Conventions of Literary Writing

By Douglas Patterson

This e-book is designed for use by teenagers and young adults in their English composition courses. It deals with the literary - as opposed to the literal - side of writing. Most course syllabi use the label Creative Writing to name courses in which this e-textbook would be appropriate. I prefer the title Literary Writing which does not convey the unfortunate and inaccurate implication that literal writing is devoid imagination and of creativity. Actually, compositions of both types may exhibit those qualities to a greater or lesser degree.
The first lessons in this book cover topics of interest to the poet, the short story writer, the novelist and the playwright.
Literary writers place great emphasis on the musical aspects of language. When one reads “The Raven” by Edgar Alan Poe, for example, his aesthetic experience arises primarily from the rhythms and the sound patterns that Poe composed so masterfully. The poem doesn’t convey an important message, but when one reads it well, the verse is music to our ears.
We all enjoy being entertained by flights of fancy; but to do so we must “suspend our will to disbelieve.”(Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s words) A literal minded chap who is unable to do so will always be offended by events that violate the Newton’s law or by creatures that have never been seen in God’s world – or in Darwin’s either. Writers with fertile imaginations often win fame and fortune by whisking us away from dull reality to places such as OZ or Wonderland.
The remainder of the book consists of writing assignments that are structured in terms of the writing process. Even though some aspects of assignments become repetitive – were one to read the book as a novel - I believe that it is important for students to work in an orderly way. Instructions given for Lesson A do not always carry over to Lesson B.
The assignments range from relatively simple to quite demanding; but I give the students enough guidance so as to ease their pain – to some extent at least.
There is nothing that strikes terror into a young scholar’s heart more than being handed an assignment but no clear explanation as to what a successful solution might look like. As soon as most students see an acceptable model, they are immediately pacified.
To set the students’ minds at ease, I begin each writing assignment with a high quality model written by a noted author, and I ask students to analyze each model by responding to appropriate questions. Short models are presented within the assignment. Longer models in most cases are English department standards which are available in school book repositories. I have provided hyperlinks to most of the models on the web.
This book and the remaining three in my series “Conventions of Language, Thinking and Writing” are offered at nominal prices. If a student were to work methodically through every exercise and every writing assignment in these four books, he could occupy himself productively in several composition courses during his high school and undergraduate years.
His language arts textbook budget would certainly be minimal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Douglas Patterson
• Release date: Feb 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301483075

Douglas Patterson

With the exception of a three year stint in the U.S.Army, I have spent my life in and around the public schools. My parents were both teachers, and I have taught language arts courses at the high school level for a total of 37 years. I was born during the great depressions and grew up in Southern Idaho (both literally and figuratively) just north of Poverty Flat. I lived in the very small town of Bellevue, Idaho, that had a population of some 500 people and an equal number of dogs. In this rural environment, I enjoyed a Tom Sawyer like life, not on the Mississippi but rather on the Woodriver where my friends and I fished an swam and roamed the riverbottom and the surrounding hills from morning til night. My parents never locked the doors to our house, and we never worried much about it being burglarized. (For you skiers,Sun Valley is seventeen miles north of this town.) After graduating from Hailey(now Woodriver) High School,I enrolled at the University of Oregon at a time when the school had a student body of 5,000 students and the football team rarely won a game. After graduation, I spent a marvelous tour of duty with the U.S. Army which took me to Europe. I was stationed in Germany for a couple of glorious years and became a dedicated Europhile. After I was discharged, I started my teaching career in the small town of New Plymouth, Idaho, near the Oregon border. After three years, I moved to Yakima, Washington, where I worked as an English and German teacher for the next 34 years. After retiring,I quickly grew bored and began writing books primarily for my own amusement. Four of the books that I am publishing with Smashbooks are language arts textbooks focusing on linguistics, critical thinking, and literal and literary composition. The other two deal with self-improvment and very basic economics. Because breaking into the traditional publishing business has always been such a long shot,I was very pleased to see ebook publishing develop into a platform for people like me who are looking for an inexpensive way to offer their materials to the public. Since they say that confession is good for the sould, I must admit that my picture was taken by a yearbook photographer at least twenty-five years ago. I have no defense except to say, "Vanity thy name is not woman alone!"

