A short story for you to read!

Jim Stevens, a press photographer, is down on his luck. When a easy opportunity to spend a few days in the country taking some photographs arises, he takes it. But things are not going to be quite that simple. Will he be able to save the day?

Find it for free on WattPad, or, if you prefer, read it on your Kindle.

Telling tales true and fantastical

Let's take a break from grammar to look at the bigger picture. Believe it or not, there is an underlying structure to every tale we tell, every statement we make, everything we write. What follows applies to everything from single sentence copy right up to novels. It matters for non-fiction as much as it does fiction. The principles of story go to the heart of effective communications everywhere. We are hungry story machines. Feed us good story and we are satisfied.

In the simplest case, there is the subject-predicate structure of English, in which we start with the thing we're talking about, the subject (for instance, "The woman..."), and then move on to the thing about the subject, in other words, the story about the woman: The woman flexed her muscles.

In a broader sense, we tell stories. And stories must have structure to satisfy our primal instincts. Humans have been telling stories to each other for so long that it is basically in our DNA. We know when stories work instinctively, but we often cannot articulate how they work.

A story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. Or, to put it more usefully, they must have a beginning hook, a middle build and an ending payoff.

Beginning

The beginning hook is probably the most important. It grabs the readers' attention and makes them want to read on to find out more. It is the why question. If this element is weak, you lose the audience immediately, at which point you have failed completely.

Often the beginning hook plants a question in the readers' mind. For instance, in a murder mystery, a dead body is found and the question is will the master detective bring the killer to justice? That can be enough to read on for hundreds of pages.

In advertising copy, the beginning hook might be a relatable question or statement, "Are you sick of tying your shoelaces every morning?"

Middle

The middle build is the part where everything is explained and everything gets complicated. It is the meat of the story, and sets you up to really care what happens. You're thrown into the world of the characters and get to see what roles they play. Without it, nothing is satisfactory and the big stuff at the end would seem out of place. The middle build tells us how events take place and leads us to the big decisions and actions that must be taken.

In the murder mystery, this is the search for clues and the false trips down garden paths in search of red herrings (love a mixed metaphor). In advertising copy, this is where I tell you about an amazing shoe that stays on your foot without laces!

End

The ending payoff wraps up the story and pays off the beginning hook. It answers that big what happens question. A story would be very unsatisfying indeed if we never got the ending.

The detective chases the killer down the alley, arrests him and the city is once again safe. The advertisement tells you to buy these newfangled velcro shoes from my store, call now to order.


Structures within structures

To further complicate things, in complete stories, each of the beginning, middle and end have their own internal structure and the entire story overall has it too (and, actually, every scene within these must have a similar structure. Just like Russian dolls, stories are made of stories. It's triangles all the way down.)

Without going into laborious detail, you're looking for an inciting incident (which causes the action to begin), progressive complications (thwarting the efforts of the action), a crisis (kind of like a major decision point), a climax (the result of the crisis decision), and a resolution (the net result).

The beginning hook mentioned earlier usually contains the overall inciting incident. The middle build contains the overall progressive complications and leads to the crisis, while the ending payoff holds the climax and the resolution.


The moral of the story/the last word

While all that sounds complicated, it is actually hard-wired into you. You expect this stuff from a good story. Stories (books, movies, great advertisements, good non-fiction) that lack one or more of these elements tend to just "feel off".

So, if you want whatever you're writing to really resonate with an audience, it's worth keeping the general principles of story in mind. It's not a stretch to say that this is how our minds work, so it's good to tap into the inner workings of the mind when you write. It will play out better that way and is more likely to be memorable.

And finally, if you're thinking that this doesn't apply to a short piece of writing, then I'll leave you with a 6-word story by Ernest Hemingway. He bet some fellow drinkers at a bar one time that he could make them cry in 6 words. Apparently they weren't made of such stern, solid stuff back then (ha ha!)

He wrote:

For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.

An Apostrophe Catastrophe

Clockwise from top-left: You tell me what that means!; How in the heck?; I wonder if Go knows his stuff is being auctioned?; Do the hats and gloves belong to Snow Toy, perhaps?

Teasing business owners and whoever it is that does the boards outside churches is too easy. This is low hanging fruit for grammar mavens and we really should know better (and be more magnanimous generally).

These poor folks are trying so hard to get it right that they get it wrong. Not at all uncommon in English.

We all know that the god-forsaken apostrophe is the worst, most heinous and evil punctuation mark in the language. Just when you think you have it nailed, you get pulled over and booked for a stray it’s when you meant its. I should know, it happened to me once in my editing course! (Yes, I lost a mark for that, deservedly so. In an editing course, like, wow.)

