August 17th, 2007 — sentence tips, grammar
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:
July 30th, 2007 — editing, sentence tips
The “writing process” is something that gets a lot of emphasis in American schools these days. And for good reason. A lot of people have anxiety about writing because they think they are supposed to produce Shakespeare after one draft.
Even Shakespeare didn’t produce Shakespeare after one draft. In fact, he probably got a lot of input from the actors and directors and copywriters.
So I liked the idea of the writing process. The problem was it produced even more anxiety for the students. Now instead of worrying about just writing well, they worried about prewriting and revising and proofing and editing and, well, writing too.
So here is the old revision process I taught:
June 25th, 2007 — editing, writing, sentence tips, grammar
Anybody can write. It’s just a matter of sitting down at a keyboard and whacking out some words. As I’ve heard Camy Tang say, it’s a matter of getting BIC (butt in chair) with regular consistency.
But—as millions of completely worthless and boring blogs attest—not just anybody can write well. Your local bookstore is probably well stocked with books on writing and inspiration and how-to-publish-your-book-idea-and-get-on-easy-street. A handful of those books may even be worth the trees that died to make their pulp.
April 23rd, 2007 — writing, sentence tips, grammar
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Good Word Editor!
In my dreams… Where the whole world values diction and syntax and language control as much as I do. (Hey, people, communication matters!)
So who am I going to rescue today?
March 28th, 2007 — sentence tips
A paragraph filled with passive voice is like wimpy basketball.
According to my son’s favorite book (Balls!), basketball was originally a low scoring game. Coaches valued defense. The game moved slowly. Most players attempted shots with two hands—rather than the more common jump shot today. And no one had yet dreamed up the slam dunk.
Is there anything wrong with wimpy basketball? Do players need to dunk in order to play correctly? No. It’s about style. It’s about guts. It’s about putting everything on the line and trying to fly.
Good sentences fly. They have guts and style. Good sentences attack the reader and don’t let go.
March 9th, 2007 — editing, writing, sentence tips
You know the story of Archimedes. Given the task of making sure the king’s crown was pure gold, he puzzled and puzzled (til his puzzler was sore). Then he took a bath. And noticed the water level rise as he entered the tub.
Suddenly the answer came to him.
March 1st, 2007 — editing, writing, sentences, blogging, sentence tips, grammar
Fancy grammarians call them cumulative sentences. (Not to be confused with cumulus clouds.) The rest of us just call them loose. Like a pair of comfortable jeans. Like one of my daughter’s lower incisors. Like a lot of what Hemingway wrote.
And they are the easiest kinds of sentences to write. Anyone can do it. Here’s how.
February 8th, 2007 — editing, models, writing, sentences, speculative fiction, publishing, sentence tips
In my last sentence tip, I completely oversimplified one effect of short sentences. You have to start somewhere right? I freely admit that I oversimplified things on purpose.
And I’m going to do it again. Heh heh heh.
February 1st, 2007 — models, writing, sentences, sentence tips
There’s a story about George Washington Carver. He asked God to reveal the secrets of the universe, and God was silent. He asked God to reveal the secrets of science and biology, and God was silent. Then he asked God to reveal the secrets of the peanut, and God did.
I don’t care about peanuts. But you could say I’ve spent the last ten years asking God to help me understand the secrets of a sentence. And I’ve worked hard to show God that I’m serious about the question.
Along the way, I’ve learned some tricks about how sentences work, and I thought I would share those in a regular series called simply “Sentence Tips.”
I'm Senior Editor for The High Calling, High Calling Blogs, and Faith In The Workplace.
