Category Archives: Mechanics

Oh, the intricacies of grammar and mechanics

Mechanics

Why I don’t read (many) writing blogs anymore

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I love reading writing blogs. I love the craft, I love learning more about it, and I love wasting time on the Internet, so writing blogs have been a major time-suck a favorite hobby.

But recently, I’ve noticed a sad trend among writing blogs. For example, yesterday, I was browsing Pinterest and saw a great graphic for an article on a writing craft topic. It happens to be a topic I’ve written a series about in the past, but I’m perennially curious, so I clicked through.

The article claimed to teach “how to write TECHNIQUE.” The actual article consisted of a paragraph introducing the topic, two points refreshing underlying principles, and two edited examples. The conclusion mentions that you don’t always have to use TECHNIQUE.

disappointed1

Yep. That’s it. Sure, the examples were accurate, but the article covers only one aspect of the technique and spends 200 words on it (and about 300 words on the rest of the article). There are entire books on the subject and I’ve written thousands of words on it myself. And this isn’t the only time I’ve seen this recently. In fact, it seems to have become a prevailing trend: a great headline on an important writing topic followed by what barely qualifies as an introduction.

Granted, a few other factors are in play here. I’ve studied writing craft off and on for fifteen years—mostly on for the last seven—and I’ve learned a lot. Much of the information out there geared toward beginners just wouldn’t interest me. But there’s a huge difference between covering a topic I already know about and not even covering the promised topic in the first place. (And admittedly, part of my frustration also stems from the fact that I’ve often written more extensively and helpfully about the same topics.)

I know that bloggers often have to leave room for commenters to participate and add to the discussion, but sometimes you can say so little that they have nowhere to go with the topic. I don’t know if these bloggers are pressed for time or not terribly interested in the craft (maybe they feel like the have to write about craft—you don’t), or maybe spending most of their blogging time crafting great graphics (which does take time). No matter what the reason, I often feel like the number of writing blogs out there has gone up while the quality, at least gauging by the articles I’ve seen shared, has gone down.

disappointed2

I’ve gotten so tired of it that I’ve stopped clicking on links that I can see go to certain sites that are particularly bad offenders, or links shared by all but a select few I know and trust.

This article would probably fall into that fairly useless category if I didn’t share some of those trusted resources, eh? So, here’s my top three sources for good, thought-provoking writing articles with practical, actual help:

  1. Jami Gold’s blog and Twitter feed
  2. Fiction University, Janice Hardy’s blog, and her Twitter feed
  3. Writers Helping Writers as well as the Twitter feeds of authors Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

To go along with that: if you ever see me just barely scratching the surface of a promised topic, comment. Say something. Call me out. Heck, even start a fight. Pretending to teach an in-depth topic with two superficial examples isn’t helping anyone learn the technique. Let’s show more respect for the craft—and for our fellow writers’ intelligence.

What do you think? Are you reading fewer writing blogs these days? Has the quality gone down, or is it just the links I’m seeing?

Photo credits: Disappointed man—bark; Disappointed child—Rachel Monroe both via Flickr/CC

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Mechanics

Fix-It Friday: Fixing those prepositional phrases

Prepositional phrases can be tricky! They can easily become misplaced modifiers, throwing a money wrench in your sentence’s meaning. fif

Let’s fix these sentences

Why would she share the secret he’d confided in her in the hall with her parents?
We’re really confused here. It’s unclear that we’re talking about two different conversations here. The way it’s written, it sounds like “she” is sharing a secret that he’d confided in her with her parents, in a conversation that took place in the hall.

Probably not what we’re going for.

Instead, we need to shuffle these prepositional phrases or even drop some of them:

  • Why would she share with her parents the secret he’d confided in her in the hall?
  • Why would she share the secret he’d confided in her with her parents? (Though this may not fully fix the problem, it’s a bit less ambiguous.)
  • Why would she share his secret with her parents? (Shortest, simplest and probably best.)

He remembered the dog he’d found as he was walking in the apartment in the street.
Again, the meaning is all over the place here. Did he find the dog in the street? In the apartment? Or is the apartment in the street? Did he find the dog while walking, or remember it while walking?