Yet, for all that, the rules are pretty simple.

Two major uses and a little one.

First off, the big baddy, the possessive.

We use an apostrophe to indicate that something belongs to someone. Normally it is deadly simple – you just add an apostrophe and an s, even in names that end in s (and the extra s is pronounced, by the way):

That is James’s book.

The cat belongs to Jane. It is Jane’s cat.

There is a lot to do, there is a week’s work ahead.

But then it gets complicated.

Plural nouns that end in s just take an apostrophe without the s:

Put that in the girls’ room

I sense there is many weeks’ work there.

Generally speaking, if the plural form is pronounced without that extra ess sound, then you don’t add an s after the apostrophe. That’s why famous names like Ulysses and Moses just take an apostrophe without the extra s.

THE HARD BIT:

Pronouns. These NEVER take an apostrophe in the possessive. Which is easy for a word like ours.

That pizza is ours.

But it also applies to the possessive form of its. The pages of a book belong to the book and are thus possessed by the book:

The book was wet. Its pages were soaked.

It is the cat’s head:

The cat raised its head.

The possessive form of a pronoun never takes an apostrophe.

So, what’s the deal with it’s then? That leads us to the other major use of the apostrophe:

Contractions.

It seems completely logical – when you shorten a word, or when you join two words (or more) together, you put an apostrophe in place of the missing letters.

So, for starters:

It is becomes it’s. 

(See – simple – it’s is a completely different word to its, how could you ever get them confused?)

Will not becomes won’t.

And so on, quite familiar I’m (I am) sure.

When you join words, be a little careful:

Are not becomes aren’t, not are’nt because the apostrophe replaces the missing letter, not the space between the former two words. And then it gets curious with triple word contractions like he’d’ve for he would have (really if you’re—you are—going that far, you probably know what you’re doing and would only use that to represent speech, not in a formal writing context.)

Generally, if you can make two words out of it, an apostrophe belongs in there. If there are letters missing, an apostrophe takes their place. Be careful of old words like o’clock which is a traditional contraction of of the clock.

Finally, “clipped forms” do not need an apostrophe. It is gym, not gym’ (gymnasium). Hippo, not hippo’ and so on.

On the matter of it’s versus its, the simple test is to see if the sentence makes sense with “it is” instead. If it does, then it is it’s. If it doesn’t it’s its. Easy.

AND FINALLY, the fly in the ointment:

Unusual Plurals.

As a rule, you never use an apostrophe in a plural. This is what trips up sign writers all the time.

There’s something about seeing an s at the end of a word that makes us think an apostrophe might be needed. God Loves You becomes God Love’s You, which is doing my head in right now. What could that mean? I belong to “God Love”? Am I blessed?

There are exceptions though.

When you start referring to numbers in the plural… take this series for instance:

1,2,3,3,3,4,5,5,5,5,6

In describing this, I might say there are three 3’s and four 5’s, but then I might say 3s and 5s. Usage here varies from place to place.

Likewise, I was born in the 1970’s is a more American usage where 1970s seems to suffice elsewhere.

But if you’re referring to plural letters, you need that apostrophe otherwise it becomes nonsense:

How many o’s and l’s are there in soliloquy?

So, to summarise in general terms:

• If it belongs to someone or something it requires that apostrophe (unless it is its).
• If it is a plural, no apostrophe.
• If it is a contraction, it needs an apostrophe.

Some linguists challenge the need for the apostrophe at all, saying that you can usually understand the meaning in context.

With this in mind, I hazard to suggest: if in doubt, leave it out when it comes to apostrophes. This works because then the only mistake you’re likely to make is the its/it’s one. The contractions normally make perfect sense without the apostrophe. Plurals basically shouldn’t have them, and the possessive form is mostly common sense.

Happy trail’s trails…

Commas. The horror!

The comma. The enemy of every Grammar-Nazi (although probably just behind errant apostrophes in ire-creation, but we'll save THAT for another episode).

Why do people struggle so much? The rules aren't that complicated. I think it's due to three issues that swirl around commas like grammatical tornadoes that refuse to die.

The first is a terrible piece of advice given to us when we are young that, ironically, was correct in English centuries ago but incorrect in standard English today, namely: "Put a comma in where you would have a pause." WRONG.

The second problem is the "Oxford Comma". There are people who love them and people who hate them and the very fact they argue just muddies the water around correct comma usage. I think the Oxford Comma is very useful.

The third is the sloppy use of bracketing commas. Read on to learn more.

There are four uses of the comma: lists, joins, gaps, and brackets.

