0.1 Writing module one: clear narrative, “characters” and “actions  (Page 3/4)

Applying the lessons of story- the sentence level

Readers expect for sentences to deliver information using a certain predictable structure. When writers fulfill readers’ expectations, they make it easy for them to process important pieces of information efficiently and effectively. What if it isn’t immediately clear what your main subject should be? Ask yourself what the most important action of the sentence really is. Now determine who or what is responsible for that action.

When you put your main character first, you give the reader essential information about the main actors in the drama they will be asked to follow. You also create a context in which the reader can understand what you will go on to say about that character.

On characters and actions

In an ideal world, the subject of your sentence will be its main character, and the action of your sentence will be the main verb. Why is this so important? When these two things don’t line up, readers experience certain negative effects of the mismatch.

• Readers will judge your prose to be indirect, abstract, complex, dense, and unclear
• Readers have to work harder to translate your words into a story that they can remember
• Readers will have to fill in any missing story elements from their own knowledge
• Readers are more likely to interpret your sentence in a way you did not expect or want

( LRS 2008 Curriculum , Actions)

Clear sentences

Easy-to-understand sentences are not the product of some subtle mystery. We prefer them because we can recognize their key information:

• “As John [character] remarked [action] earlier...”
• “As Mary [character] argued [action] … ”
• “As our results [character] demonstrate [action]… ”

This is not to say that your main character must always be the subject of your sentence, or that character’s action is always represented by the verb. However, if readers find your writing confusing or unclear, it’s a safe bet that one of these things is throwing them off. If your most important character is not the main subject of your sentence, and if that character’s most important action is not represented by the sentence’s main verb, a good first step is to locate each of these and align them with one another!

Choosing characters and emphasizing actions

Achieving optimal placement of characters and actions in your sentences is as much about diagnosis and revision as it is about drafting or composition. As Joseph Williams explains in Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace , to transform characters into subjects, you have to know three things:

• When you haven’t;
• Where to look (for characters); and
• What to do when you find them (or when you don’t) (Style 53).

Williams and Colomb present a step-by-step system for finding and relocating characters. They teach us to

• Skim the first seven or eight words;
• Identify the main characters;
• Locate actions involving those characters;
• Organize your new subjects and verbs into a sentence using conjunctions such as if, although, because, when, how, and why (Style 53-54).

We’ll walk through the process using an example here.