Growing Grammar: Planting Words So Sentences Can Sprout

One of the most challenging lessons for students to learn (and for me to teach them) is that diction (word choice) and syntax (how words are arranged in a sentence) are crucial in understanding the piece we’re reading.

Truly, the most difficult perception to hack away at is the notion that writers just don’t pay all that much attention to the words that end up on the page. For example, in The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses “throng” (it’s the second word of the first chapter) to describe those assembled outside of the prison. For more minutes than my kiddos would ever imagine, we discuss (okay, I discuss and then they join in) why he chose that word. Why not crowd, or group, gathering, multitude, pack, horde, swarm, gang, bunch?

Words have meanings. They drag little suitcases of associations behind them, invited or not. Do you buy cheap jewelry? Of course not. Inexpensive jewelry, yes. Who wants to pay $40,000 for a used car? No hands raised? Well, then, what about the same amount of money for a previously owned vehicle? Would you vacation at a lodge or a chalet? Is the character in your story curious, inquisitive, or nosey?

These connotations, these shades of meanings color our stories, paint the settings with feelings and emotions. As a writer, I experienced the joy of victory pouncing upon the just-right word and the agony of defeat when the word won’t birth itself out of my brain.

After we’ve labored over the words, it’s all about the delivery—the sentence. Varying sentence structure is an element of style. Sentences that read as if they were blasted out of a machine gun(you know the ones, subject+verb+object) can be rhythmic—if you’re attempting to lull your reader into a deep sleep, that is. But, you say, where’s the sentence store (because you’re certainly not returning to high school to endure one of my classes to listen to this)?

Not a rhetorical question!

Suggestions for styling sentences:

1. Imitate! Underline sentences you find in other books, magazine articles, or newspapers that are so well-written, you wished it was yours. Well, it can be. Not exactly of course; that would be intellectual theft. But you can examine the pattern, analyze it, and then imitate it. Collect them in a notebook or computer file.

2. Study your style, compare it to another writer’s style whose work you admire. Using a page or two of each writing, count the total number of words and the total number of sentences. What’s the average number of words per sentence? How many words in the shortest sentence? the longest? What is the longest paragraph in number of sentences? the shortest? the average number of sentences in each paragraph?

3. Using one of your own sentences, write it in at least three of four different ways. Read the sentences aloud to help train your ear if you don’t see the differences.

Here are three patterns to play with:

1. After college I learned an amazing lesson: a degree doesn’t guarantee an income.

(Pattern: General statement (idea) : specific statement (example of the general idea).

2. Cheesecake, chocolate, ice cream—which is your favorite dessert?

(Pattern: Appositive, appositive, appositive—word that summarizes and S V)

3. “Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go.”

(Pattern: Object/Complement/Modifier subject verb)