The Listing Comma.

The easy one. You simply put a comma between the items in a list with an "and" (or "or") before the final item. An Oxford Comma comes before the final "and" or the "or" in a list. It can be very useful to avoid ambiguity. Use it for that reason rather than because you have a thing for Oxford commas.

There's no equivalent to the Oxford Comma in any of the other usages. That is worth remembering for street fights over commas. The Oxford Comma applies ONLY TO LISTS.

The other helpful trick with listing commas is that you should be able to replace all the commas with "and" and it should still make sense (albeit clumsily). If adding "and" makes it nonsensical then a comma would be incorrect too.

"His bold, innovative, daring approach was extraordinary." can become "His bold and innovative and daring approach was extraordinary." The commas are fine.

If we were talking about "His bold, daring runway approach...", we could replace that first comma with "and", but we can't put a comma between daring and runway because "and" wouldn't work either. It's dependent on what the adjectives are modifying - "daring" modifies "runway approach" as a whole, not "approach".


Joining Commas.

These join two complete sentences into one sentence. The comma must have a connecting word after it, chosen only from and, or, but, while or yet. I used one above (the second comma):

If we were talking about "His bold, daring runway approach...", we could replace that first comma with "and", but we can't put a comma between daring and runway because "and" wouldn't work either.

That could have been a full-stop (period) followed by "We can't put..."

If you don't use the connecting word, in this case "but", you commit the cardinal sin of a comma splice. Don't fall into the trap, kids.


Gapping Commas.

These indicate where words have been removed for brevity. It should be done with caution and judgement.

Some football teams like singing their song before the game; others, only if they win.

That last comma replaced "like singing their song". We know what was meant in context. If that meaning is unclear, don't replace the phrase or words with a comma at all.


Bracketing Commas.

THE (EXTREMELY USEFUL) BUGBEAR.

These do what they say on the tin: they bracket an interruption in the sentence.

Check your punctuation with this easy test:

Take out the commas and everything in between. Does it still make sense and convey the meaning you intended?

If you answer "yes" you're doing it right. That's what bracketing commas do: they enclose a weak interruption that is useful but not essential.

If you answer "no" you're doing it wrong. Either remove the commas entirely or move them around.

Yet, beyond that glass, lay a toxic world. 

Wrong. If you take "beyond that glass" out you get "Yet lay a toxic world." That doesn't work at all. Leave the commas out: Yet beyond that glass lay a toxic world.

He reached over the car seat, and finding a dummy, gave it to the baby. 

Wrong. The first comma should be after "and" for the same reasons. In this case because "finding a dummy" is an interruption that is very helpful to meaning but not essential to the sentence.

A variant on the bracketing comma is the comma that precedes the addition of a non-restrictive clause in a periodic sentence. That's a bit technical, but it's the comma that you put before a further clause with additional information. English allows an infinite number of these to be added to any sentence. This is why English has infinite scope for creativity.

"He drove the car, squinting through the dirty windscreen, lighting a cigarette as he steered with his knees, worrying about what his girlfriend had said the other day, barely watching the road, knowing he was in trouble."

All those clauses after commas are non-restrictive. Each could be removed without harming the sentence. "He drove the car." Dull, but still functional as a sentence.


Misuse of bracketing commas often leads to sentences with far too many commas. When you add in commas of the other varieties a sentence can bristle with punctuation and prickle the skin of language mavens everywhere. Don't prick the skin of the beast with bad comma usage. There are far more forgivable mistakes to make!

Until next time...

With my editor's cap on, it's Grammar Time!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/upsidaisium/

And we're off! Beginning with an "And". We will joyously split our infinitives with healthy gusto. Leave your prepositions where you found them because this is where the rubber hits the road.

This is to be the first in a series of brief tips on English writing: style tips, grammar, usage, spelling traps and generally how to write well. This introductory one is not so brief, though.

I'm inspired by work I did recently for a client - the effervescent Camielle of Follow Me Media asked me to edit a blog post. She knew what she wanted to say and had written the post already. The question was, did it read well? Were there any mistakes? Plus, could I improve some of the wording and give more punch to the ending?

These are all questions of editing. A well written and edited post makes you look competent and professional. It will read better and communicate more effectively. That means it's more likely to be understood and the message passed on. Which all lends weight to your professional reputation. Good stuff. Everyone should have all their professional work edited, professionally. Even me. This is a "do as I say" moment.

Camielle followed up my work by asking me for advice on how to write better in the future (her writing is very good already, don't get me wrong, but like many people whose main job is not writing, there is always room for improvement. Hell, my work has plenty of room too. Nobody's perfect!)