Book preview

Conventions of Literary Writing

By Douglas D. Patterson

Copyright 2011 by Douglas D. Patterson

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

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Introduction

Part 1 – Rhetoric

Lesson 1 – Words

Lesson 2 – Rhythms

Lesson 3 - Sounds and Melody Lines

Lesson 4 - Sounds and Meanings

Lesson 5 - Techniques for Creating Musical Interest

Lesson 6 - Literal and Figurative Analogy

Lesson 7 - Symbols and Allegory

Lesson 8 - Irony and Ridicule

Lesson 9 - Other Rhetorical Figures

Part 2- Description, Narration and Commentary

Lesson 10 - Voice and Point of View

Lesson 11 - Action and Setting

Lesson 12 - Characters

Lesson 13 - Commentary

Lesson 14 - The Writing Process

Part 3 Models and Assignments

Section A – Paragraph Development

Paragraph 1 - Focus on Setting

Paragraph 2 - Focus on Action and Setting

Paragraph 3 - Focus on Dramatic Action

Paragraph 4 - Focus on Process

Paragraph 5 - Focus on Causes and Consequences

Paragraph 6 - Focus on Relative Magnitude

Paragraph 7 - Focus on Illustration of an Abstraction

Paragraph.8 - Focus on Illustration by analogy

Paragraph 9 - Focus on Inductive Inference

Paragraph 10- Focus on Deductive Inference

Section B - Literary Reports

Report 1 - Narrative Poem

Report 2 - Dramatic Monologue

Report 3 - Dramatic Dialogue

Report 4 - Surprise Ending

Report 5 - Framework Story

Report 6 - Science Fiction

Report 7 - Stream of Consciousness

Report 8 - The Historical Novel

Section C – Imaginative Commentaries

Commentary 1 - Fixed Form Verse

Commentary 2 - Free Form Verse

Commentary 3 - Personal Essay

Commentary 4 - Biography

Commentary 5 - Literary Criticism

Commentary 6 - Policy Proposal

Introduction

Writers of imaginative literature over the centuries have developed many usages and techniques which are accepted by readers as right and proper. These conventions may not be carved in stone; but a young writer is wise to look to established practice as a foundation on which to base his work. If he learns to emulate the works of great writers, he may be well on his way to becoming a successful writer in his own right.

Poets, particularly, have experimented with the musical side of language. They, along with other writers, have developed a number of tropes - clever ways of expressing ideas without saying exactly what they mean. Storytellers have learned to spin fictional tales about imaginary characters who at times seem all too real.

In this textbook, we will explore these and other widely practiced conventions of literary writing.

Part 1 - Rhetoric

Many writers want to do more than convey information or to express and support opinions. They also wish to write with flair. They hope that their readers will experience aesthetic pleasure in reading their works. They, like painters and musicians, treat their craft as an art form.

The poet, of course, is most concerned with the art of writing. He wishes above all else to describe significant experience beautifully. One has only to paraphrase a poem to appreciate how the poet has labored to express his ideas in a rhetorically interesting way. For example, in the following poem Emily Dickinson makes her point with such style and grace that changing a single word diminishes its effect.

THERE IS NO FRIGATE LIKE A BOOK

There is no frigate like a book

..To take us lands away

Nor any coursers like a page

..Of prancing poetry;

This traverse may the poorest take

..Without oppress or toll;

How frugal is the chariot

..That bears the human soul!

Emily Dickinson (l830-1886)

A loose paraphrase of this poem might look something like this:

There is no ship that can convey us to other settings with the ease that a book can; nor are there any show horses that are as elegant as a page of lively poetry. Even poor people, by reading a book, can travel without paying a heavy price. The book is an inexpensive vehicle for transporting a person's innermost being.

This paraphrase has, hopefully, captured the central ideas of Ms. Dickinson's poem. The aesthetic value of the poem has obviously evaporated.

What techniques do writers use to make their writing aesthetically pleasing? In the following lessons we will look at these topics: word choice; repetition and variation of rhythms, sounds, melody lines, words, phrases, clauses and sentences; figurative language; and other conventions of imaginative writing.

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Lesson 1 - Words

Good writing has been defined as the right word in the right place. A writer who wishes to communicate accurately and with flair must, perhaps above all else, be sensitive in his choice of words. If he chooses his words carelessly, his reader may have difficulty understanding his meaning; and he may also find the composition boring.

How does one choose the right word? No one can provide an infallible guide, but the following points are important.