Try again for clarity.

  • As he walked into the apartment, he remembered the dog he’d found in the street.
  • As he walked in the street, he remembered the dog he’d found in the apartment.
  • He remembered that dog—he’d found it as he was walking in his apartment.

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.
This one is a famous joke, with the punchline “How he got into my pajamas, I shall never know.”

For humorous purposes, this works—but you have to call attention to a somewhat minor ambiguity, as in the scene I shared last time from Clue:

A man was bitten by a bat walking down the street on his thumb.
The bat here is the one walking down the street . . . on his thumb.

This cuts to the heart of the issue: make sure the prepositional phrase is closest to whatever it’s modifying.

“On his thumb” describes where he was bitten, so it should go by that. He was walking down the street when he was bitten.

  • A man walking down the street was bitten on his thumb by a bat.
  • A man was walking down the street when a bat bit him on the thumb.
  • A bat bit a man on his thumb as he was walking down the street.

She couldn’t believe he was standing there after their conversation yesterday on the sidewalk.
If the conversation took place on the sidewalk, this might be a little clearer with “yesterday” at the end. Otherwise, we need to move “on the sidewalk” closer to “he was standing there” to show it modifies that phrase, not the sentence.

  • She couldn’t believe he was standing there after their conversation on the sidewalk yesterday. (Conversation on sidewalk.)
  • She couldn’t believe he was standing there on the sidewalk after their conversation yesterday. (Standing on sidewalk now.)

Again, often the problem is using multiple modifiers or more than one prepositional phrase. As we stack the phrases, we have to be sure the meaning doesn’t get lost, or we’ll leave our readers confused!

So how would you fix these sentences? Any good ones you’ve seen?

Photo credits: tools—HomeSpot HQ

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Technique, Mechanics

Fix-It Friday: watch those prepositional phrases

Prepositional phrases can be tricky. I’ve found a few ways they can really trip up writers and change the meaning of otherwise fine sentences. One of those ways: the simple order of prepositional phrases. When they become misplaced modifiers, prepositional phrases throw a money wrench in your sentence’s meaning. fif

What’s wrong with these sentences?

Why would she share the secret he’d confided in her in the hall with her parents?

He remembered the dog he’d found as he was walking in the apartment across the street.

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.

A man was bitten by a bat walking down the street on his thumb.

She couldn’t believe he was standing there after their conversation yesterday on the sidewalk.

Notice that often the problem is using multiple modifiers or more than one prepositional phrase. As we stack the phrases, we have to be sure the meaning doesn’t get lost, or we’ll leave our readers like these characters from Clue:

So how would you fix them? Next week!

Photo credits: tools—HomeSpot HQ

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Technique, Mechanics

Fix-It Friday: Fixing overstuffed sentences

Two weeks ago, we looked at a couple overstuffed sentences—sentences where I was putting too much information in, and tripping up my readers. fifI learned my lesson about overstuffed sentences from editor & RITA-award winning author Alicia Rasley, when she line edited four sentences for me (emphasis added):

Don’t make your reader work so hard to figure out what you’re getting at. Try writing it plainly first, to make sure you’re getting it across, then embellish. But really, I think you’re trying to do too much for one paragraph. This might not have bothered me in two paragraphs or three, if you took your time and really explored what was happening . . . . If that’s too attenuated, see what’s important to keep and make sure everything is clear.

As I’ve said before, sentences should work hard for us as writers and serve several purposes. But there’s a limit to how much you can pack into a sentence or paragraph and still be intelligible to readers.

Another really important point here is that dense (= packed) writing isn’t always better. Sometimes it makes the reader feel dense (= stupid). If something is really important to the story action or the character, often that weight should be matched by the amount of real estate that event gets.

Or as Alicia put it,

If it’s worth stating, . . . it’s worth developing or exemplifying or showing. . . .

I know I’m always saying, “Take it slow.” But don’t try to compress too much.

So, how should we fix our examples from last week?

#1: blow up the emotion

How must the buildings that were so familiar she hardly noticed them look to Father O’Leary? Three years ago, she compared the Gothic chapel, its stone façade flanked by blazing maples in a carpet of lawn, to her parents’ church in city center. At the time, St. Adelaide seemed a suburban oasis; three weeks ago she was disabused of that notion.

