Lars Eighner's Lavender Blue

3. Structure and Strength

The paragraph is the natural unit of English. Although a sentence has been defined as one complete thought, it is not by sentences, but by paragraphs that arguments are advanced or plots developed.

The Paragraph in Fiction

Paragraphs of fiction sometimes differ in important ways from paragraphs of essays. Not all paragraphs of fiction, for example, have topic sentences. Stories unfold as events. Events are usually best ordered chronologically. Logically related information is distributed among paragraphs throughout the story. If this were not so, fiction would be impossible. A paragraph about a murder, if logically organized would contain at the least the name of the victim and the name of the perpetrator. If this paragraph were written, the point of the story would be lost.

The logical order of what happened to John's lover Mike begins with Mike: he was kidnaped and raped but finally released when the kidnapers discovered they could not get any money from John. The next subject is John: what he did when he got the ransom note, that he did not have any money, what he decide to do and so forth. Then there is the hardboiled private eye John appealed to for help: how the detective tracked down the kidnapers, how he convinced them that John was maintaining affluent appearance with a credit card, how he apprehended the culprits once Mike was released. Then the kidnapers: why they wanted the money, why they thought John had money, and so forth. We might convey the whole story in a fictional essay.

That essay might be a very helpful tool for the writer, but it would not be a short story or a novel.

Journalism and essay writing aim to provide the reader with answers. Fiction aims to provide the reader with questions: Will the kidnapers kill Mike? How will John convince the private eye to take the case without a cash retainer? Is the private eye screwing the right person to get the information he needs? What will happen to Mike when the levelheaded kidnaper goes out, leaving Mike alone with the demented one? Is Mike only humoring the kidnapers, or is he developing a strange sympathy with them, á la the Stockholm Syndrome? Does John really want Mike back? Is Mike sure that he did not really enjoy being raped? Was he raped, really?

Most, but not necessarily all, of the questions are answered eventually. Important questions are answered as near the end as possible. Secondary questions are posed and answered in an overlapping manner. Questions and answers are evident in a suspense or mystery novel, but the questions and answers are necessary in all kinds of fiction, even if they are sometimes more subtle. The reader begins with the question What is going here? That question must be replace as soon as possible with the question What will happen next? Necessary questions cannot occur if the writer grasps his subject by a topic sentence, tells all he knows of the subject, and moves on to the next paragraph.

The story begins:

Logically, the kidnapers have broken into the apartment and the demented one has knocked over a lamp in the process. They are being very quiet in order to jump Mike when he comes out of the bedroom. The reader does not know it is kidnapers, but because this is a detective novel, the reader know something bad is in the apartment.

In making a story of this information, the writer posed the question "What (or Who) is in the living room?" He used the time to plant the seeds of other questions and story elements.

The reader now knows that John does not really have money: he cannot afford the suits he wears. When the ransom note arrives, the reader will wonder, as John does, what will happen to Mike, since paying the ransom is out of the question. Kidnaping is now a plausible outcome of whatever is going to happen in the apartment. John does wear expensive suits and he works in a bank. The kidnapers will have noticed.

Mike takes downers and sleeps in his clothes. What kind of relationship do John and Mike have? Is Mike very happy in his present life? Is it possible that he will have a degree of ambivalence about being kidnaped and raped?

Could be.

Knocking over a lamp is a shopworn device. Maybe it will do. The place for an unlikely or trite device or for an implausible premise is at the very beginning. The reader accepts such things in the beginning to see what is made of them. To rescue the heros at the end by a similar device is to ask too much. The question of the lamp will be reconsidered at the time of the first revision. With chapter one rolling along well, the writer does not look back.

The writer might or might not have the whole fictional essay in mind when she begins, but the paragraphs of her story are very unlike the paragraphs of the fictional essay.

While it is hardly an infallible rule, the lesser structures of a writing often are, and should be so far as possible, be of the same form as the whole writing. As a whole, an essay has a topic, which is stated early, a conclusion at the end, and exposition in the middle. So most paragraphs of an essay have a similar structure on a smaller scale: a topic sentence at the beginning, a summary sentence at the end, and exposition in the middle (although it is true enough that this structure is sometimes inverted and sometimes is missing one of the elements). The idealize paragraph of an essay, then, is a little essay. Fiction (and nonfiction which reads like fiction, such a true crime or memoir) establishes a conflict or and interesting situation early and builds to the resolution of the conflict near the end. The idealized paragraph of a story is a little story -- and this principle applies to chapters, sections, scenes, and even to parts smaller than a paragraph. The ideal is that each of the parts share the structure of set-up, intervening events, and resolution that characterizes the story as a whole.