Choose words that denote precisely what you wish to communicate.

One of the great strengths of the English language is that it has so many words with such highly refined denotations. The reason for this wealth of vocabulary is, of course, that our language is a river with many tributaries. Even though the English language is Germanic in origin, English speaking people have borrowed concepts and the words to express them from many other cultures and languages around the world. This wealth of vocabulary allows us to express ourselves in very precise ways. All of the verbs in each the following lists, for example, relate to the same general ideas; but no two verbs in any list mean exactly the same thing.

hate……….like……….wish……....walk

despise…...love………want…..….saunter

loathe…....adore…….desire……..shuffle

abhor…….worship….yearn…….stroll

detest………………………..……...amble

Effective writers use the right word and not, as Mark Twain has written, its second cousin. They don't choose hate when they mean despise or despise when they mean loathe.

Choose words with appropriate connotations.

In addition to their fixed meanings, words often bring to mind meanings which exist apart from the things which they explicitly name or describe.

For example, in Emily Dickinson's poem, the word frigate refers to a ship, but it also connotes speed, maneuverability, lightness, adventure, and the British and American navies.

The Model T Ford, to the Americans who were young in the early years of the 20th century, meant much more than a car. E. B. White, in his personal essay Farewell My Lovely, associated this jalopy with his own youth, with personal freedom, with American ingenuity, and with many other ideas that were in vogue at that time. (See his essay at this website: http://www.wesjones.com/white1.htm)

Individuals and groups sometimes attach their own connotations to words, but these secondary associations may have only transitory existence. When the women's liberation movement began using the phrase male chauvinist pig, many people attached their own non-standard meanings to the word chauvinism.

Sometimes connotations become so widely accepted and their implied meanings endure over such long periods of time that one is hard pressed to know whether the meaning is a denotation or a connotation. For example, the word cavalier, which referred originally to the supporters of the Stuart kings in 17th century England, implies a swash-buckling, devil-may-care attitude, even to people who have never studied English history or literature from this era.

Express yourself in your own words.

Using time-worn phrases requires little mental effort; as a result, we all at times fall back at times on clichés instead of thinking things through, drawing our own conclusions, and expressing our thoughts in our own words. We often overuse figures of speech such as these:

He is wrinkled as a prune.

She is wise as an owl.

Birds of a feather flock together.

In writing their correspondence, businessmen sometimes use stilted and hackneyed phrases that are alien to their normal speech patterns.

Unnatural

We deem it advisable that you make a prompt remittance.

Natural

We suggest that you pay promptly.

Effective thinkers, speakers, and writers do their own thinking and express their thoughts in language natural to themselves.

Express yourself in words that your listener or reader can understand.

The object of writing or of talking should be to communicate experience, information and ideas, and not to display one's intellectual prowess. When talking to a child, an adult should use words that the child can understand. (Adults, of course, have an obligation to teach young people new words.) Doctors and lawyers and computer programmers, when talking to people who are unschooled in these fields, only confuse their audiences by using professional jargon.

Prefer concrete language.

The greatest writers prefer concrete words, those which relate to the senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. They use simple, highly descriptive words which evoke images in the minds of their readers. They do not tell their readers about their characters and events but rather show them in action.

For example, in his prologue to the Canterbury Tales Chaucer painted word pictures of his characters, and he allowed his readers to draw whatever conclusions that they wished about these characters. In one case, he described the Miller in these simple but vivid terms:

His beard, like any sow or fox, was red

And broad as well, as though it were a spade;

And, at its very tip, his nose displayed

A wart on which there stood a tuft of hair

Red as the bristles of an old sow's ear.

His nostrils were as black as they were wide.

He had a sword and buckler at his side,

His mighty mouth was like a furnace door.

Chaucer does not tell his reader that the Miller was a rather uncouth fellow, but most readers will conclude as much from this rather graphic description.

Abstract words/concepts are important. We use them to sum up and to interpret experience; but the poet, the story writer, and the novelist prefer to focus on experience; they show the reader an experience and allow him to draw meaning from it. The effective essayist employs abstract judgments such as patriotism or nobility in his theses; but he supports these ideas by showing the experiences on which they are based.

The ability to describe experience is one of the most important skills in writing; the writer who has learned to use concrete language to show rather than tell has mastered one of the most important techniques of writing.