“I’m sure it’ll get to feelin’ like home soon enough,” she murmured.

Along with other excellent feedback from editors Alicia & Theresa and other commentators, the passage in question eventually grew—the first paragraph (three sentences) expanded into three paragraphs (eight sentences):

He scanned the whole scene, as if surveying the squat brick school, the rectory, the Gothic chapel’s stone façade flanked by blazing maples in a carpet of lawn. The dismay in his expression dissolved with his satisfied nod. St. Adelaide must seem like a suburban oasis to him.

Three weeks ago, Molly had been disabused of that notion. Now the idyllic scene carried a sinister undertone so strong she couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. She hadn’t even noticed when the maples turned red.

Father O’Leary sighed and looked to her. How could she tell him the truth and shatter his illusion? “It’ll get to feelin’ like home soon enough,” she murmured.

I agreed that this event was important enough to give it more real estate in the book—but it’s not like I devoted an entire chapter to this. Just a few more sentences here made the passage clearer and gave it greater emotional impact.

Note that I decided the reference to the past (three years ago) was not actually worth including, since it distracted from the present—it wasn’t important enough to explore, and thus it probably wasn’t important enough to include.

But you don’t always have to blow it up quite that much. Sometimes, breaking up the action and simply fixing the sequencing is enough.

#2: sequencing and clarity

This is an actual sentence from the first draft of my WIP:

I slip onto the back porch, but the door latch I’m expecting to hear behind me doesn’t come by the time I reach the stairs.

My problems with this:

  • Awkward wording, especially “the door latch I’m expecting to hear behind me doesn’t come”
  • Is the door latch an object? “I’m expecting to” doesn’t tell us right away
  • Most of all, the sequencing is all over the place. She leaves, we don’t see her shutting the door, there’s a sound (or object?), she’s expecting the sound—oh, wait, there’s no sound, stairs?
  • Seriously, where did these stairs come from?

Here’s how I actually fixed it:

I slip onto the back porch, letting the door swing shut behind me. But by the time I reach the stairs down to the yard, the door still hasn’t latched.

The ideas are all still there, but now I’m explaining what happens in order, without skipping steps. She goes onto the porch and shuts the door. She reaches the stairs (which go somewhere that makes sense now) and realizes the door hasn’t latched. Voilà.

And the word count difference? Five words.

Neither of these are going to win a Pulitzer 😉 but perhaps the serviceable lines should be even more smooth to keep your reader moving on to the big stuff, right?

Onward!

#3: breathing room

Those fears and feelings, raw and vulnerable, echoing through me, must be why I finally have to pull back to wipe away my tears.

Also a line from my WIP, this is just a few paragraphs after the above. Kind of a lot to digest all at once, isn’t it?

Again, the change is really simple here, and right to the point: that’s just too much for one little sentence to handle, so we make it two. My fix:

Those fears and feelings, raw and vulnerable, echo through me. Finally I have to pull back to wipe away my tears.

Is it less powerful as two sentences? I don’t think so. In fact, there are some things I like about it better. Instead of stuffing everything into one thought (for what reason?), we give the two important thoughts there a little more room to breathe. It gives each of them a little more time to make an impact.

Oh, and the word difference? -3.

What do you think? Have you found any overstuffed sentences in your writing? How do you fix them? Come share!

Photo credits: tools—HomeSpot HQ; overstuffed beef ravioli—George Hatcher

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Technique, Mechanics

Fix-it Friday: Overstuffed sentences

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Line-editing is now part of editing my book Fix-It Fridays!

fifWay back in our Secret Sauce Series, we talked about overstuffed sentences—sentences where we’re trying too hard to appear writerly, putting too much information, being entirely too clever, and just generally confounding our readers.

Once upon a time, I must have held a subconscious belief that a “real” writer made their sentences work two and three times as hard. That’s probably true in a way—each action of a story, each scene and maybe each sentence can accomplish more than one thing.

But instead, I took that to mean that the more complex a sentence, the better. But that’s simply not the case. Yes, sentences should work hard for us as writers and serve several purposes. But there’s a limit to how much you can pack into a sentence or paragraph and still be intelligible to readers.

