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A single sentence

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Like a word, a single sentence can make or break a book. Books come in all forms; fiction, non-fiction, entertainment, information, third person omniscient, first person narrative, but the structure is basically the same.

A writer uses words to form a sentence, and the sentence is presented in order to define and clarify an idea, but there are some sentences that do the job better than others.

Last time, I made my point by showing how changing a single word in a sentence can elicit different imagery. This time, I want to show the first few sentences from an actual, published book.

I went to Amazon, and by utilizing the look inside feature, I was able to look at the following sentences from the introduction of Marion Gropen’s The Profitable Publisher: Making the Right Decisions.

The following are the first sentences:

Most publishing folks would rather have their teeth pulled than wade into their “numbers.” But, if you want to survive and thrive as a small press, you can’t afford to avoid the math. My aim here is to get you past any difficulties, painlessly. I’ve never found anyone who couldn’t learn this material. Nor have they ever needed anesthesia! You can do this. You may even enjoy it.

Where do I begin?

First and foremost, I want to point out the use of would and could. Both of these words make for weak writing. I can expound upon this for hours on end, and perhaps, for my next post, I will, but for now, let’s look at the core idea.

A single paragraph is designed to present a single idea, and the sentences within the paragraph are there to explain the idea in the most concise and cogent terms.

So, what’s the key idea, and how do these sentences make or break this book?

The idea is that with Gropen’s information, a small press can thrive. The insinuation is that a small, publishing press can’t survive without doing the math. Great, but let’s look at the first sentence.

Most publishing folks would rather have their teeth pulled than wade into their “numbers.”

First of all, this is a wild assumption. Second of all, using would signifies an if situation; this is not an assertion but a guess.

If people find themselves wading through numbers, they would rather have their teeth pulled.

Again, this is an assumption.

A better way to write this is:

No publisher enjoys wading through the numbers.

Then, why is numbers in quotations? It isn’t a quote. There’s no dialogue. I understand this is written as a first person narrative, so the author is talking to me, the reader, but then the whole thing requires quotations, and we just don’t do that. Furthermore, numbers isn’t slang, which benefits from an italicized font and not quotations anyway, but I’m deviating from my point, sort of; a sentence is more than what we hear, it’s also what we see, and the punctuation and grammar we use is used to provide the most direct information, especially in regards to an informative book.

This first sentence also dives right into the second sentence:

But, if you want to survive and thrive as a small press, you can’t afford to avoid the math.

I guess no one taught this author not to start a sentence with a conjunction. Did they forget FANBOYS?

A conjunction ties two ideas together, so, more appropriately, the first two sentences are a single, complex sentence:

Most publishing folks would rather have their teeth pulled than wade into their “numbers”, but if you want to survive and thrive as a small press, you can’t afford to avoid the math.

That’s the correct way to write this single sentence. The reason the first comma belongs outside the quotation marks is because what’s quoted isn’t dialogue, and needs to not be in quotations anyway. Secondly, you don’t put a comma after but. The comma goes before the conjunction. Now, I want to add that when we deal with dialogue, many of the rules go out the window, but I’ll deal with that in a later post.

So, we have instead:

Most publishing folks would rather have their teeth pulled than wade into their numbers, but if you want to survive and thrive as a small press, you can’t afford to avoid the math.

Now, that’s a big, bulky, clunky sentence. What’s it saying? It’s saying that publishers don’t want to deal with numbers because it’s unpleasant. Is it unpleasant? Maybe; let’s assume it is.

How does the following sentence sound?

No publisher enjoys wading through the numbers.

That says it all. It’s concise, it’s direct, it gives the reader no wiggle room; they know beyond a doubt, just by reading that first sentence, that working through numbers sucks.

So, let’s tackle the next sentence:

My aim here is to get you past any difficulties, painlessly.

I don’t know that here is required. Obviously, if reading this book, the aim is provided in here.

My aim is to get you past any difficulties, painlessly.

It works, but again, it sounds clunky.

How about:

Unfortunately, the math is crucial to a small press, but don’t fret; I’m going to show you what to do.

