the second one, chiasmus: "the repetition of grammatical structure without repetition of the same words or phrases, as in 'It's hard to make time, but to waste it is easy.'"2 

I've seen poems that are written in this form, and I know there are articles written about how chiasmus is used in the Bible, and how the Book of Mormon is one big chiasmus. Another example of a line of chiasmus: "What is stolen without remorse, with guilt must be repaid."3

Now what in the world is ANTIMETABOLE? It's similar...it's the repetition of words in reverse order. Example: "Everyone who loves his country is a patriot, but not every patriot loves his country."4

There you can see repeated words on each side of the comma.

1 Wilbers, Stephen, Mastering the Craft of Writing, pg 228

2 Wilbers, Stephen, Mastering the Craft of Writing, pg 228

3 Wilbers, Stephen, Mastering the Craft of Writing, pg 229

4 Wilbers, Stephen, Mastering the Craft of Writing, pg 228

Week 39: Use Parallel Structure to Create Rhythm

by Tamara Passey

Last week Valerie mentioned a little something called rhythm. This week we're learning another tool to create it.

How does parallel structure create rhythm? 

Imagine a train on the tracks in the above picture...can you hear the steady sound of the wheels turning? Can you feel the momentum? Now what if one of those tracks were not parallel to the other and the train derailed? Not a pretty sight or sound. 

So for the purposes of this week, the train is your sentence and you are the conductor. Your job? Don't let your sentence go off the tracks.

Keep your structure parallel. This means you need to know your nouns from your adjectives as well as your verbs. It helps to know your noun phrases from your verbal nouns, or gerunds, too. But this doesn't need to be an intense study of the different parts of speech. This is rhythm we are talking about. Read these sentences and I bet you'll be able to hear the consistency--or lack of it, even if you can't put your finger on why.

Let's start with something most of us have heard from Alexander Pope:

"To err is human, forgiving is divine."

Did you catch that? Like a train screeching off the tracks. 

"To err is human, to forgive divine."

Ah, that's better.

Here are two correct structures:

"Language is not a carving; it's a curl of breath, a breeze in the pines. (no surprise this quote is from poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder.)

 "In the writing process, the more a thing cooks, the better. (Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing.)1

Choose a pattern and stick to it. Remember your readers want consistency. And consistent parallel structure will keep your sentences humming along the tracks.



1. Mastering The Craft, Wilbers, p. 216 

Week 38 Conclude your Paragraphs with a Click

All About the Rhythm!
by Valerie Ipson

"Take special care with the last sentence of each paragraph," William Zinser advises in On Writing Well. "It is the crucial springboard to the next paragraph ... Make the reader smile and you've got him for at least one paragraph more"...as quoted in Wilbers Mastering the Craft.

So just as we've practiced ending a sentence with a bit of a punch, we can, and should, do the same with our paragraphs.

Wilbers teaches that this technique is more than paragraph structure, more than figuring out beats, and more than putting your best line at the end. It involves RHYTHM. 

Your homework, should you choose to accept it, is to check out chapter 38 and read the examples included. Read the concluding sentences of each paragraph by Eudora Welty, Kevin Kling, and Stephen King out loud and listen to the rhythm of the lines leading up to the pause. See how the concluding sentences create an impact.

Week 34 Start with Something Old; End with Something New

Week 34
Start with Something Old; End with Something New

by Peggy Urry

I had to chuckle to myself when I read the title for this week. Oh, how appropriate as I have a daughter getting married in a couple of months. This post, however, deals with the order of things to improve the flow and clarity of our writing.

Ending our sentences with new information gives the reader a sense of what is coming next, enticing them to read on (as was discussed last week).

"Consider this sentence: 'You need to eliminate common errors in your writing.'"1

Eliminating common errors is an idea that you've introduced and it now is 'old information'. Anything referencing that idea should come at the beginning of subsequent sentences with new info presented at the end.

What do you think of this set-up: "You need to eliminate common errors in your writing. Your credibility will be undermined by errors in grammar, word choice, and punctuation."?