Here are a couple such overweighted sentences from my own works:

#1 (the passage that taught me this lesson!)

How must the buildings that were so familiar she hardly noticed them look to Father O’Leary? Three years ago, she compared the Gothic chapel, its stone façade flanked by blazing maples in a carpet of lawn, to her parents’ church in city center. At the time, St. Adelaide seemed a suburban oasis; three weeks ago she was disabused of that notion.

“I’m sure it’ll get to feelin’ like home soon enough,” she murmured.

And #2

I slip onto the back porch, but the door latch I’m expecting to hear behind me doesn’t come by the time I reach the stairs.

And #3

Those fears and feelings, raw and vulnerable, echoing through me, must be why I finally have to pull back to wipe away my tears.

Next time (Sept 13 27!), I’ll share how I fixed them—but first, what would you do? Come share!

Photo by HomeSpot HQ

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Technique, Mechanics

Julie Coulter Bellon’s Secret Sauce: The CLAW (and self-editing)

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by Julie Coulter Bellon

Julie Coulter BellonMy secret sauce in making the leap to being a published author was learning how to be a better self-editor.  I think when you know the areas to look for that are your personal weaknesses as a writer, you can better learn the craft to make that your strength.

Here is my personal self-editing checklist.

First I do the CLAW  

I start with the easy stuff because it makes me feel good to check it off.

Check for basic editing errors like:

  • Page numbering and blank pages
  • Too many adjectives or adverbs:  “It was a beautiful sunny June day and the lush, emerald green grass reflected the bright yellow sunlight and hurt my eyes.  Or, “She desperately wanted to kiss him passionately.”
  • Tense consistency and subject/verb agreement:  “He couldn’t believe that his boss had fired him over a typographical error. He is a great worker and always turns in his projects on time.”  Subject/verb agreement, “He run to the store.”
  • Clichés: “She’ll come crawling back to me.”  “He couldn’t beat around the bush any longer.”
  • Repetitious descriptions:  Weave in your first descriptions and make them powerful enough that you don’t have to beat your reader over the head with more.
  • Favorite words: “really”  “just”  “some”  “that”
  • Too many dialogue tags or weird tags:   James laughed at her pain. “Don’t bother trying to get away,” he replied.  We don’t need the replied because we know it’s James talking.  And use “said,” in most instances because when you try to get fancy “he pontificated,” or “she remonstrated,” it can take the reader out of the story.
  • Chapter or POV breaks.  Double check that those are correct and done.

Let someone else read it that will give me good feedback.  Not my mother or grandma, but someone who will be honest and somewhat brutal.

Always print it out and read a hard copy.  Mistakes will jump out at me that way.  Sometimes putting it into a different font can also be helpful in spotting mistakes.

Walk-away for a few hours, days or weeks and come back with fresh eyes.  I’ve created something and I need a bit of time to enjoy that, but I keep thinking about it, and when I come back to it, I’m ready to make the changes I need to.  Anything that doesn’t advance the story must be cut out, even if it’s my favorite part.

So, now I’ve done the basic CLAW checklist, then I send it out to beta readers for some feedback.  But I don’t wait around for them to get back to me.  While they have it, I print it out myself and read it front to back for any other little changes I might want to make.  Once that’s done, I’m ready for the second round of self-editing.

My second round of self-editing is where I go through that hard copy and look for specific problem areas.  (For some reason I see mistakes better on a hard copy.  It can be done on the computer as well. Maybe I’m just getting old, or my old journalism habits are coming through!)

(Also, I know I’ve seen a lot of these areas on Jordan’s previous secret sauce blog entries and I have to say I’ve learned a lot from them and for my next book I can delve even deeper into some of these.)  Here’s my specific list for the second round.