The structural hierarchy of English.

The natural structure of English builds up from the word to phrase to the clause to sentence to the paragraph, or in descending order the structures of English are:

The principle of structural significance.

Although paragraphs of fiction are not organized on the same scheme as paragraphs of an essay, the reader of fiction shares with the reader of essays the expectation that each paragraph is about as important as any other paragraph. Each paragraph has a unit of significance.

A paragraph's significance is distributed more or less equally among its sentences, the first and last getting a bit more than their share. The share of significance that a sentence gets must be divided among it clauses, each clause's significance is shared by its phrases, and so to the word which receives a bit of the phrase's importance. In a paragraph of many sentences with sentence of many clauses, clauses of many phrases, and phrases of many words, the value left to a single word is paltry. When a clause makes up a whole sentence, the clause receives all of the sentence's importance; when a phrase can be promoted to a clause, it receives the whole attention a clause deserves; promoted to a sentence, the phrase becomes even more important. The word, elevated through the steps, gains confidence, looks the world in the eye, raises its voice.

Shouts.

An adept writer who is familiar with the principle of structural significance can thumb his nose at the tawdry exclamation point. He has command of the whole dynamic range of English, not just one loud note.

In writing fiction, as opposed to answering essay questions, writers need not give the most space to important ideas. Important ideas may get fewer words, but the words are important words, words that have been structurally promoted. Loss of detail is avoided by choosing words carefully:

• John moved quickly on his feet.
• John ran.

• Jesus broke down and shed tears.
• Jesus shed tears.
• Jesus wept.

• to carry on the future advance of progress
• to progress.

Various degrees of significance can be attached to ideas using the principle of structural significance. Compare:

The right word can replace a whole phrase not only without a loss of detail, but also with a more exact expression of detail. "John moved quickly on his feet," leaves the reader in the dark as to what exactly John is doing. Is he dancing? "John jogged," "John trotted," "John ran," and "John dashed" all tell what John did with more concreteness and detail, and in each case the expression is stronger for letting the single verb do the duty of the phrase "moved quickly on his feet."

Fiction may be approached by successive technical corrections. If a writer has written "moved quickly on his feet" but recognizes that this is a weak expression, then the writer may stop to envision what it is John did do. The writer may start with a vague idea or not much of an idea at all. The vague idea, because it is vague, must be expressed in fuzzy words. If the writer can spot fuzzy words he can see where his story needs more work. The better idea often arises from the process of substituting better words. While nothing is wrong with coming to the keyboard with a clear vision of the story one means to tell, for some writers the words come first and the vision afterwards.

A traditional therapy for writer's block is to type the word "The," the word to come next, the word after that, and so forth. To carve an elephant out of a block of marble, chip away everything that does not look like an elephant. When a sufficient number of words have been captured on paper, there is a story. The job is cutting out the parts that do not belong and replacing the "moved quickly on his feet" expressions with precise words. Inspiration is not a lightning bolt.

The parts of speech.

Beyond the importance that words derive from their position in English structure, words have value according to their functions, that is, according to their identities as parts of speech. Here, and elsewhere, I do not pretend to give an academic treatment of English grammar, but mean only to provide sound advice to a creative writer. For present purposes the parts of speech in descending order of strength are:

The verb.

The verb is the strongest part of speech. Verbs express all the action a sentence possesses. Movies and television shows prove it hardly matters whether the things are stock cars, speed boats, helicopters, or horses. What counts is chasing, shooting, crashing, and exploding.

Verbs themselves have a natural hierarchy:

Doing verbs express action and this is why they are the strongest. Saying verbs will be discussed in greater detail when we take up the subject of dialogue. Saying verbs are relatively strong because sometimes the action of the story is the speaking. Saying verbs can be weak if what is said is not pertinent to the story or if speaking takes the place of the real action. Likewise, thinking and feeling are stronger when they are the developments of the story at a particular point and are not merely reactions to events. Thinking and feeling are weaker than saying because they can only involve one of the characters.

Being-done-to verbs are those, as grammarians would put it, in the passive voice. Sex and grammar are confusing enough without confounding the two. The passive voices is wrong, wrong, wrong. The passive position is quite another thing. Be sexually passive in the active voice: not I was being fucked by Al, but Al fucked me.

