Participial-ation, making those sentences flow…

By mcmckit on Aug 28, 2012

A couple of cautions about using PP’s: They should refer clearly to a noun or pronoun in the sentence. And they should not be placed too far away from the words they modify. This can be awkward and confusing. See the difference in the sentences below.

Inspired by the beautiful spring day, I walked to work.

I walked to work, inspired by the beautiful spring day .

The PP (“inspired by the beautiful spring day ”) describes the “I” so it is much more elegant and direct when used in juxtaposition with “I” than it is trailing after “work.”
In some cases, writers neglect to include the noun or pronoun being modified. The result leaves the reader hanging:

Curling my toes and squinting, the doctor prepared to puncture my arm with a needle.

Obviously, the doctor is not curling his or her toes. This is a dangling participial phrase. The word “I” is missing:

Curling my toes and squinting, I waited for the doctor to puncture my arm with a needle.

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T-participial-rex, dinosaur

By mcmckit on Aug 21, 2012

Where have all the participial phrases gone? Almost nobody uses them anymore. When we edit books, we marvel at how much waste and clumsiness could be avoided with a simple PP. We are forever shortening and streamlining material by employing them ourselves.

A participle is a verb that is used as an adjective or adverb; it generally ends in –ed or –ing. A PP then, is composed of a participle and its modifiers. It still functions as an adjective or adverb but now, instead of a word, there is a phrase. Here are some examples:

Holding the flashlight with a shaky hand, Norman stepped out of his tent.
Norman waved the light through the trees, creating a lot of ghostly shadows.

What PP’s do is streamline paragraphs by cutting down on the number of sentences. They improve flow and make prose more elegant and interesting. Below are some sentences which can be combined with the use of PP’s.

• I guided the pinball through the upper chutes, down a runover lane, off the slingshot bumpers to the flippers.
• I cradled it there.
• I bounced it back and forth until I had a perfect shot through the spinner.

Guiding the ball through the upper chutes, down a runover lane, off the slingshot bumpers to the flippers, I cradled it there, bouncing it back and forth until I had a perfect shot through the spinner. (J. Anthony Lucas, THE INNER GAME OF PINBALL)

You can see the difference in the series of short, choppy sentences and the one flowing sentence with the PP’s. It’s huge, and this is why we encourage writers to revive the participial phrase.

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First and Last Lines – and the World in Between

By mcmckit on Aug 13, 2012

Before we went on vacation some time ago, we wrote a blog on last lines in books. Today, we have the origins of those lines for anyone who is interested. But as we were thinking about this blog, we wondered what the relationship is between last lines and first lines of books. So we looked up the first lines of our last liners and have also included them below. Some of them are neat and tidy. Isabel Allende in HOUSE OF SPIRITS purposefully ends up where she began. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle begins THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES at breakfast and ends it at dinner.

In others though, the first line and the last line might as well be from different books there is so little apparent relation between them. These examples remind us of how far we travel when we read a book.

**So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. –F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY

First lines: In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

**But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before. –Mark Twain, THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

First lines: YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

**Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? –Ralph Ellison, INVISIBLE MAN

First Line: I am an invisible man

**“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” –Ernest Hemingway, THE SUN ALSO RISES

First Lines: Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn.

**Might I trouble you then to be ready in half an hour, and we can stop at Marcini’s for a little dinner on the way? –Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

First Line: Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table.

**Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper. –Arthur Golden, MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA

First Lines: Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we talked about something that had happened a long while ago, and I said to you, "That afternoon when I met so-and-so…was the very best afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon."

**Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him—and it was still hot
 –Maurice Sendak, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

First Lines: The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him "WILD THING!" and Max said "I'LL EAT YOU UP!" so he was sent to bed without eating anything.

**There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it. –Annie Proulx, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

First Lines: Ennis Del Mar wakes before five, wind rocking the trailer hissing in an around the aluminum door and window frames. The shirts hanging on a nail shudder slightly in the draft.