How would you improve it?

Consider this: "You need to eliminate common errors in your writing. Errors (old idea) in grammar, word choice, and punctuation will undermine your credibility."2 The flow and clarity improve with just a simple change in order.


1 Wilbers, Stephen, Mastering the Craft of Writing, pg 189.
2 Wilbers, Stephen, Mastering the Craft of Writing, pg 190.

Week 32 Use Sentence Fragments To Punctuate Your Writing

This is not your English teacher's novel
by Valerie Ipson

Think for a minute what your manuscript would look and sound like if you followed all the rules you were taught in 8th grade English. 

(I hope you're shuddering just a little bit.)

If you're strict with the rules, you'll be writing without the benefit of the fast-paced, efficient fragment. I know. I know. Your teacher marked all over your papers in red ink because of sentences that were missing subjects and verbs. Well, it's revenge time. 

In our fast-paced world, people are moving more and more to short, quick forms of communication. And that's what fragments do for a novel. Set the pace. Move thought quickly. And efficiently.

"In the hands of a skilled writer (like you), fragments can underscore a point or advance a plot with remarkable precision and brevity...Their clipped, staccato cadence varies the rhythm from the flow of complete sentences. They add contrast and energy. They create pauses, and as you know, pauses create emphasis." 1

And truth be told, don't we often live life in fragments?
Yes. Yes we do.


1 MTC, P 175

WEEK 30 Expand Your Sentence Repertoire by Adding Trailing Elements

How Not To Be Boring
by Valerie Ipson


The basic premise of this week's lesson is that readers crave variety. If an entire novel was just one long string of subject-verb-complement-period sentences, it would be soooo monotonous. Truth be told, the reader wouldn't even make it past the first chapter, maybe not even the first page.


Stephen Wilbers advises choosing a paragraph from your manuscript at random and counting the commas. "If you're writing without commas--or without dashes, colons, and semicolons--you're probably writing without variety" MTC, p 162. He calls these extra add-ins "trailing elements." Find his exercises on p. 164-165 of Mastering the Craft.


I've found that for me the best tool is reading my work out loud. It's then that I see how the rhythm of varying sentence structure is working...or not.


So, basically, don't be boring! Change things up. Keep the reader engaged through variety.

Week 28 Use Sentence Beginnings for Emphasis

Use Sentence Beginnings for Emphasis
By Tamara Passey

Remember when Mary Poppins said this:

 "Our first game is called Well Begun is Half-Done."

Do you think she was talking about sentence structure?  I know she was teaching young Michael and Jane how to go about cleaning up the nursery--but I think she could have been dispensing some seriously good writing advice.

Wilbers says it this way in Mastering the Craft: "Beginnings and endings count more than middles." He also explains that "every sentence, like every paragraph, document, or speech--has natural stress points at the beginning and end."1 A stress point being a point of emphasis. And silly me, I thought stress points were knots in my back.

We know word choice is important in any given sentence, but so is word placement. Here are a few examples.

"I have never felt more frustrated."

Let's move one little word to the opening:

"Never have I felt more frustrated."

Can you hear the added emphasis? And we did that without adding any exclamation points.

Or this one:

"I'm telling you for the last time I won't do it."

Try:

"For the last time, I'm telling you I won't do it" (I would even omit the the phrase 'I'm telling you' for more punch: "For the last time, I won't do it."

Maybe at this point, you are thinking this isn't a very impressive technique - move one or two words around and somehow that improves the sentence? But think of it this way. Ever walk into a room full of furniture and the placement was haphazard, or boring or lacked direction and you weren't even sure where you were supposed to sit? And someone came along and rearranged the pieces and Voila! the room now had flow and became inviting for you to sit? That's placement.

And like Mary taught, "Well begun is half done." (I think she may have picked that up from Aristotle, but it sounds a bit more fun coming from her.) She also said, "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." Imagine if she said, "Now in order to assist the medicine going down, try a spoonful of sugar." Hmm. See, she knew the power of word placement.

1. Mastering the Craft, Wilbers, p. 150