More "Writing Tools" Notes - Patterns

If I was really cool and planned ahead more, I would have posted this closer to Martin Luther King Day. Oh well.

In Writing Tools, Roy Peter Clark advises writers to build, then break, patterns. He says it adds emphasis to the final element, while linking the whole together. Dr. King gives us a prime example:

From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring. From the mighty Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snow capped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California! But not only there; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill in Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

He has a sort of stumbling waltz going on: "Let freedom ring" ends the first two sentences, so you're expecting the third, the trifecta, but no--he gives us half a sentence instead and lets us fill in the blank. Then "let freedom ring" is placed at the start of the sentences, and again, not a third. Another broken trifecta, and in this one he places a clause first, then puts "let freedom ring" in the middle of a sentence. Next two sentences, freedom rings at the start. Then he reprises the first sentence structure to end it with "let freedom ring" at the end of the sentence.

Geez, Dr. King. Way to throw patterns for a loop.

We expect a third to complement two matching elements, because that is the custom. If the third is switched, then, it grabs our attention. For Dr. King, this means he kept his audience's attention throughout the whole. How boring would it have been to have the same sentence structure over and over, yet how less full and triumphant if he had only listed three places total.

Clark says that when it comes to lists:

Use one for power; two for comparison and contrast; three for completeness, wholeness, roundness; and four or more for a list, inventory, compilation and expansion.

One last thing I'll add: The repetition of "let freedom ring" is what keeps the whole thing from shattering to pieces. There is still one common element, even though he is continually switching it up and laying faux patterns left and right.

Clark said repetition of words is good for one other thing besides pounding the word into the audience's brain:

(Hemingway) often repeats key words on a page—table, rock, fish, river, sea—because to find a synonym strains the writer's eyes and the reader's ears.

This is not permission to use the same word in every sentence, but it is permission to not think too hard for a synonym when a simple word will continue to do the work. Here's the thing with simple words: they are less memorable. When you are writing, you want your reader to forget they are reading; if you start doing a thesaurus song and dance, you'll pull them out.

For example: I have used the word "three" or versions of it, seven times in this post. I've said "sentence" ten times, seven times in the paragraph underneath all that ringing freedom alone. I bet you didn't even notice.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Thomas Jay Oord

I'm going to interrupt this Writing Tools flow with a writer's book review, partially to shake things up and partially because my article about it was printed last week in the Idaho Press-Tribune.

Thomas Jay Oord is a theology professor at Northwest Nazarene University. Wikipedia calls him the leading theologian on love working today, and his recent book, "The Uncontrolling Love of God," undoubtedly adds to that empire (if we give Wiki the benefit of the doubt). In this book, Oord says God's preeminent attribute is love. God wants the best for everyone, which leads to the problem of evil: Why is there evil in this world if God exists?

This question is what brings many to atheism, and it deserves all the books and thought it gets. Oord's solution, in short, is that there is evil because God simply cannot prevent it. He argues that were an all-loving God able to prevent evil from happening, He would. For more on this and Oord himself, read the article I wrote about him.

Now for how he wrote it: Philosophy and theology is infamous for being difficult to get through. A lot of that is because the writers are stereotypically long-winded, exhaustive in their arguments, prone to jargon, and boring.

Of those traits, I'd only assign one to Oord, that of being exhaustive. In the philosophy world, though, that is the correct way of doing things. People poke holes in your argument if you don't cover every single base in existence. Oord was close to doing this in his book, but he missed a couple by my reckoning. He didn't mention the devil, who I think should have at least been mentioned in a "He is irrelevant" fashion, and he never backed up the main assertion he was standing on, that is, that God's primary attribute is love. He used this as a building block and as a way to discount other theories, yet never gave any reasoning to support the claim.

While his argument may seem strong, it is a stone castle set on a cloud.

This is my main problem with the book. The writing itself is academic, easy to understand, and concise. He pulls the reader along through the first few chapters, which I especially enjoyed, with teasers of what is to come if they only hang on. He introduces examples at the beginning that he then refers back to throughout the entire book, which gave his concept a workable setting.

Please note that these are positive attributes in any sort of writing (maybe not always the academic part, but the rest of it): Write clearly and concisely. Use teasers or other methods to keep your reader going. Set your scene up early.

But don't ignore your foundation, especially when it comes to philosophy or theology. "Because it's what I believe with all my soul" doesn't cut it.

"Writing Tools" Notes - Verbs

What I wrote down: Active verbs move the action and reveal the actors. Passive verbs emphasize the receiver, the victim. The verb "to be" links word and ideas.

As a reminder, active verbs are when the subject is doing the verb. Examples: John threw the ball. The ball hit Alice. Alice knows where John lives.

