Post
by polymath » September 9th, 2012, 3:34 pm
Prepositions that have other parts of speech uses, like as conjunctions, adverbs, adjectives, and sometimes pronouns and nouns, excepting only interjections; for example, still, used in fuzzy ways, drive me around the bend when used in prose writing. They are connective tissue for academic writing and common in everyday conversation. Prose should be more accessible and appealing than academic writing. And prose should be more exciting than routine, everyday conversation.
Superlative, conditional, and irrealis mood adjectives and adverbs also make for fuzzy, static meaning.
I spend twice as long or longer, up to four times as long, reworking a raw draft than writing a raw draft, looking for fuzzy meaning, recasting sentences, combing out tangled flow that bores, confuses, and disrupts readers' reading and comprehension ease.
I've come to realize that there are such things as beginning, intermediate, and advanced writers. Beginning writers are mechanical style students, like grammar school writers. Intermediate writers are craft students, working on content and organization skills. Advanced writers are voice students. They develop a working facility with narrative distance and narrator and character voices. Winning writers are audience students. Writing for audience reading and comprehension ease is challenging and more than mere word choice or craft or voice. Yet the number one writing principle, bar none, is: facilitate reading and comprehension ease. Period.
Writing for an audience is about making intent and meaning appropriate to an audience's sensibilities, about making writing accessible and appealing. Fuzzy meaning fails at that and makes for static movement (static voice) from lacking causally directional, tension-filled, antagonistic flow. Or ACT: antagonism, causation, and tension; part of my mnenonic for dramatic writing features DIANE'S SECRET SPICED ACT*.
Words I look for as landmarks that call for recasting sentences, for example: Of, as, when, while, ever, never, always, usually, so, now, before, that, almost, mostly, most, foremost, seem, seems, seemingly, seems like, just, still, yet, which, but, however, although, though, since, after, once. That's a partial list. The full list runs into the hundreds. Then, also, there's word choices, diction, that is disproportionately simple or complex, awkward or imprecise, clumsy or distracting, yet still appropriately expressive. The main idea for me is to create a dynamic, accessible, appealing flow for readers' reading and comprehension ease.
* DIANE'S SECRET SPICED ACT: writing modes: Description, Introspection, Action, Narration, Emotion, Sensation, Summarization, Exposition, Conversation, Recollection, Explanation, Transistion; narrative features: Setting, Plot, Idea, Character, Event, Discourse; and drama features: Antagonism, Causation, and Tension.
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