English in the trenches—conjunction junction, what's your disfunction?

If you grew up around the time that I did and watched Saturday morning cartoons, the title to this post instantly brings a School House Rock tune to mind. I liked them so well that I set up a tape recorder next to the TV on Saturday mornings, hoping to record School House Rock songs to listen to later. (This was before CDs and DVDs.)

Combined with the occasional comma, I've noticed that there is quite a bit of usage confusion going on out there when it comes to conjunctions. If you suffer from conjunction disfunction, here are a few tips to help you.

Conjunctions can join words, phrases, or clauses.

Bob and Fred are tormenting the neighbor's cat. (Compound subjects)
The neighbor's cat is hissing and clawing. (Compound verbs)
The cat is jumping into the air and onto Bob. (Compound phrases)
Bob is bleeding, and Fred is laughing. (Compound sentences)

The main takeaway here is that the two parts which you join with a conjunction have to be equal to each other. This means you cannot join a word and a phrase with a conjunction. They are not equal.

Bob and ran to the store.

Obviously joining a subject and a verb with a conjunction doesn't work. It doesn't even sound right, so it's unlikely anyone will make this mistake. However, there are other possibilities which are more subtle.

Bob, frustrated (word) and showing quick thinking, (phrase), is dropping the angry cat on Fred's head.

This sounds a little better, but it's still wrong. You can't put a word and a phrase together with a conjunction. In the School Rock vein, it's like trying to hook up a bicycle and a train car. Not pretty.

So today's lesson is two-fold. Don't try to join unequal sentence parts with conjunctions, and don't mess with your neighbor's cat. It will be bad. Very bad.

Book cover memory lane

These are some of my favorite Nanowrimo covers. (I'm feeling reminiscent rather than exhausted because I didn't actually do Nanowrimo for the first time in several years.) But still, it's nice to think about those manuscripts of yesteryear. Here are some of our covers:

This was from 2009. Honestly, I had more fun doing the covers than anything else.

A cover for a friend, but she ended up doing something else.

Hubby's cover. He did a World War II novel (of course) for Nano.

Probably my favorite creation, although my daughter ended up wanting to do her own instead. (I didn't really mind. She was spreading her own wings.)

One of my daughters' covers.

Cover for 2010. Not terribly exciting, but I thought it worked, considering I was churning out 1667 word per day and not getting enough sleep. 

The novel I never write. Never. Year after year I consider it and never do it.

My serious sci-fi middle grade novel. Someday this one will have a real cover made by someone else.

English in the trenches—what is a sentence, anyway?

Your proofreader has scrawled a note on your manuscript that says, "This isn't a sentence."

You look down and consider that the "sentence" in question has a capital letter at the beginning and punctuation at the end. Isn't that enough? Actually, it isn't.

When writing for young children, there are editors who are touchy about the use of complete sentences. This is because they want your writing to be a good influence on those impressionable youngsters who are still in the process of learning the English language, rather than annihilating it like the rest of us.

As you write for older children, you're allowed a little more leeway. Dialogue, in particular, sounds stilted when it's written as complete sentences. This is because no one really talks that way except for aliens from other planets who, if you've noticed, never use contractions.

So what is a sentence?

A sentence must meet two requirements.

1. It must contain a clause.
2. It must sound complete.

In case you didn't know, a clause is made up of at least a subject and a verb. Independent clauses sound complete, and therefore are sentences. Here are a few examples.

Bob threw the ball.
Mary is friendly.
Jennifer is running.

By comparison, here are some dependent clauses. You'll notice that they don't sound complete, even though they each contain a subject and a verb.

If Bob threw the ball.
When Mary is friendly.
Where Jennifer is running.

These could be fixed by attaching them to an independent clause or by rewriting them.

If Bob threw the ball, he's in big trouble.
When Mary is friendly, she doesn't eat your Cheetos.
There is a vicious bull in the field where Jennifer is running.

In short, a sentence has to have a subject and a verb, and it has to sound complete. If it doesn't sound complete, it must be fixed before the grammar police nab you.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I'll get to them in future posts.

Where Is the Phoenix?

Tangled Ashes by Michele Phoenix

 A chateau in France that is used for the Nazi Lebensborn program... A baby rescued... An American company hired in present day to rehab the chateau... A man in need of redemption... A woman who seems out of place caring for other people's children...

 The premise has so much promise and the author handles the language and transitions well. The story begins in an intriguing way with the viewpoint of a sixteen year old French girl, Marie, who works for the Nazis at the chateau to provide for her family. Gradually, she realizes what is going on especially since her friend and co-worker is caught up in it.