Passive verbs do express some action, although in a backhanded way, but being verbs are so weak that they are hardly verbs at all, or as certain philosophical arguments put it: being is not predicate. In many languages, including the language of movie-screen cavemen, the being verb is often omitted ("Fire good") with no loss of sense.

The quality of the verb determines the quality of the sentence. From weakest to strongest are these examples:

Some forms of a given verb are stronger than others. In general verbs that require auxiliary verbs ("can," "could," "will," "would," "were," "had," "have," and so forth) are less strong than the forms that do not require the auxiliary. "Went" is stronger than "was going" or "had gone" or "did go."

Sense or grammar often requires the use of the auxiliary verb, but sometimes not. "He did go to the store," should be "He went to the store" unless there is some question as to whether he did. "He was walking down the street until the policeman stopped him," should be "He walked down the street until the policeman stopped him." When the time is understood, the simple past tense can often be substituted for the past perfect: "He had gone to the store yesterday," might be "He went to the store yesterday." "I have come" should be "I came."

If most of your sentences are of the being type, some of them should be recast in a more powerful form.

As no sustained piece of music should be fortissimo throughout, no sustained literary work can rely entirely on doing sentences. Single words should only rarely be promoted to stand as paragraphs. A succession of simple sentences with active verbs and unadorned nouns becomes wearisome. As a rule, an author should reserve his strongest writing for the erotic scene (or whatever the climactic scene is, according to the genre), and the next strongest writing should be used in developing important story elements.

A new writer, however, had best attempt to repair any weak expression he perceives. He will perceive only a few of the weaknesses and will not know how to improve some of the weak parts he finds. Few writers ever need to worry about making the background parts softer. The problem always is to make the foreground more vivid.

Some verbs to watch out for.

Some verbs need revision although they seem to be doing verbs. A few such verbs are "make," "take," "use," "do," "have," "give," "become," and "employ." More weak combinations including these verbs exist than can be illustrated here, but a few examples should make such combinations easier to recognize:

Some of these phrases employ abstract nouns, which are weak for being abstract: "decision," "mistake," "progress," et cetera. Incorporating their senses into the verbs strengthens the sentences.

"Make" and "take" and the other verbs are not so weak when they have their literal senses: "to make a chair," "to take an extra roll." Even in such cases a more precise verb may be found: "to make lace" might be "to tat" (but tatting is not the only way to make lace).

Among the doing verbs, those which are stronger are precise and concrete. Precision is one reason that "ran" should be preferred to "moved quickly." Concreteness is the issue treated by the writer's maxim: "Show us, don't tell us."

"Susan loved Amy" suffers a bit from imprecision, for "loved" has many senses. But it suffers more from being abstract. The idea is conveyed better by a sentence in which Susan does something loving, just as Jack's anger was most strongly conveyed by his throwing something. Sometimes, of course, Susan and Amy are minor characters and the nature of their relationship must be summarized in a few words. But if the story hangs on Susan's love for Amy, we had better have some evidence of it.

Nouns.

Like verbs, nouns derive their strength from being precise and concrete. Do not write that a bird was singing. Tell us whether it was a canary, a sparrow, a mockingbird, or grackle. Besides strengthening the sentence, the more precise noun may give us an idea of the season or the setting. When the noun is fixed, the verb may need revision. Mockingbirds scold; grackles do not sing. Do not write of an arm muscle if you can write of a biceps.

As with verbs, abstractness is warning bell. Love, anger, truth, justice, and pride do not do things. Do not write of being horny; show us a hard cock.

To know the name of something is to have power over it, and the more precisely you can name something, the more power over it you have. Do not write of a "board" if you can write of a "two-by-four" or "stud" or "purlin" or "decking." Certain do not call something a "big, thick piece of lumber" if what you mean is a timber. When you write of things outside of your daily experience, a major part of your research should be devoted to leaning what things are called. Many readers, of course, will never know the fine distinctions you make, but those who do know the distinctions will notice if you gloss them over.

Most imprecise nouns do not represent the writer's ignorance, but his lack of thought. "Truck," for example, stands for such various vehicles that most writers should select "pickup" or "van" or "semitrailer." Few people would need to do research to know the differences the more precise terms represent. The writer who writes "truck" probably knows which kind of truck she means, and she will probably picture the same kind of truck every time she rereads the passage she wrote. So long as she writes "truck" in a journal that will be read only by herself or in a letter to a friend who can guess reliably at her meaning, the writer is justified in considering herself perfectly literate. But when published, the word "truck" will fail to convey to many readers what the writer had in mind.

