The Music of the Sentence

by Sheila Connolly

I love flea markets and farmers markets and junk sales and antiques fairs, because I never know what I’m going to find. That includes Irish markets, where it’s even more likely that I’ll find something unlikely and unexpected. The Skibbereen (West Cork, Ireland) Saturday market is no exception.  This was the second year I’ve been there, and I always come away with something.  Lots of somethings, in fact.

The food products are amazing, but that’s for another blog.  They also sell live poultry there (I don’t have much use for a duck, now, do I?), and there are always a couple of junk stalls.  Oh, and the guy selling hand-carved magic wands.  Yes, I bought one, made of bog oak, which is supposed to be wood a thousand years old, pulled out of a bog.

 

One of the sort-of antique stalls was run by an English couple.  I first spotted an old book on a pile there and was of course drawn to it, and we started chatting.  Turns out the husband has written a mystery about the discovery of a Viking horde on a beach somewhere, so we had something in common.  And yes, I bought the old book I had first seen:  It’s called:

A Grammar of Rhetoric, and Polite Literature; Comprehending the Principles of Language and Style, the Elements of Taste and Criticism: with Rules for the Study of Composition and Eloquence; Illustrated by Appropriate Examples.

 

It was written by one Alexander Jamieson, published in London in 1818. There’s a hand-written inscription which I think says (it’s in Latin) it was given as a prize to an outstanding student named David Sherlock in August 1830 (it doesn’t look as though young David used it much). It’s bound in red leather with gold stamping, and the edges of the pages are gilt.

 

My initial impression, upon opening the book at a random page, was that one would have to have a pretty impressive education simply to read any part of it.  This is not a primer for beginners!

But reading even the index is immensely entertaining (no, I will not claim to have read the book yet). Some chapter headers might come from a modern document on “How to Write,” while others sound absurd.  A few samples:

Under characteristics of style: “The Nervous and the Feeble of the same Import with the Concise and the Diffuse.” Huh? Of course, “An Author may write simply and yet not beautifully.”  On a more reasonable note, “The Foundation of all good Style, is good Sense, accompanied with a lively Imagination.”

There are sections on Historical Writing and Philosophical Writing. There is an entire section devoted to “On the Nature and Structure of Sentences, the General Principles of Perspicuity, and the Harmony of Periods.” Then there’s a chapter on “The Various Species of the Unintelligible,” which begins with “The unintelligible, from want of meaning in the writer, proceeds from vacuity of thought.” The writer seems to be saying, think before you write.  Good idea.

When we arrive at the part about the Harmony of Periods, the writer says,

Those words are most agreeable to the ear which are composed of smooth and liquid sounds, where there is a proper intermixture of vowels and consonants; without too many harsh consonants grating upon each other or too many open vowels in succession, to cause a hiatus or disagreeable aperture of the mouth.

I could happily go on, for the small book is nearly 400 pages long, but I think you get the drift.  Our man Jamieson was a Scotsman, a schoolmaster, a teacher; he went bankrupt and then became an actuary (rhetoric doesn’t pay the bills?).  This little grammar was very successful when published, and there were at least 53 American editions. It would have been used in colleges and was widely quoted (and even used for female education!).

Clearly the methods of teaching writing have changed since 1818, but I’ve always thought that something was lost when we stopped reading the old classics, if only for the sounds of the words. I think it bears thinking about, if we as writers want to reclaim what Jamieson calls “the music of the sentence.”

 

The second book in the County Cork Mystery Series, coming February 2014

 

 

Here's What I Know

By Nancy Martin, guest blogger

Here’s what I know about publishing: The more I write, the less I know. At least, that’s my perception. There’s always something new to learn about writing.

When I started publishing books—egad 30 years ago!—I wrote “by the seat of my pants”—that is, intuitively. That method worked for me because I was writing historical romances by guessing what the heroine would do or feel next. That’s a step plot, of course. One step leads to another and another and another until the—uh—climax. Even when I moved into writing romances from two points of view—the hero as well as the woman of his dreams—I could feel my way through the story by intuition. And I had success as a romance writer. I made good money. One of my romances sold over 5 million copies. My books were translated into 21 languages. I received fan mail from all over the world.

But then my daughters got old enough to read my books, and I decided I didn’t want my girls embracing the basic premise of a romance novel—that a man would come along, engage in a lot of clever banter, propose marriage and make her life perfect. I know, I know—in some romances the heroine learns a lot of other stuff about life, but I wasn’t writing them because . . . I was writing a simple step plot!

In an effort to write books that would both appeal to my daughters and show them that life holds a lot of wonders, challenges and goals beyond Prince Charming, I decided to turn to my first love as a reader—the mystery novel.

The mystery is a wonderfully flexible literary form that allows writers to do just about anything they please as long as there’s a dead body and some detecting going on. (My own mysteries are good examples—my Blackbird sisters would probably be afraid of my new character, Roxy Abruzzo!) Yes, I could have written step plot mysteries, but I was looking to do something more thematically complex, and I finally realized something obvious: If writing was my profession, I needed to learn more about it. Especially about plot, because although romance novels didn’t need a lot of attention paid to the plot, mysteries were all about plot—the more intricate the better. And themes must emerge from the action of a plot. I needed to learn from other sources, not just my own experience. I needed to read about writing, learn from other writers, take some workshops—invest in my future as a writer.