 Juxtaposed with the World War Two story is a modern story about an American company rehabbing the chateau to serve as a high end hotel and restaurant. The American in charge of the rehab, a man named Becker, has been sent to accomplish the job by his partner as an alternative to alcohol intervention therapy. A mysterious Frenchwoman designer irritates him, but facilitates the process of the rehab project. Another Frenchwoman, the lovely Jade, cares for the property owner/developer's children and begins to minister to Becker as well as a mysterious man who lives on the fringes of the property.

 Unfortunately, Becker never becomes likable or truly redeems himself. The bulk of the modern story is about his tortured relationships, his victim mentality and his ongoing and unsuccessful battle against alcoholism. Even Jade unravels. Then, the promised mystery from the Nazis in France during World War Two, also delivers only sadness and despair in its revelation.

 Spoiler alert.

When I reached the end of the book, I felt cheated. I had put up with all the anger and failure and depression and fear of the characters, and at the end of the book all I got was more anger and fear and depression. The World War Two story ends badly. And then, when Becker abandons Jade, who is fighting cancer, to go home and get alcohol treatment, I wanted to strangle him – and the author – for stringing me along. I know people with horrible life problems and I don't enjoy being pulled down into their misery. The book only hints at the saving grace of God, but never manifests it. The book, like Jade's church, has “holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power. Have nothing to do with them.” (2 Timothy 3:5)

English grammar from the trenches

I've noticed that language as a whole is on a downward slide. Between texting and emails, we're learning to ad lib like never before. Even in the best of circumstances, we only use a small chunk of the vocabulary Shakespeare used in his day. Something must be done.

Now, it's not that I'm an English whiz compared to a friend of mine who was an editor and now runs a close-captioning company. His level of perfection is possibly beyond me, but I can hold my own and detect perhaps 95 percent of the troubles most writers would do well to avoid if they wanted to keep their credibility as craftsmen of the English language. No matter where we each are, we could always be better and use a hand up from our English-using pals. Maybe you're mystified by compound sentences (like I used to be). Perhaps you're confused by perfect tenses and spelling rules. Whatever the case, I'll be posting a few simple lessons which should help.

(And in respect to that sad comment about Shakespeare's vocabulary being so superior to our own, I'll be giving you a word to add to your cache. Your mission is to use it in a sentence and impress your friends, family, and coworkers.)

If this post has depressed you too much, check out this Shakespeare version of the Three Little Pigs.


Word for the day

eucatastrophe—[noun] a sudden and favorable resolution of events in a story; a happy ending.

Example: Do you prefer a book with a eucatastrophe?

Don't be yourself (at least not all the time)

Wait a minute. What do you mean, don't be yourself? What about tibi ipsi esto fidelis and all that jazz? Aren't you supposed to stay true to yourself and refuse to compromise by eating milk chocolate when you really prefer dark? 

Recently I've been reading "The Plot Thickens" by Noah Lukeman. It's taking me awhile because I'm studying and taking notes, but even though I'm only on page 100, I'm amazed by the value of his book. The first two chapters are about getting to know your characters, inside and out. In those chapters, Lukeman has created enormous lists of questions which help a writer develop an incredibly detailed bio of her characters. The result is that by the time you finally write your story, it practically writes itself because you have come to know your characters so deeply. An added advantage is that characters written from such a detailed background come across as three dimensional and real to the reader rather than flat and stereotypical. 

So I might not be a cagey old grandpa or a spunky twelve-year-old super-spy, but thanks to Noah Lukeman's help in fully developing my characters, I can get into their heads and be them and even have their adventures for awhile. And the better I'm able to live through my characters, the better my readers will be able to do it, too. So the moral of this post is that in real life, yes, you do want to be yourself, but when it comes to writing, you don't have to be. When you write a story, you can and should be someone else sometimes, at least temporarily.

Rendezvous with success

Darcy Pattison had an awesome post last week on Fiction Notes entitled, 'How Do You Get So Much Done?' It's a question that she, as a writer, hears every so often. Darcy's answer is that, when it comes to writing, she keeps office hours. Just like any other job, and even though it's in her home, she writes at specified times of the day. When she had children, her hours were a bit shorter and designed to fit around their school schedules. Later she was able to expand them to an 8 to 4 work day.

When I read Darcy's post, I had a revelation moment. Maybe it was the simple way she put it, but it really hit home to me, because the single biggest problem in my own writing is that I act like writing is a treat for when everything else is done, rather than a job to do first.

It's possible there is no single ingredient in the writing life that guarantees success for a writer more than writing consistently.

There's a vast difference between having a dream and having a plan.

Honesty time. What does your writing days look like? Do you keep a regular rendezvous with your work in progress, or do you only touch base once in awhile? Do you have a daily time when you write? When is this? If you're a consistent writer, has your skill increased? Do you believe a writing plan can lead to fulfilled writing dreams?