Avoid wordiness.

Great writers use words sparingly. They try to make every word count. If they can replace a long phrase with a shorter one or with a single word, they prefer the more concise form.

For example, rather than calling a creature a herbivorous leaping marsupial with a small head, a long thick tall used as a support and in balancing, and rather small forelegs not used in progression, the sensible writer would probably call the animal a kangaroo.

Here are some simple ways in which you can make your writing more concise.

Prefer the active voice of the verb.

Excessive use of the passive voice leads to wordiness.

We form the passive voice, of course, by placing the helping verb to be in front of a past participle. The direct object or the indirect object then moves to the subject position, and the subject of the active voice sentence becomes the object of the preposition by.

Active Voice

Sub...AV……DO

Jim wrote this essay.

Passive Voice

…….Sub...HV…AV……OP

This essay was written by Jim.

The sentence with the passive voice verb uses two more words to say exactly the same thing that the three word active voice sentence did.

Talk about your subject, not what you are doing.

Writers often add phrases and sentences such as these to their stories and essays:

I am going to write about.

This story is about the time that....

The purpose of this paper is to....

Readers are not blind. They can see what you are doing.

Avoid using sign posts.

At the outset, I want to say....

First of all.... Second of all.... Third of all....

In summary, let me say....

Don't label your comments as facts or opinions.

Statements such as those below sound apologetic; and they add nothing to the discussion. Your reader will probably prefer to make up his own mind about the nature and the merits of your assertions.

In my opinion...

It is my belief that....

The fact of the matter is....

Avoid redundancy.

When a word expresses a concept adequately, using another word that repeats the same idea is unnecessary.

The consensus of opinion was....

The smoke rose up.....

He told an untruthful lie.

The word consensus means group solidarity in sentiment or belief. Adding the prepositional phrase of opinion only restates a concept that has already been expressed.

When the smoke rises, it certainly does not go down.

A lie is, by definition, an untruthful statement.

Assignment 1 - Denotations and Connotations

Look up definitions for the following words.

In what ways are the dictionary definitions for the words in each list similar?

In what respects do they differ?

What meanings other than those found in the dictionary do these words suggest to you?

childish…..artless…......slender…..sick

childlike….naïve……….thin…..…..ill

infantile.....ingenuous...skinny……wan

Assignment 2 - Concise Descriptive Writing

Select poems and stories and essays that you believe to be particularly well done.

Analyze these compositions from the standpoint of language.

Has the author preferred concrete over abstract language?

Has he used words sparingly?

Has he used the passive voice excessively?

Assignment 3 - Eliminate the Passive Voice!

On the line to the left of each sentence, write an A if the verb is in the active voice and a P if it is in the passive voice. Rewrite each sentence making their active voice verbs passive and passive voice verbs active.

_____The book was written by Mark Twain.

___________________________________________________________

_____The president gave a speech to the congress.

____________________________________________________________

_____The passengers in the air terminal were advised to stand by for boarding.

____________________________________________________________

_____We were told what to do by the principal.

____________________________________________________________

_____The table was set by my mother.

____________________________________________________________

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Lesson 2 - Rhythms

A skillful writer pursues seemingly contradictory goals in trying to make his writing musically appealing. Like a musician, he varies the musical elements of language; at the same time, he systematically repeats stress and sound and pitch patterns in order to give his compositions a feeling of musical unity and coherence.

In this chapter and in the two that follow, we will look at the musical characteristics of language.

Rhythm

The systematic repetition of stress patterns is basic to life. All Humans (and most animals as well) respond to a beat. Tap out a rhythm, and you will soon see children and adults (and their pets as well) responding to the sound patterns. Keep it up, and everyone will soon be dancing.

Rhythm is an essential element of music, and it is also an extremely important in language. A writer or a speaker who employs sentences with interesting rhythm patterns is likely to find his audience responsive to what he is saying. Even if what he is saying in not all that important, a writer’s audience is more likely to respond favorably to his nonsense, than they would to brilliant ideas expressed in monotonous ways.

Edgar Allen Poe, whose attention to musical values is legendary, used an intricate and forceful rhythm pattern in his most famous poem The Raven.

Once upon a midnight dreary,

As I pondered weak and weary,

Over many a volume of forgotten lore.

Poe's inventive use of rhythms is an important element in his style, and it is also a characteristic