**It begins like this: Barrabás came to us by sea… – Isabel Allende, THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS

First Line: 'Barabbas came to us by sea', the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy.

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Famous Last Words: We’re Outta Here

By mcmckit on Jul 17, 2012

Much is made about the first lines of books, but we get more pleasure out of last lines because, if they are good, they evoke the whole experience of reading the book. Good last lines give us a warm feeling like we have been somewhere, changed in the process of going or coming, and arrived at a new and highly satisfying place.

While the buzz is all about first lines, the Internet anthologist elves, have pulled together all sorts of ‘ten best’ and ‘hundred best’ last line lists. We offer you up some to ponder while we are on vacation for the next few weeks. When we get back, we will reveal the authors. If you don’t know the line and can’t guess where it came from, it is interesting to conjure up the book that might be attached to it.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

"But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before."

"Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?"

“'Yes,' I said. 'Isn’t it pretty to think so?'"

"Might I trouble you then to be ready in half an hour, and we can stop at Marcini’s for a little dinner on the way?"

"Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper."

"Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him—and it was still hot."


"There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it."

“It begins like this: Barrabás came to us by sea…”

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Voices in Space: When Book Characters Don’t Have Bodies

By mcmckit on Jul 8, 2012

Lately we’ve been reading a lot of conversations in clients’ books that seem to be floating in space. These disembodied voices leave us with an odd feeling like we have landed in the midst of some fantasy novel in which the characters simply don’t have bodies, but float around indistinguishably in space as pure consciousness or something like that. Trying to follow the thread of the story makes us wonder briefly about our state of mind.

But then we snap out of it and begin to think about what is missing from the writing.

Here is an example of what we are talking about. From Ann Beattie’s MY LIFE STARRING DARA FALCON, this is a conversation between the glamorous Dara and her humdrum friend, Jean:

“What’s the next act for Dara and Tom? That’s what I don’t want to get to.”
“It doesn’t seem entirely within your control.”
“It hurts like a physical pain. I think I am going to lose him.”
“You won’t lose him.
“I’ve set you up. What else can you say? ‘Yes, you are sure to lose him’?”
“I don’t say things because I am set up. I didn’t say that because it was what you wanted to hear.”

Beattie is known for writing wonderful dialogue. But even she does not rely on the dialogue alone to carry her scenes. Her characters make faces and have voices that show their emotions. They have bodies. Below is the dialogue the way it actually appears in the book:

“What’s the next act for Dara and Tom? That’s what I don’t want to get to.”
“It doesn’t seem entirely within your control,” I said.
She looked at me, and her eyes started to widen, but then they narrowed again. “It hurts like a physical pain,” she said. “I think I am going to lose him.”
“You won’t lose him,” I said, though I had nothing to base that on.
“I’ve set you up,” Dara said, “What else can you say? ‘Yes, you are sure to lose him’?”
“I don’t say things because I am set up,” I said. But my voice wasn’t steady. I did, indeed, say things because they were expected of me; all too often, I certainly did say whatever was expedient to reinforce the status quo. I tried to speak again, to tell her the truth. But what was the truth? Tom was going to be the one who decided their future. “I didn’t say that because it was what you wanted to hear,” I said, trying to sound indignant.

When you are on a roll and whipping out your story, you probably see it vividly in your head, all of it, the way the protagonist tilts his head, the way the villain shades her eyes, the down of the old lady’s cheek. Why stop to write all that down? You may not stop but you better go back and do so because the reader is lost in space without that basic information.

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When is it time to give up on traditional publishing and self-publish?

By mcmckit on Jun 29, 2012

Recently, a prospective client told us she had received a rejection letter from an agent in which the agent said she had been on the fence about the book and after much debate within herself, had decided to pass on it. Well, we were impressed. That kind of “good” rejection is hard to come by.

But the writer saw it differently. After sending out about 20 queries to agents, she has decided to self-publish.

