You're a Writer: What's Your Weapon Status? · 8:54pm Oct 10th, 2019
Blog Number 61: The Tools (and Weapons) a Writer Wields Edition
“So to writers I say, you're going to have to read a lot… So many books that you're going to overflow. You've got to hook into the popular culture… You've got to keep your mind open to all sorts of influences. You've got to sit down for hours at a time in front of the computer. And you must make grammar, punctuation and spelling a part of your life.”
- Source: Terry Pratchett, from https://www.writerswrite.com/journal/terry-pratchett-4001
It's a quotation I'm going to take seriously.
OK, so let's try something different. In order to find another angle of approach, I'm getting into the mindset of someone who's approaching this writing business for the first time. This someone has a tutor, or guide, or mentor, or more experienced what-have-you, so I'm imagining what that tutor would say to them. Something like this...
"First rule of any art: you're only as good as your tools. If your medium is dance, your limbs and muscles and spinal cord are your tools. Learn how to use them.
"If your medium is music, your instrument and your hands, mouth, and ears are your tools. Toy with them, practise with them, at every opportunity.
"Since you're a writer, language and its components - including the dreaded g-word - are your tools. Really toy with them, practise with them, familiarize yourself with them, and know how to use them. At every opportunity.
"Especially do this because you'll be tempted to think that you use them everyday so eh, it's OK. It's not. You use your mouth and your lungs every day to talk; that doesn't make you a singer. It definitely does not make you a competent or professional singer. Don't confuse casual conversation with wordsmithing, or daily anecdote with disciplined storytelling."
And that leads us to the dreaded g-word. Grammar.
Grammar is one of those tools, and I gather it's not always a welcome one. Who wants to sit down and figure out the past participle this over the present perfect continuous tense that?
But really, the long clusters of ugly academic words are concealing something deviously clever and valuable: they are no less than the pulsing, beating, living bones that support language itself, which in turn is an ability no less remarkable and intricate in its functional complexity than the flying skill of a swallow, the dextrous trunk of an elephant, or the telling secrets of a honeybee's sophisticated dance. A living system, intricately constructed and adapting over time, yet with its own hidden rules and tricks of the trade.
For instance, past participle? That's just fancy talk for past-tense words like "walked", "heard", and "seen" when combined with "have" and "had", hence "had walked" and "have heard".
This combination isn't just something to beat students round the head with; it's needed to create the larger past perfect tense, for instance in "I have walked to the shop", "she has heard it already", and "you have seen the show by now, right?"
"So what?" one might ask. "We use it all the time. We already get it."
Well, no. Our subconscious might, and even then only for narrow, everyday purposes. We might be familiar with the phenomenon, even if we don't know it's called past participle or that it's a particle of language that fits in the larger past perfect tense construction like a sail onto a ship.
But we are artists. Familiarity isn't the same as expertise, or adroitness. If we don't know why we're using something, we can't be sure we're using it to its full potential.
Or even using it well.
See, that kind of unthinking familiarity is what leads, in another area, to ancient metaphors fossilizing into dull idioms and stock phrases in our everyday language, to the point that we don't even realize they are metaphors, or anything to try differently. Why do we "show someone the ropes"? Why do we "pass with flying colours"? Why do we even use a seemingly dead-end word like "opportunities"?
Without knowing that all these terms come from golden ages of sailing, or ship jargon in olden times, we lose a new angle of attack. Without looking for such openings, these phrases don't inspire. They barely rise above dead wrecks being used as crude bridges across the harbour. They don't sail over the horizon to adventure in lands unknown. That's how we end up stranded on Cliché Island.*
*For those wondering, "show someone the ropes" means teaching a sailing ship's crew members how to deal with the rigging that helps manoeuvre the ship; "pass with flying colours" is related to sail symbolism that signals victory for ships returning from battle; "opportunity" derives from Latin opportunus or ob- and -portus (in the direction of port), specifically for a wind blowing towards the harbour i.e. the very opportune wind that favoured any sailing ship needing to dock.
More to the point, the basic elements of grammar are the ropes of our particular ship. Er, let's call it the USS Language.