This conclusion might seem obvious to those of you who have been reading how-to books from the get-go and taking every workshop you could manage, but for me—a writer isolated in a rural place and trying not to spend my writing income on anything but the mortgage and shoes for the kids—investing the money and time of learning about my profession was a big leap.

There are lots of good resources for writers out there. Early, I fell hard for Dean Koontz’s How to Write Bestselling Fiction (which he later denounced, and it’s now out of print) and later I came to appreciate Evan Marshall’s The Marshall Plan and Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel for helping me learn to break a plot into such elements as heightening stakes, consequences of failure, the emotional impact of sacrifice and the specific questions a writer can ask her characters to create a truly “character-driven” novel. (You’ll notice I’m not talking about the feel-good, inspiring kinds of books about writing. I didn’t need inspiration. I needed hard information!) And although I’d had Robert McKee’s book Story on my shelves for some time, I took his 3-day workshop and came away changed forever as a writer. Christopher Vogler’s peek into the storytelling expertise of a Disney writer in The Writer’s Journey also had a big affect on me—especially when it comes to creating the kinds of secondary characters that truly flesh out a protagonist who engages readers in a subliminal way.

Jane Smiley’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel is brilliant, and I refer to it often. I like that she breaks down the nebulous idea of “complexity” in a story into sociological, moral, emotional, psychological and even geographical complexity—all elements that create a more layered mystery novel. Elizabeth George’s Write Away taught me why, as a reader, I was immediately engaged by some characters on the first page, while other characters failed to seize my interest at all. It’s because of the “emotional extremis” she espouses.

Now, when I set out to write a book, I bring out a deck of cards I created for myself. Each card contains information I’ve gleaned from some source or other and explains an element I find necessary in the progression of a complex story that pleases me as well as my readers. I tried to write up a kind of standard outline for myself, but I discovered that as I continue to learn about my profession, a written outline was too static. I need the flexibility of my card system that allows constant additions and revision.

In an era when just about anybody thinks they can be a successful writer as long as they do a lot of self-promotion, I try to focus on the goal that gets pushed aside: Becoming a better writer.

Can you suggest a good resource for me? What has worked for you?

Nancy Martin is the author of nearly fifty popular fiction novels including the bestselling Blackbird Sisters mysteries and the newly released Our Lady of Immaculate Deception. She serves on the board of Sisters in Crime, and in 2009 she received the Romantic Times award for Career Achievement in Mystery Writing. She blogs at the trend-setting Lipstick Chronicles.Visit her website at www.NancyMartinMysteries.com for her appearance schedule and more information about her books.

The 12 Days of Christmas for Writers

Tired of dropping hints about what you’d like for Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or just “because it’s winter and I’m cute?” Print the following list. Highlight your favorites. Hand it to your significant other, your kids, your mother. And if you have any other suggestions for writer gifts please share them in comments.

Four lucky readers are getting Christmas gifts from Poe's Deadly daughters:
Auntie Knickers
Lucinda
Helen K
Penny T
are the book winners from Wednesday. Please contact Sandra Parshall with your mailing information: sandraparshall@yahoo.com.


(Special thanks to Debby Ridpath Ohi—Inky Girl and Lynn Viehl—Paperback Writer on whose blogs I first saw some of these items mentioned.)

1. Books. Writers like to read as much as we like to write. (Some days we like it more.) You’ll get brownie points if you know what books we’d like to get, but ask and we’ll be happy to give you a list.

2. An Alphasmart Keyboard. They’re tough. They’re portable. They’re lightweight. They run for ages on batteries or one charge.


3. Desktop Whiteboard. This will save your writer lots of paper which will save her lots of money and the planet lots of trees. The whiteboard is fun to play with and your writer can feel virtuous while she’s using it.

4. Magazine Subscription(s). The Writer, Romantic Times Book Review, Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine are just a few the writer in your life might like.

5. Dragon Naturally Speaking. Give your writer a break at the keyboard with this voice recognition software which can be trained to recognize voice and speech patterns.

6. Books on writing. Give some inspiration: Bird by Bird from Anne Lamott, On Writing by Stephen King, How Not to Murder Your Mystery by Chris Roerden, The Artist’s Way from Julia Cameron, Write It Down, Make it Happen by Henriette Anne Klauser.

7. A massage session. Some massage therapists have portable massage chairs or tables and will come to your writer. (Warning, a good massage can be addictive.)

8. Writing tools from Levenger include planners, organizers, pens, briefcases and more. How about a note card bleacher for organizing notes, a Thai book rest, or the Lapalot lap desk for working in bed or just about anywhere else?

9. Cafepress offers a great collection of t-shirts, mugs and other fun items, including Debbie Ridpath Ohi’s Will Write for Chocolate T-shirts and mugs.

10. McPhee's action figures include Poe, Shakespeare and (my favorite) The Crazy Cat Lady—complete with six cats.

11. Chocolate. (Enough said.)

12. Time. Take the kids or the dog for the afternoon and give your writer time to write. Cook dinner, do the laundry, clean the bathroom and give your writer time to write.