This is not a crazy decision anymore. All you have to do is go to http: indiereader.com to see that lots of writers are making it is independent writers. Among them is Jessica Park who decided to publish her book FLAT-OUT LOVE independently after traditionally publishing other books. As an independent, she is making enough money to keep on writing and she feels more like a “real author.”

I spent months thinking that I needed a big publisher in order to be a writer, to legitimately carry that “author” title. To validate me, and to validate Flat-Out Love. I needed a publisher to print my books and stick a silly publishing house emblem on the side of a hard copy… I also, apparently, thought that I needed to be taken advantage of, paid inexcusably poorly, and chained to idiotic pricing and covers that I had no control over.
I was, it seems, deluded.

Other writers go to extreme lengths to get traditionally published. Jacob M. Appel writes on the blogspot Literary Rejections on Display:

My collection, Scouting for the Reaper, has won this year's Hudson Prize and will be published by Black Lawrence Press. Your readers will be amused to know that my total rejection count for creative work now includes slightly more 25,000 rejection letters. I have published slightly more than 200 stories.

How much rejection can you stand?

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Dear Writer…Dear Writer…Dear Writer…Dear W…

By mcmckit on Jun 19, 2012

One of our authors, the writer of a darling children’s book about a hedgehog and his special larch tree, is just beginning the process of trying to sell her book TANNI. In the meantime, she has already become famous in a way as one of the 238.

Sandra Assmann, our author, submitted some of her work to Writers House literary agency. In due time, she received a rejection letter from Writers House. Then she began to get e mails from other writers who had been similarly rejected, more than 200 of them. Writing is a famously lonely business so the opportunity to commiserate with other rejected authors was irresistible.

It turns out that someone at Writer’s House pushed the cc (carbon copy) button instead of the bcc (blind copy) button so instead of sending out 238 rejections to various anonymous people, 238 rejections were sent a visible group. Later, this person sent out another rejection letter to the 238:

“Thank you for your submission to Writers House and for your patience as we considered your query on its individual merits. I regret to inform you that we will not pursue representation. While your work certainly has merit, it simply isn’t right for our list, nor are any of the 237 other queries we are responding to…

“I wish you success in finding representation as I know you will wish me success in learning how to use the bcc function in my e-mail.”

Too late for damage control. As Sandra writes in an e mail to us:

“The few. The proud. The Noble 238 was born. We have now a Facebook account. We`re trying to help one another and two already signed a contract. It is really funny.”

Go 238!

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Gotta Dash

By mcmckit on Jun 12, 2012

After reviewing hundreds of client manuscripts, we can say with some certainty that everybody has her or his favorite punctuation. Some people are fond of ellipses which make them look as if they are perpetually drifting off… Maybe trying to get off the page…

Lately there have been a lot of semi-colon users; they write in connected sentences; we aren’t sure why this is; but it does tend to run everything together in a sort of mush.

Readers of this blog may have observed that our favorite punctuation is the em dash – so named because it is a big as the letter “m” (in contrast to the en dash which is the size of the letter “n”). We like to use it to interrupt ourselves – introduce a break in thought – rather than some of the other, many uses for the em dash. And we like to surround it with spaces a la THE NEW YORK TIMES MANUAL OF STYLE AND USAGE and in contradiction of THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE.

The em dash is a new phenomenon. Maybe that’s why we like it so much. It did not exist until the computer age and even now, there is no em dash key per se. One has to push control and then, the dash key in the numbers section. We think this makes the em dash kind of special. But the internet is full of criticism. Blogger Noreen Malone wrote in Slate last year that em dashes make the language look like it “is signaling distress in Morse code.”

“The problem with the dash—as you may have noticed!—is that it discourages truly efficient writing. It also—and this might be its worst sin—disrupts the flow of a sentence. Don't you find it annoying—and you can tell me if you do, I won't be hurt—when a writer inserts a thought into the midst of another one that's not yet complete?”

We are not deterred; we like the em dash and we intend to use it. We stand up for all our writers right to use whatever their favorite punctuation is in whatever way they want… Then, we step in and correct it.