For instance, this past perfect tense can be contrasted with the more usual past tense, which doesn't need the "have" or "had" part: "I walked", "she heard", "you saw". Namely, the past perfect tense can be contrasted with the past tense to imply that the act was completely or perfectly done, e.g. "I have walked there and back, yes. [And I want to make it clear I'm done with that]." VS. "I walked there and back, yes. [And maybe I might do it again]." That's two types of rope you can pull on if needed to get the ship moving into slightly different waters.
Or you can even use it, if you pull another way, to emphasize your meaning more clearly: "I walked there!" or "I walked there! [not him]" or "I walked there! [I didn't run]" or "I walked there! [nowhere else]" VS. "I have walked there!" or "I have walked there! [I really did, no lie!]".
Such small, modest tweaks in tense and verb formation, like yanking a rope the right way, can be used to more finely adjust or refine the specific meaning of a sentence you want to get across, and hence the message in the larger context, how the ship steers, whether it cruises safely through the right seas or struggles in a wind and even lands you far from where you ought to be.
Alternatively, if ships aren't artistic enough, think of it as how you use a brush to deliver a thicker or thinner or differently coloured stroke on a canvas. A way to make a sunset more vivid, say, or to capture the right shape of an eyebrow and hence change the expression on a person's face. Make its emotion go a different direction.
Basically, that's grammar.
That's all it is, really. Different ways to shade your meaning.
Not some stuffy classroom pedantry, but a highly flexible mod system for the ultimate sharing app: language itself. Or think of it as the selection of weaponry a soldier might need to cover every kind of enemy and obstacle (handguns for quick and easy use, sniper rifles for precise long-range shooting, plastic explosives for heavy obstacles, etc.), before charging into the fray and completing the mission: in this case, getting a pinpoint-accurate message across with efficiency and skill.
And once you know about this underlying system hiding in plain sight, you can explore it to find more tools to do more jobs. For instance, the Oxford Everyday Grammar lists not just the past perfect tense and past tense, but a grand total of twelve forms of tense in which verbs can be organized in a clear table:
- -------------------SIMPLE----------------CONTINUOUS-------------------PERFECT------------------------PERFECT CONTINUOUS
- PAST------------I walked---------------I was walking--------------------I had walked------------------I had been walking
- PRESENT------I walk-------------------I am walking---------------------I have walked-----------------I have been walking
- FUTURE-------I shall walk------------I shall be walking--------------I shall have walked----------I shall have been walking
Not all of these tenses must be used or are even especially useful most of the time (the Future Perfect Continuous tense isn't likely to apply outside of overly formal places, for example). Still, knowing what tools are in your toolkit, and what weapons are in your armoury, gives you a little more of an edge when consciously trying to pull off particular effects.
And this is just the main verbs, which can be used to form those different types of phrase. It doesn't cover the larger issue of verb classes (e.g. main verbs VS. auxiliary verbs like "should", "might", "can", "have/had", and "be/were/been/etc." that modify those main verbs more finely like different modifications of the same gun) or even unusual verbs (verbs used as nouns, like "Smoking is forbidden", and infinitives like "to err is human" or "let me go home". Basically, tools used in ways other than the obvious, such as using a rifle to knock a distant object over and thus bring it within your hand's reach).
So, anyway, this all came to me when I got the aforementioned Oxford Everyday Grammar book and started flicking through the pages. It's actually really fascinating to find out what's hidden in plain sight, and since grammar's also in the writer's purview, I figure learning more about these words I use will open up new avenues for exploration and experimentation.
Plus, I, uh, I think it's kinda fun to learn about. And neat. But that might just be me, of course. 
Welp, I've said my piece. Just thought I'd offer a little something out there, to fellow writer enthusiasts. Hope this has proven to be food for thought, if nothing else.
For the time being: Impossible Numbers, out.
I thought you were leaving.
5135096
It's an option I'm keeping in reserve, just in case.
Aw, you shouldn't have. ;D
5135123
Well, it's not often I make friends with a grammatical tense.
Grammar is all. Grammar is life.
The English language is a savage beast, rife with exceptions to its many, and often contradictory, rules.
See? That last sentence... I’m not even sure it’s 100% correct.
My dark secret is that I never managed to learn much in the way of formal grammar. I take the sing-song sense of words and parlay them into the finest constructions that my ear can guide me through. But as 5135312 can doubtlessly attest, sometimes that just means I faceplant all the more spectacularly.
I do hope that honing your command of this particular tool pays dividends for your enjoyment of the writing process.