Style problems getting the way of your prose? Pick up the pace! Break through bad style and you’ll find yourself zipping along the autobahn feeling spunky and free.
A billion years ago, I started this series and forgot to post the rest of it! Bad blogger, bad! You may have forgotten, the first trick:
1) Avoid unnecessary adjective clauses.
Trick two has the same catchy grammatical joy:
2) Avoid redundant impersonal constructions that use “To Be” verbs.
I’m sorry, I just couldn’t think of a better way to say it. Some ideas are boring and technical no matter how you phrase them. But that doesn’t make them any less important.
Probably, you have a few questions. Maybe a few anxieties and flashbacks to evil grammarian teachers in middle school with pointy rimmed glasses and yard sticks that sounded like thunder when they slapped onto your desktop. (Or that could be my personal problem.)
I got to hand it to the grammarian, though. She taught me about impersonal constructions. These sentences begin with an indefinite pronoun and a “to be” verb.
It is…
It seemed…
There are…
There seemed to be…
Blecchh. Gag. Choke. Vomit. These subjects are vague. These verbs are weak. The sentences are practically doomed. (Don’t get me wrong, such sentences can work. But in general, try to avoid them.) In fact, try to use “to be” verbs as little as possible. (If you have forgotten what “to be” verbs are, go read my post about passive voice.)
If I am in a hard core editing mood, I’ve been known to count the “to be” verbs over a series of pages and challenge myself to cut the number in half. (I only do this on my own material.) You’d be surprised what a difference it can make to the specificity and energy of the writing.
Verbs are power. Weak verbs have no power. They might move an East German Trabant 601, but they won’t move any readers. To move readers, you need active, vivid verbs. Here’s an example of what I mean, based on a real sentence from a real writer (used with permission).
It was always about all the little things that made great impacts. It seemed to start with normal conversations, relationships, and friendships.
Notice those silly, little indefinite “it” at the beginning of both sentences. They aren’t renaming any specific noun. They are just taking up space, adding a vague and meaningless rhetorical frame around the sentence.
It was always about all the little things that made great impacts. It seemed to start with normal conversations, relationships, and friendships.
Take a closer look at the first sentence, and you’ll see where the real meat is—hidden inside an unnecessary adjective clause! Like this:
It was always about all the little things that made great impacts.
The second sentence buries its power in a similar way. Only it uses an infinitive phrase instead:
It seemed to start with normal conversations, relationships, and friendships.
Again, there is nothing wrong with adjective clauses or infinitive phrases or even impersonal constructions like this very sentence. If nothing else, all of these tools help us create good sentence variety. But they can also make our sentences unnecessarily bloated and swollen and wordy.
To stay true to the author’s words, I suggested combining the two sentences. Like this:
All the little things in my work life made great impacts, starting with normal conversations, relationships, and friendships.
It’s a little more direct. It’s a little tighter. Out of context, the ideas still seem vague, but in context they worked fine.
First a question: How would you have changed the sentences?
And second, for those of you who never saw the beautiful graffiti art from the Berlin Wall or experienced the joy of the Trabbi 601, I offer you this vintage commercial:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQwj0EqOQJw[/youtube]
14 comments ↓
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
To “be”, or not to “be”. Depends on your J Austenian aspirations.
Yes, but see, I would argue that Austen’s indirect prose intentionally glosses over what people are thinking. That’s her brilliance. Her style itself embodies the dissonance between the superficial manners of the early 19th century and the incredible conflicts and oppression facing women in particular.
Why must a single man want a wife? Because it was his duty, his noblesse oblige to take care of others. Certainly, a respectable woman could not take care of yourself.
Also, Austen really is a master. What she is doing is incredibly hard to pull off. Just look at the dreck that fills the romance genre her work inspired.
Sorry. I surely didn’t mean to say your advice was ill-offered. Strong verbs. I love strong verbs. Verbs with chutzpah. Spirit!
Okay, that’s it. You know I always love your advice, and you know I always have to look at the other side. It’s me. (Oops, sorry again. There’s that weak little “to be” sentence popping up.)
L.L., I didn’t mean to come on too strong there. My undergraduate thesis was on Austen, so she just gets me excited.
That’s why I have not been published. Because there is not yet a category for the peculiar and enigmatic.
LL, I can’t wait for Spring to come so I can read Stone Crossings.
I’m so impressed. It took me years to be able to read an Austen book without coercion. But, later, I did a graduate paper about “Austen and power”. She really was a master at observing power in relationships. And, Craver, how nice of you to be waiting for Spring.
Craver, why wait for Spring? Tell her to email you a manuscript. Show some chutzpah, dude!
Chey wait a minute now. Didn’t Barbara Kingsolver have a chapter about people who read books before they’re ripe?
Cha, cha, cha. (That’s me laughing in Yiddish.)
Okay now, in my best Orson Wells voice: I will read no book before its time.
Ah, yes, waiting for asparagus! Cha, cha, cha… isn’t that laughing in espanol?
Ja, ja, ja…that’s laughing in espanol.
Depending on the emphasis, your sentences could have been written “Normal conversations, relationships, and friendships, those little things in my work life, they had the greatest impact”. Or something like that.
I’m giving a shot a revising because I know I am a terrible perpetrator of “to be” verbs usage. I appreciate this advice. If only I had a work in progress to revise, I’d be happily upon those pesky “to be’s” right now.
AMM, I like the way you revised the sentence a lot!
am i the only one here who didn’t really get the post?
Sucks to be a doctor if you want to do anything else in life than treat peopel. like enjoy literature.
schizo
Schizo, thanks for dropping by! Yeah, this post was a little technical. I had a friend challenge me a few weeks ago to try to teach other people to edit their own work.
This is my admittedly lame and confusing attempt. But that’s the joy of blogging right? I can post something new later.
Reading through your blog, I can see that you’ve internalized the rules of good writing pretty much already. Your prose has good rhythm already. So forget about the hard core editing tips.
In fact, I’m wondering if the truth about teaching people to edit and write well isn’t just the same as it has always been.
Read good stuff. All the time. Then you write all the time. And some of it will be good.
Marcus,
you made my week. Thanks. I do feel that i should dust my grammar textbooks and do those exercises again. someday.:)
that is the most uplifting comment i have heard about my writing in alomg long time
ciao
schizo