Call a cock a "cock." Yes, sometimes it should be "fuckpole." "One-eyed snake" never was erotic and no longer is funny. Depending upon your narrator, it might be "dick" or even "peter." (When it is "dick" you must write "head of his dick." "Cockhead" works. "Dickhead" doesn't.) To paraphrase Strunk and White: never call a cock a pee-pee without good reason. Fresh figures and colorful expressions are most effective when strictly limited.

Some nouns have become wordy for no good reason. "Time span" is an example of such a noun. Usually the word "span" should be deleted; other times "period," "era," or some other precise noun should be substituted for the whole of "time span."

Because precision is so important in nouns, it follows that proper nouns, being perfectly precise because they refer only to one person (or thing), are among the strongest nouns. Call your characters by name often, both because the names are stronger and because using names avoids problems of pronoun reference.

You need not vary an apt noun for fear that readers will tire of it. Some writers avoid using any noun often. A rose is once a rose, again is a red flower, then a fragrant scarlet blossom, this blushing beauty amid the thorns that was a rose but can never be called a rose again. Readers do not tire of words so quickly as writers think.

Calling characters by epithets (that is, "the Caped Crusader" for Batman or "the Bard of Avon" for Shakespeare) was required by Homer's meter, but nowadays is the way of pulp novelists. Your character may be called by slightly different versions of his name by his mother, his lover, and his boss, but for narration pick one name and stick to it.

Nouning Weirds Language, Too

Many nouns are formed from verbs or other nouns. Such nouns can often be recognized by their endings.

Some nounified words are undesirable because they are abstract or vague. The most serious problem occurs when a nounified verb hides the correct verb for an expression. This point was made in the discussion of verbs, particularly the verbs "make," "take," "perform," and so forth. If you do not recognize such poor expressions by the weak verb they contain, you have another chance to eliminate them if you are alert for nounified verbs. You may also recognize a better verb in the noun even when the existing verb is not one you know to watch out for.

Adjectives

Adjectives may do either harm or good.

Some adjectives bring added precision to the nouns they modify. The image produced by "ladder-back chair" is more precise than that of "chair," and if we are suppose to picture the chair for some reason, the adjective "ladder-back" is very helpful. On the other hand, unless the writer has done something to present the possibility of other colors of roses, we will assume a rose is red, so the adjective of "red rose" may not do great harm, but certainly does little good.

As with nouns and verbs, precision and concreteness are the attributes of desirable adjectives. This is true even of the simplest adjectives, the articles. The precise article is "the." A thing of importance often should be "the" thing. A brush on your character's dresser should be "the brush," unless of course there are many. "The" is the definite article, and in most cases the author should be as definite as possible.

Almost all abstract adjectives are worthless or worse. "Good," "bad," "ugly," "beautiful," "special," and similar adjectives tell us only the author's opinion of the thing named, and nothing about the thing itself. The language is littered with the bones of adjectives that have been abused into meaninglessness, and many of these are abstract: awful, terrific, nice, cute, clever, fine, tremendous, wonderful, marvelous, fantastic. Careful writers may be able to use a few of these in their original senses. But almost all such adjectives are better omitted.

A number of other adjectives are relative in their meanings: "big," "tall," "small," "short," and so forth. We all know that an adult elephant is big. If you write "big elephant" we may wonder what you mean. You might be telling us that an elephant is big, which we already know. Or you might be trying to tell us that this elephant was even bigger than is usual for elephants. If you mean the former, you ought to leave out the "big," and if you mean the latter, you must say something else to make it clear.

Of the adjectives which are precise and could add something to a sentence, the danger is that they will proliferate. "Rose," "scarlet," "crimson," and "cardinal" are good words. But some writers will reach for "scarlet" or "crimson" whenever they mean "red." Not every noun requires an adjective to be complete. Few nouns require a string of fancy figures in adjective form. See how the sentence reads with the gold-plated adjective.

Adverbs.

Most adverbs are up to no good. Verbs are the source of strength in sentences. Because adverbs limit verbs, adverbs weaken sentences.

Adverbs not only enfeeble sentences, but they also indicate wrong verbs. We have seen that there are many verbs we should prefer to "moved quickly." We want "ran" or "raced," or "sprang" or "jumped," or perhaps "spun" or "whirled." If we realize we have written something as empty as "moved quickly," we will correct ourselves. But such weaknesses are hard to spot.

We can spot weaknesses by looking for the bad old adverb -- in this case "quickly." The bad old adverb props up an impotent verb.

