In grade school we were taught about the parts of the English language: Noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection. Our teachers also tried to teach us to put these parts of language together; sometimes they even succeeded.
Nouns describe a person, place, thing, event or idea. Pronouns substitute for proper nouns such as he, she and they. Adjectives describe nouns. A verb is action and the three main forms are present, past and past participle. Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Prepositions link nouns/pronouns to the sentence; some prepositions are above, across, below, but, except, up, via, and within. A conjunction joins groups of words; examples of conjunctions are or, either, and, if, so that, and yet. An interjection is often a singular word that expresses an emotion or reaction such as damn, gosh, and wow.
All of these words go together to form simple, compound, and complex sentences. All sentences should contain complete thoughts/clauses. An independent clause can stand alone, but a dependent clause “depends” on a joined thought to complete the sentence. A simple sentence contains a subject and a verb. A compound sentence contains two clauses joined together with a conjunction. Finally, a complex sentence is one independent clause joined with one or more dependent clauses; they are joined together with words such as although, because and which.
The parts of a story include setting, plot, conflict, character, point of view, and theme. Setting includes the place and time of the story. A plot is the sequence of events to tell the story and must contain conflict. Conflict is opposition or struggles and helps to keep the story moving; there may be multiple conflicts, but there should be a main one. Character can describe the people in a story or their characteristics. Point of view is basically who the reader “views” the story through; if the story is told through the eyes of a character keep in mind that the character cannot tell you the thoughts of another. The theme is the author’s message or “moral of the story”.
We have rules in writing. But there are times when rules are better off broken.
Dialogue doesn’t need to follow the rules of proper grammar or sentence structure if that is NOT how the character talks. If you have a character who is illiterate or for whom English is a second language, proper sentence structure may not sound authentic. Make sure that you write your dialogue as the character would speak. Don’t overdo it though, sometimes all you have to do is pepper the dialogue with a character’s unique speech patterns and you can avoid making the story unreadable.
Switching point of view (POV) radically within a scene is called “head-hopping” and normally frowned upon. There are times that you can change the POV so long as it does not confuse the reader (as to WHO is talking or acting). A select number of readers like to feel that they are “watching a movie” where the camera lets you see the scene from various angles; such “head-hopping” may be called omniscient, told in third person but moved from character to character. If you are a beginner writer it is usually safest to begin with third-person POV (ie: He moved across the room…) and told from the viewpoint of one chosen character throughout the story.
Writing exercises: Are the following sentences Simple, Compound or Complex? (answers below)
1- Rosie cooked the meal and she served her family dinner.
2- Jimmy came home.
3- Brenda and Alan sang Christmas carols.
4- I purchased new jeans because my old jeans ripped.
5- Jim, who is in my grade, will have gym on Fridays.
Writing prompt: Describe the room you are in and your actions from your point of view (first person: I see, I hear…); then describe the room from the viewpoint of someone standing in the doorway and watching YOU (third person: She sat rocking in the chair…) Remember that in third-person the person describing the room cannot be in YOUR head, they cannot know HOW you feel.
[Answers: 1- Compound; 2- Simple; 3- Simple; 4- Compound; 5- Complex]