Second Round of Self-Editing—The Editor’s Checklist

  1. Show don’t tell—show us what your character is experiencing in that moment.  What does he/she hear, feel, or smell?  Let the reader be in the moment with them.
  2. Passive voice—the lady is being kissed by a masked man.  The masked man is kissing the lady.”  Keep it active and concentrate on the action.
  3. POV shifts—usually one POV per scene
  4. Chapter hooks, beginning and end.  Make the reader want to keep on turning pages.
  5. Does each character have a motivation?
  6. Is the setting done well?  Does it contribute to the piece?
  7. Is the story timeline consistent?
  8. Does the conflict keep the tension throughout the story?
  9. Do you have a natural flow—nothing contrived?
  10. Is there a balance of narrative, action, and dialogue?

This round takes a bit more time, but it is totally worth it when I catch mistakes like my character having blue eyes in chapter one that magically change to brown eyes in chapter fifteen.  Going through the manuscript ten times looking for specific issues like the ones above has saved me so many times.  (That’s why I can never show people my first or even fifth drafts!  You would laugh.)  Also, by the time you’re done going through it so many times you’re going to hate your manuscript and that’s always a good sign that it’s close to being finished!

Which leads me to the last round of self-edits—the big picture issues.

Do You Know Your Big Picture Problem Areas? 

(If you find problems here, you will bang your head against the wall for a while trying to fix it, but make no mistake, you will be glad you fixed it at this stage instead of when a reader/editor/agent tells you.)  (See what I did there? Make no mistake? Haha)

Characterization—Are we privy to the main character’s thoughts, or do we only skim his/her surface? Is this a character we simply witness, or a character we understand deeply?

Plot—Is your plot contrived or unbelievable?  Do you know the end and work toward a satisfying conclusion with no dangling loose ends or unnecessary beats?  Are there elements of truth in it that readers can relate to?

Continuity—Are your characters consistent throughout with no name changes, eye color changes or backstory inconsistencies?  Is your timeline appropriate? Are settings and events consistent?

Details—Do you have a hard time finding balance and detail people to death?  Are you focusing on the small picture or keeping an eye on the big picture?

Once that is all done, there’s just one more step.

Now What? Change Hats Once More

Take off your editor’s hat and put on your writing hat again. Make the necessary changes from what you saw in your piece on your three editing rounds.  Drown the piece in red ink and bring it back to life with new words and ideas.  Make it flow.

I know it’s hard sometimes, but enjoy the journey of revision.  Rewriting can be rejuvenating and breathe new life into your characters.  Don’t be discouraged.  This is your opportunity to make the story shine and bring your ideas to life. One of my favorite quotes is by Arthur Polotnik.

“You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what’s burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.”  Arthur Polotnik

Let your fire show so your readers can experience your story the way you saw it in your head.

The more you learn about yourself as a writer, the better able you are to self-edit and really improve in your craft.  Of course this is one of the first steps in your journey to publishing and doesn’t substitute for a critique group and a professional edit, but once you are this far, your piece is polished enough to go on in the process.

About the Author

Julie Coulter Bellon is the mom of eight children and the author of nine books. She balances being a mom with being a writer and an avid reader. She blogs at LDS Writer Mom. Her latest release is Ashes Ashes.

Sophia Naziri is wanted for questioning in the murder of a U.S. senator. She’s worried the police will show up on her doorstep any moment, but when Detective Colby Black appears, it’s to help her put out a kitchen fire, not take her in. Yet. His easy smile and persistence in getting to know her pushes all her troubles to the back of her mind, until a hit man tracks her down. Getting arrested becomes the least of her worries and the handsome detective could be her only way out—if she tells him the truth.

Colby Black’s sniper skills have been a blessing and a curse to him. As a member of a Hostage Negotiation Team, he can use them to save people, but sometimes he can’t protect the innocent despite his best efforts. When a hostage situation goes bad, he tries to put it behind him by helping out his mysterious next-door neighbor, Sophia Naziri. But she pulls Colby into a web of lies and conspiracy that will force him to use every skill he has in order to survive. Faced with the moment of truth, can he trust anyone around him—including the woman at the center of it all?

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Mechanics

Did you “use to” or “used to”??

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One strength of the English language its flexibility. We have lots of ways of rewording things. For example, we can use simple past tense (I went to the store), or we can use a two-word “paraphrastic” past tense, usually for emphasis or negation these days (I did go to the store, or I didn’t go to the store.).