The "tightly" of "held tightly" is a tattletale. It indicates that "held" is the wrong verb. We want "grasped" or "clasped" or "clutched." "Smiled broadly" should be "grinned," and we will realize that when we see the bad old adverb "broadly." A way of finding imprecise verbs is to look for adverbs. A few vague verbs will transpire such a dragnet, but not many. Moreover, this method will turn up redundant adverbs; we will find that someone has "raced swiftly," which suggests a less-motivated person might have "raced slowly."

Not all bad old adverbs are attached to verbs. In one manuscript I found I had written that my dog Lizbeth was "apparently ferocious." "Apparently" was redundant because "ferocious" means "apparently fierce." "Seemingly," "apparently," and similar adverbs express the suspicion that the appearance and the fact differ. If no suspicion exists, these adverbs serve only to weaken writing.

Moreover, many adverbs are what is called in commerce weasel words: practically, rather, virtually, mostly, usually, somewhat. The purpose of these words is to weaken sentences (and as such they do have some legitimate uses, as when an instructor hopes to remind students that he is speaking in generalities, or that rules have some exceptions). Overly cautious writers sprinkle their prose with these weakening words. Curiously, some adverbs that were invented to strengthen expressions now have a weakening effect too because they have been overused: very, much, great, extremely, and so forth.

Although little could be written without some adverbs, most of the adverbs a beginner puts on paper should be eliminated, either outright or by revising the verb to which they are attached.

Other parts of speech.

Some attention must be given to other parts of speech, the function words and words that make up phrases.

Function words such as "when," "while," "where," and "there" are invariably stronger if used in their literal senses. "While" is best used to mean "at the same time as"; "when" is best used to express time; "where" and "there" are stronger if used to refer to physical places.

Many writers have pet words or phrases that need to be revised out almost every time they occur. "Just" is a problem for some writers. When it does not mean "fair," it may mean nothing. Technically, the useless "just" may be an adverb, but may not be recognized as such because it is so empty. "Just" is a bad habit that some writers have. Other writers have other bad habits that they should learn to watch out for. In other cases wordiness results from simple carelessness, from not paying attention to what is being written.

Considerable wordiness is contained in phrases. "At first light," for example, should be "at dawn." Sometimes lengthy phrases are almost empty of meaning. For example: "Many of the popular porn stars are short" says nothing more than "Many popular porn stars are short." The "of the" has almost no meaning, and "of the" occurs in many wordy expressions.

Examples:

While red roses are common, some roses are white.

("While" here does not really have anything to do with time. Better: Although many roses are red, some are white, or: Red roses are common, but some roses are white.)

While I showered, Jack undressed.

(Appropriate use of "while.")

One of the drivers behind us sounded his horn.

("One of the" means "a." Better: A driver behind us sounded his horn.)

"Jimmy is there among my memories . . ."

("There" is no real place and adds nothing to the meaning. Better: Jimmy is among my memories . . . ")

"Today as I sit here in front of the window . . . "

(As "in front of the window" specifies where you are, "here" is meaningless. Probably "Today" adds nothing because we know the time meant is when the writer sits by the window. Better: As I sit in front of the window . . .)

Phrases containing "manner," "method," "fashion," and "way" may be better translated to adverbs. The adverbs, in turn, must be treated with suspicion due all adverbs. "Moved in a quick manner" is simply the bad old "moved quickly" in disguise. Other phrases do not use any of the words above, but amount to the same thing. "With quickness" may be another form of "quickly."

and so forth.

If you were writing a grammar or diction checker program, you would want the most complete list of wordy, meaningless, or loose phrases you could find. One piece of software advertises that it recognizes more than 10,000 bad phrases. A writer does not need to memorize 10,000 phrases. Because writing is a game of percentages, you shold be alert to the mistakes you make most often. Enter them in a page for that purpose in your notebook, and if you have the skill do so, add them to your diction checker.

Some poor expressions pose problems: you see a problem but do not know how to fix it; you see a problem that requires a little time and thought to fix; you are see what you think is a problem, but you are not sure it really is a problem in the particular context. But many poor expression are always wrong and always can be fixed in the same way. Among these are what I call "frank redundancies."

You ought to see immediately what is wrong with "frank redundancies" and how to fix them. Most of them are learned from exposure to politicians and bad academic or corporate writing. The are "frank" because they are always wrong and can be corrected in the same way every time. Sometimes, however, the correction is still vague or abstract, and further correction is necessary.

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