This complex sentence accompanies my first sentence, and it provides reassurance to the reader while reinforcing the original premise; doing the numbers sucks.

Next, the writer has the following:

I’ve never found anyone who couldn’t learn this material.

This raises questions; how many people have they taught, how many people have had trouble trying to get over the trouble of dealing with numbers, and if there’s no trouble involved in learning how to get over the difficulties of dealing with the numbers, why is there a whole book devoted to it?

Moreover, this sentence deals with something superfluous. The introduction originally stated that publishers don’t enjoy working through the numbers, and that the premise of the book was going to be about how to get past that difficulty, but this new sentence addresses the ease with which one can get past the difficulty of how difficult it can be to get past working with numbers. Did you get all that? Confusing, right?

Let’s just cut this sentence completely and move on to the next one:

Nor have they ever needed anesthesia!

Well, crapola; now we start a new sentence with another conjunction, which ties back into the premise that people would rather have teeth pulled than wade through numbers. There’s no need to reinforce a would be scenario, and since this is a fragment, we’ll just cut it, too.

Next, we have:

You can do this.

Okay, its’ a little positive reinforcement. That’s good, but why on earth is canboth italicized and bold?

Finally, we have:

You may even enjoy it.

Aha, but I may not enjoy it, eh? That just negated the previous, positive reinforcement, so we’ll cut that.

What do we have left then?

No publisher enjoys wading through the numbers. Unfortunately, the math is crucial to a small press, but don’t fret; I’m going to show you what to do. You can do this.

In this version, the final sentence breaks the flow of the paragraph, so you see how important a sequence of properly written sentences is.

A better way to write this is:

No publisher enjoys wading through the numbers. Unfortunately, the math is crucial to a small press, but don’t fret; I’m going to show you what to do. The following pages are filled with simple rules to follow, which will lead you and your small press to success. You can do this, and I’m going to help you.

Now, let’s be honest; which book are you more likely to read? Do you have a better understanding of the importance of proper sentences and how seemingly similar sentences can evoke totally different mindsets?

Thank you.

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A Word

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Most of the questions I’m personally asked are about specific details regarding the editing process of a novel or story during or after the writing process.

Today, I will cover the word.

A single word can make or break a story. How? Well, let’s see….

What if you read the word lanky? What image comes to mind? What if you read the word thin or wiry? Do different images come to mind?

Let’s look at a single sentence now.

The lanky man walked down the street.

What do you see?

How about: The thin man walked down the street.

Or: The wiry man walked down the street.

Different imagery comes to mind, right?

Generally, my advice to writers of all levels of expertise is to just get the story down, get it all down, get it all out of your mind and onto paper, or a screen, or whatever. Once everything is done then it’s time to edit, and this is where it gets complicated.

Writing the story is the easy part. Writing is really just getting out the sequential account of events, which transpire, but editing is turning those sequential accounts into an enjoyable story for people, and I assure you, readers read differently than writers, and this is why editors are a great go between; they read as both writers and readers; they understand what a writer is trying to say, and they turn it into something that readers understand.

So, let’s take a quick look at those words again. Thin, lanky, and wiry can all mean something similar, but a lanky person isn’t generally thought of as strong or tough. A thin person is usually thought of as attractive; TV tells us we should be thin. Wiry tends to connote strength; a wiry person is thin and maybe lanky, but they’re usually also a tad muscular, or tough, or stringy, and so all in all, each of those words brings unto a reader a different image, a different meaning.

Now, let’s try something a bit different.

The lanky man shuffled down the street.

This is different from a lanky man walking. Shuffling connotes a different meaning even though walking and shuffling are synonyms. Suddenly, a reader is locked into a new image; a man is shuffling, why?

It’s a common mistake that writers make; they choose a synonym only because they used another word of similar meaning on too many previous occasions. They think that because someone else walked earlier, they must use a similar but different word on the next passage, but this can be a mistake as it will make the reader wonder why someone was shuffling when there seems to be no cause for shuffling, which means that everything before and everything after the shuffling must be tied together, which is why it’s important to make these changes during the editing process and not the writing process; the author can then have a better idea of the imagery they’ve already introduced.