The Store (By Guinness). I didn't use to go to this store.Notice, though, that in English, when we use a paraphrastic tense, only ONE verb carries the tense: “I did go to the store,” not “I did went to the store” (or, to get crazy with it, “I did wanted went to the store.”). Naturally, in forming past tense questions, we also split the past marker off: “Did you go to the store?” not “Did you went to the store?”

That’s very, very simple and straightforward, right?

Of course not! Ha! Ridiculous! This is English. How can it be simple?

What happens when you introduce another type of paraphrastic in there? Specifically, I’ve come across this issue more than once with the verb phrase “used to.” Obviously, in simple past, we can say, “I used to go to the store.” (And equally obviously, never “I used to went to the store.”)

“Used to” is already extra tricky because vocally (where you’d usually hear this colloquialism), “used to” and “use to” are pronounced almost identically, so many speakers aren’t sure what the correct form is in the first place. (It’s “used to.”)

But what happens when we get crazy with the paraphrastic past, emphatic or negative?

“I did use to have a job, you know.” vs. “I did used to have a job, you know.”
“I didn’t use to worry about these things.” vs. “I didn’t used to worry about these things.”
“Did you use to visit often?” vs. “Did you used to visit often?”

While “use to” often looks wrong in this context because the simple form is correctly “used to,” I’m of the opinion that you shouldn’t have two tense markers in the same verb. Just like you wouldn’t say “I did/didn’t went to the store,” I don’t think you should say “I did/didn’t used to go to the store.”

And of course, in very formal writing, you should never have used either 😉 .

Want to get technical? Of course! Here’s a usage note on “used to” from the Oxford American Dictionary to back up my theory (emphasis original):

1 The construction used to is standard, but difficulties arise with the formation of negatives and questions. Traditionally, used to behaves as a modal verb, so that questions and negatives are formed without the auxiliary verb do, as in it used not to be like that and used she to come here? In modern English, this question form is now regarded as very formal or awkwardly old-fashioned, and the use with do is broadly accepted as standard, as in did she use to come here? Negative constructions with do, on the other hand (as in it didn’t use to be like that), although common, are informal and are not generally accepted. 

2 There is sometimes confusion over whether to use the form used to or use to, which has arisen largely because the pronunciation is the same in both cases. Except in negatives and questions, the correct form is used to: we used to go to the movies all the time (not we use to go to the movies). However, in negatives and questions using the auxiliary verb do, the correct form is use to, because the form of the verb required is the infinitive: I didn’t use to like mushrooms (not I didn’t used to like mushrooms). See also utilize (usage).

And, of course, for the negative, you could always rephrase with “never” (if that’s what you mean).

What do you think? Did you use to think that? 😉

Photo by Miguel Ángel Díaz Rey via Flickr & CC license

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Mechanics

Secret sauce: those stinking participial phrases

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This entry is part 13 of 16 in the series Spilling the secret sauce

Okay, so participial phrases at the beginning of sentences have become one of my pet peeves. I don’t mind them when they’re well done, but unless you’re pretty handy with a clause, you might want to avoid them. This might seem like just one of those silly arbitrary rules that are just made up to help us prove we’ve read up on the latest so-called rules for writing, which will change in another ten years.

But present participial phrases are not just a magical hoop editors want us to jump through to prove that we’re familiar with industry bywords. It’s mainly an issue of grammar (and to a lesser extent, style, but that’s because they’re overused). Complaining about strictures against present participial phrases is almost like complaining about commas. There are correct places and times for using commas, and incorrect ones, and I suspect that most of the time, if we carefully look at a book, we’ll see that most of the commas are used right and perhaps not as often as we thought.

I really came to understand this by reading the posts on present participial phrases at EditTorrent, a blog by two editors. But if you don’t feel like clicking through, I’m happy to summarize the anti-present participial phrase arguments.

First, to clarify, these are not gerunds. Gerunds are typically not a problem. Gerunds are the -ing form (present participle) of the verb used as a noun:

I enjoy writing.
Writing is fun.

For the most part, this isn’t going to be a problem in a sentence, since they’re on the rare side. (I.e. beginning each sentence with a gerund would also be a problem, especially in the midst of too many present participial phrases, but the occasional correct usage of a gerund isn’t going to hurt anybody.)