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Twit Lit

By mcmckit on Jun 5, 2012

Jennifer Egan has tweeted the first ever short story for Twitter. It appeared in ten installments @NYerFiction, the New Yorker Magazine Fiction Department’s Twitter handle. Egan is the author of several highly regarded books, including most recently the Pulitzer Prize-winning A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD.

Below are the first three chapters (or stanzas?) of the story called “The Black Box.” But we recommend that you go to NYerFiction to get the true flavor of this work which confines each sentence to 140 characters or less. It is a different experience to read it as a series of tweets than as a whole work as you can do in the last issue of the New Yorker.

Here is what Egan has to say about her work in a New Yorker blog posting:

“This is not a new idea, of course, but it’s a rich one—because of the intimacy of reaching people through their phones, and because of the odd poetry that can happen in a hundred and forty characters. I found myself imagining a series of terse mental dispatches from a female spy of the future, working undercover by the Mediterranean Sea. I wrote these bulletins by hand in a Japanese notebook that had eight rectangles on each page. The story was originally nearly twice its present length; it took me a year, on and off, to control and calibrate the material…”

 “Black Box”

1.

People rarely look the way you expect them
to, even when you’ve seen pictures.

The first thirty seconds in a person’s
presence are the most important.

If you’re having trouble perceiving and
projecting, focus on projecting.

Necessary ingredients for a successful
projection: giggles; bare legs; shyness.

The goal is to be both irresistible and
invisible.

When you succeed, a certain sharpness
will go out of his eyes.

2

Some powerful men actually call their
beauties “Beauty.”

Counter to reputation, there is a deep
camaraderie among beauties.

If your Designated Mate is widely feared,
the beauties at the house party where
you’ve gone undercover to meet him will
be especially kind.

Kindness feels good, even when it’s based
on a false notion of your identity and
purpose.

3

Posing as a beauty means not reading
what you would like to read on a rocky
shore in the South of France.

Sunlight on bare skin can be as nourishing
as food.

Even a powerful man will be briefly
self-conscious when he first disrobes to his
bathing suit.

It is technically impossible for a man to
look better in a Speedo than in swim
trunks.

If you love someone with dark skin, white
skin looks drained of something vital.

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What’s All the Comma-tion?

By mcmckit on May 29, 2012

The country’s major newspapers have been writing about commas recently. Have the dog days of summer arrived early?

University of Delaware Professor Ben Yagoda started the comma-tion in his New York Times Opinionator. If you count the most recently posted comma questions installment, in which the professor answers a lot of questions from readers about commas, there have now been three in the comma series.

We don’t want to resurrect everything that Yagoda says; you can read his series here. He rightly points out that commas are a complicated business. Comma rules change with circumstances. In some cases, they are used to set off unique items but not those that aren’t so special. Sometimes using a comma is simply a choice. If you do manage to learn all these rules, be prepared for change. Today’s comma rules are not the same as they were thirty years ago.

For such a small mark, commas do, in fact, make a great deal of difference. They can change whole the meanings of sentences. Almost everybody is familiar with the title of Lynn Truss’ book EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES which completely changes meaning without the comma. There are readings of parts of the U.S. Constitution which hinge on comma use.

It is the rules surrounding commas that are comma-cal as Washington Post blogger Alexandra Petri wrote in her blog last week:

“Commas are like forks. For the most part, it is obvious what to do with them and where to put them. But then sometimes you find yourself confronted with six or seven of varying shapes and functions and have to try not to grab the wrong one in order to avoid awkward pauses.”
“We’re all lost and adrift, or lost, and adrift, or lost,,,,,, and,,, adrift.”

What’s a writer to do? One of us at The Word Process, not saying who, used to solve the problem by simply omitting them from her writing except for occasionally in which case they were inserted in places that were obviously wrong, perhaps to mark pauses in writing which are not at all the same thing as pauses in reading. (In any case, placing commas by sound is not correct; that would be too easy.)

Really, who can stop to figure out about commas when they are writing?

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