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.