What we’re talking about here are present participial phrases:

Running to the door, I called out my son’s name.
Writing out the prescription, the doctor didn’t bother looking up.

I think you can probably see how this is already becoming a problem.

Now that we’ve got that straight, on to the primary argument: Present participial phrases are, to put it mildly, evil.

The vast majority of the time in amateur usage, these phrases appear too often, are often misused, create other grammatical problems, don’t reflect how real people think—and I’m just getting started.

A: Present participial phrases are overused, especially by amateur writers.

Not to say that any of us here are amateurs, but too many present participial phrases are a mark of an amateur. Frankly, more than one per page (YES, per page) jumps out at me. Three on a page don’t just jump; they scream. People who aren’t really aware of this grammatical construct can inadvertently begin almost every other sentence with a present participial phrase. Seriously. I’ve critiqued *good* writers who still almost made my eyes bleed. This happens exceedingly rarely in the published books I read.

Important note: this standard seems to be very different for UK & Canadian publishers. Whatevs. TMMV.

B: Present participial phrases are frequently misused.

The grammatical construct of a present participial phrase at the beginning of the sentence ALWAYS means that the action in that phrase and the action in the main part of the sentence are simultaneous. Always. (There’s sometimes a bit more leeway when the present participial phrase appears after the main part of the sentence, though technically speaking there shouldn’t be.)

So, these would be not only grammatically incorrect, but physically impossible:

Chomping down on her food, she stuck her tongue out. (Ouch.)
Sneezing, he sang an aria.

However, there are lots of things you can do simultaneously:

Smiling, she walked down the aisle.

An important note here is that reading is a very linear activity—we read one word and then the next—and these phrases can make it easy to misunderstand or just slow us down as we try to figure out the order of the actions and picture them. This is so important it could warrant its own letter, but I don’t think I really need to explain this more.

C: Present participial phrases frequently cause misplaced modifiers.

The action or state described in a present participial phrase must ALWAYS describe/be done by the subject of the sentence. If not, you get a misplaced/dangling modifier:

Running to the car, the cat darted between his ankles.

The only grammatically correct way to understand this sentence is that the CAT was running to the car. At best, this sentence is ambiguous—we really can’t assume that it means the man was running. If I want to say the man was running to the car and the cat darted between his ankles, I’d be much safer to say THAT.

Walking down the street, a bat bit the man on the thumb.

Grammatically speaking, this sentence says a bat was walking down the street and bit a man on the thumb. Paraphrased from a famously bad police report.

D: If we’re supposed to be writing in our character’s thoughts and minds, present participial phrases would appear sparingly at best.

People rarely think that way. Really, think about how you think. Okay, generally we think in pictures, but when you do use words, is that how your thoughts go? If we’re seeking to replicate our characters’ voices and internal thoughts, then, would they use them?

Varying sentence structure isn’t a good enough reason for these either. As editor/author Alicia Rasley points out, varying sentences isn’t an end to itself: it’s an intermediate goal to create a smooth read.

Since these constructions do stick out if used incorrectly or awkwardly or too frequently, and so many first drafts contain so many present participial phrases that you can’t construe their usage as actually varying the default sentence structure anyway. Again, important enough to get its own letter, but I don’t want to beat you over the head with this.

To conclude:

Okay, maybe present participial phrases aren’t exactly evil, but just like commas, but we have to be VERY careful about how we use them (or we’ll end up with something ungrammatical or bizarre) and very judicious about when we use them.

In my opinion (formed by the careful tutelage of the editors I mentioned above), the best use of a participial phrase is for something that describes the state of the subject of the sentence, NOT an action:

Hoping she wasn’t too late, she dashed into the room.

Her emotional state in this sentence is one of hoping.

Yes, sometimes published and unpublished authors use present participial phrases. I invite you to find a book published in your target market or by your target publisher, flip to any page and count the number of sentences that begin with present participial phrases. I was amazed when I did this: books that were decades old or only a few months both yielded very few.

What do you think? How often do you really use present participial phrases? What did you find when you opened a book in your target market? Come share!

Photo by Bird Eye

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