Passive verbs, on the other hand, give the object of the sentence precedence: The snowball was placed in John's pillowcase by Alice. The pillow was soaked by the snowball.

As for the last part of my note, Clark explained, "A verb that is neither active nor passive is a linking verb, a form of the verb to be." (His italics, not mine.) He says that all verbs are either active, passive, or "to be."

Generally, people discourage passive voice for its wordiness and mellow tone. Writing Tools author Roy Peter Clark doesn't discourage passive voice, though; he says to use it for a purpose. What do you want to emphasize? Usually, it will be the subject, but if it is the receiver, then go for it. Use passive voice.

Read this example Clark used and see if you can pick out the passive and active:

Presently I saw a man leaning on a two-strand barbed-wire fence, the wires fixed not to posts but to crooked tree limbs stuck in the ground. The man wore a dark hat, and jeans and long jacket washed palest blue with lighter places at knees and elbows. His pale eyes were frosted with sun glare and his lips scaly as snakeskin. A .22 rifle leaned against the fence beside him and on the ground lay a little heap of fur and feathers - rabbits and small birds. I pulled up to speak to him, saw his eyes wash over Rocinante, sweep up the details, and then retire into their sockets. And I found I had nothing to say to him ... so we simply brooded at each other (John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley)

There was only one passive sentence, but it was there: "His pale eyes were frosted with sun glare ..." Imagine if Steinbeck had used the active. That sentence would have said, "Sun glare frosted his pale eyes ..." Do you hear the difference? The first sounds lazy to me.

But that's the point, isn't it? He comes across as a lazy, laid-back character, and all that Steinbeck did to make it that way was to make him lean back, not move much, and suffer through a single passive sentence. Without that one passive sentence, he seems much more hostile, mainly because then the emphasis would be on "glare," not "pale eyes" and "frosted."

Another note from the book, while we're on the subject of verbs: A good adverb (those exist?!) changes the meaning of a verb. It does not increase the intensity of what is there. Use the correct verb if possible, but use an adverb if necessary to convey the correct meaning. Examples of adverbs Clark would excuse: smiled sadly, killing me softly, sweetly faked.

Using adverbs is lazy if they are doing unnecessary work (backward, isn't it?). Remember that great quote by Robin Williams' character in The Dead Poets' Society?

So avoid using the word ‘very,’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.

Yes, "very" is an adverb.

The Haiku Turn

I am finally getting around to discussing my notes from Roy Peter Clark's Writing Tools. It's sure taken me long enough, hasn't it?

The book is an odd mix of advice for news reporting and storytelling, with most advice applying in both fields but some only mattering in one or the other.

There were also some great jokes and anecdotes. My new favorite English joke: "I dropped the toothpaste," he said, crestfallen.

An anecdote I loved told about a fellow reading through old stories from children, then thinking to himself that one of the kids sounded like E.B. White. He looks, and it totally was. True voice, that; no pretending or following trends.

One piece of advice that stood out to me in particular was to create paragraph turns, similar to those in a haiku.

Haikus are some of the funniest poems out there. In ancient times, poets would get together, get drunk and make a game out of writing haikus. Here are some I love. The first three are by Yosa Buson, who was brilliant with imagery, and the second three are by Matsuo Basho, whose bluntness and imagination I adore. The final three (I was restraining myself, okay?) are by Kobayashi Issa, who wrote well about how he viewed the world, placing himself into all the poems, it feels like:

Morning breeze
riffling
the caterpillar's hair.

The old man
cutting barley -
bent like a sickle

A tethered horse,
snow
in both stirrups.

Still alive
and frozen in one lump -
the sea slugs.

What fish feel,
birds feel, I don't know -
the year ending.

Don't imitate me;
it's as boring
as the two halves of a melon.

I'm going to roll over,
so please move,
cricket.

Washing the saucepans -
the moon glows on her hands
in the shallow river.

In this world
we walk on the roof of hell,
gazing at flowers.

Now that you have enjoyed some haikus, my point: Haikus have surprise endings. Whether the surprise starts on the second line or the first, it is not what was expected, yet it somehow fits. Paragraphs can and should be written similarly, when possible, particularly in academic or media writing.

The first sentence of a paragraph is supposed to introduce the concept of the paragraph. Then you have support and a conclusion. Make sure your conclusion is not the same as your first sentence. You ought to have given new material that affects what you are saying and advances it. The more interesting, the more your reader will like it. Surprise them.

I don't know how this would hold in fiction or storytelling, except on the chapter level. Insert a plot twist in every chapter. Characters should not do the expected, and they should never face the expected (unless it is the dreaded, of course). This keeps the story interesting.

Let's call this tool the haiku turn: the moment when you turn from the expected.