So, let’s take a look at a more complicated situation.

It was a hot day, and John decided to stay inside until it subsided. From his living room, he caught sight of a lanky man walking down the street. Whoever the person was, John didn’t recognize him.

Nothing wrong with the above paragraph; it provides the reader everything they need to know; it’s hot, which is why John is indoors, and that’s why he saw someone, who is lanky.

Now, a writer must consider many things; what happened before? What happens next? Why is any of this important? Is this a novel? Is this a short story? What is the genre?

Now, you’re asking, “What does this have to do with changing a single word, and how does it make or break a story?”

Well, buckle up.

If the preceding paragraph has already tackled the weather, John’s setting, or the man then it’s important to avoid being redundant, and changing a single word can have that effect.

If the following paragraph follows up on the man rather than John, the setting, or the weather then it becomes important to choose the right words in order to lead into the next idea, and again, a single word can make all the difference.

If this is a novel then a reader will want to know as much as possible about anything germane to the story, but if this is a short story then there are probably a great many things, which require no explanation. In other words, if this is a novel, the writer should probably focus on creating a more complex paragraph, but this also depends on the scene; will it be an action scene, or is it a form a foreshadowing, or this just a framing device to set up another chain of events?

What genre is this? Is this horror? Is this a fantasy? Is it scifi?

Let’s play with the paragraph.

It was a blistering day….

By changing hot to blistering, the reader has a different notion of how hot it is, but that word is also different from hot in another way; we can no longer continue the sentence as it was originally provided.

It doesn’t make sense to say: It was a blistering day, and John decided to stay inside until it subsided.

Until what subsided? The day? No, the heat, which we knew as readers when we read the original paragraph, so by changing a single word, if we don’t change another word later in the same sentence, we break the story.

We have to write instead: It was a blistering day, and John decided to stay inside until the heat subsided.

This first sentence has now taken on a whole new life. Yes, we still know that John is inside because it was hot, but now we know how hot; we’ve all experienced summer days so hot, we had to stay inside until the heat subsided. Changing a single word, which forced us to change another, has now made this sentence far more relatable and meaningful.

Now, let’s play around some more. What if this is a horror short story about zombies?

It was a hot day, and John decided to stay inside until it subsided. From his living room, he caught sight of a lanky zombie walking down the street. Whoever the person was, John didn’t recognize him.

Obviously, I changed man to zombie, but that’s not important because everything else is exactly the same, however, since the reader will know it’s a horror short about zombies, they expect to read a horror about zombies, so let’s change a word.

From his living room, he caught sight of an emaciated zombie walking down the street.

Whoa, emaciated is way better than lanky. Now, you say, “Lanky and emaciated don’t mean the same thing; they aren’t synonyms.”

You’re right, sort of; emaciated is a synonym for thin or skinny, which are synonyms for lanky, but since this is a horror, it’s important to use a more terrifying word that elicits a fearful image, and lanky doesn’t scare anyone, but is emaciated the right word?

How about: From his living room, he caught sight of a cadaverous zombie walking down the street.

Now, we’re on to something; cadaverous makes us think of something already dead, but doesn’t cadaverous zombie sound redundant? We know it’s dead, kind of, I mean, it’s a zombie….

Here, we have another case of a single word breaking the story, whereas emaciated made the story better, but it doesn’t end there.

If a writer really wants to tune up that sentence, they might try: From his living room, he caught sight of a cadaverous creature shuffling down the street.

Yes, a total of three words have been changed, but it’s a chained effect caused by changing that one word, lanky, and following it up to make a sentence more palatable for an audience, and more appropriate for the genre in question. It cannot be denied that the later sentence is far and away more horrifying than the previous one.

If all this sounds complicated, it is; editing is no picnic, and a competent editor has to do a lot of work to make a story worth reading, and it’s also why editors aren’t hired until after a story is completely written; we can’t edit without knowing what happened before, during, and after a set of events, and neither can the author choose the correct words, neither can the audience understand the writer’s meaning, but taking some time to understand the art of writing rather than just jotting down a sequential account of events will really help to make a story a far better read to the audience.

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