I was happy to give advice. There's no danger of revealing state secrets or somehow giving the game away and finding myself destitute. English is English. I did not make the rules - they're out there for everyone. However, there's a bit of "art" to editing that is hard to explain.

Concise is good, but it's not the last word. 

Let's start with my first piece of advice to Camielle, taken directly from that steadfast tome of mavens the world over (even outside its US home, believe it or not), "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk Jnr. and EB White:

"Omit needless words."

Ah. Simple. Just make it short!

NO.

That's not how this rule works.

It means you should make sure all the words in a sentence are pulling their weight; "that every word tell."

So, how can you use this advice in the real world?

A major enemy of concise writing is repetition. In their insecurity-fueled attempts to include every single thought they want to convey, many writers repeat themselves. Say it twice, three times! Once more with feeling!

Take a paragraph that contains an idea. Carefully read the sentences and look at their meaning. Do they say the same thing as each other? Does one say it better? Be brutal: delete the repetitious sentences.

I mean brutal. Even if they're only close, try the paragraph without one of those sentences. I almost guarantee it won't suffer - your reader will still understand you.

Now that you have that one good sentence, feel free to add more detail back into that sentence. That sentence is now carrying the big idea - there's no harm in a bit of necessary detail - after all, Strunk and White are happy with your extra detail, as long as it is doing work, as long as it is needed.

Whoa. That last para needs work.

Here:

Now that you have that one good sentence, feel free to add more detail back into that sentence  if you like.  That sentence is It's now carrying the big idea - there's no harm in a bit of necessary detail. After all, Strunk and White are happy with your extra detail, as long as it is doing work does work; as long as it is needed.

Now you have one good sentence, add detail if you like. It's carrying the big idea. After all, Strunk and White are happy with extra detail, as long as it is needed.

60 words down to 32. I could go further, but I'm happy there.

Dangerous Constructions.

There are some sentence constructions that are hazardous to concise writing. Watch out for "thats" and "hads".

"I remember I had been in grade school and we had had a great time mucking up in the classroom that had been our home room and that had been where we learned English. Our teacher had been most upset."

Yuck. All those hads and thats.

"I remember grade school shenanigans fondly. We were always mucking around in English class. Our teacher nearly cried one day."

Sure, I made some word choice changes there too, but you can see what's going on. Each sentence does its work and we move on. I made a late addition of "one day" to "Our teacher nearly cried" because, to me, that seems like something someone would say. It is honest.

Sentences are like picnic baskets - they hold the whole feast.

A common mistake is to take a series of ideas and give each of them its own sentence. Instead, try adding a few ideas into one sentence. Make each sentence do more work.

Taking the above example again:

"I remember grade school shenanigans fondly. We were always mucking around in English class. Our teacher nearly cried one day."

Could be rewritten as:

"One hilarious day we nearly made our English teacher cry."

There's a bit of detail gone, but this new sentence almost begs for us to read on to find out exactly what made the teacher nearly cry. That's better writing.

Study each word. Take it out if you can. But stop before you destroy the sentence's power and beauty. William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway had very different styles. Faulkner of the Baroque, Rococo, Byzantine bent, Hemingway more agricultural. Both brilliant.

People do not associate Faulkner with brevity, quite the opposite, and yet, would you be so brave as to start slicing and dicing his prose? Probably not. Why? Because despite his incredible flourish with words, they all add up to something brilliant. I suspect even Strunk and White would be happy to leave Faulkner alone.

So, like all writing advice, try it out and practice. You'll find that even just having a go will make it read better.

Until next time...

You need to tell your customers WHY.

Your “About” or “Meet the Team” page is the most important page of your website.

Read that again. THE MOST IMPORTANT PAGE IS YOUR “ABOUT” PAGE.

How could that possibly be? Surely it’s the wonderful products and services you supply, or the amazing places that you have been, or the cool photos you have showing you looking young and vibrant and hip? Surely?

NO!

IT’S THE “ABOUT” PAGE.

Why?

Because business is competitive and these days there are very few truly unique offerings. But even the unique stuff is rarely unique because it looks or functions differently.

You know those amazing Kickstarter projects? Things like amazing backpacks with a GAZILLION POCKETS THAT WILL REORGANIZE YOUR LIFE? Yes. Those. Well, they all start with the reasons why the guys started in the first place. They have a little story to tell.

The strong impression created is that they do not care if no one at all buys their backpack. It’s like they just want to share their hard-wrung solution to a very personal problem they had at some point while travelling in eastern Europe while, actually what where they doing, spying? I mean who needs that many gadgets anyway? I digress…

The point is, at some point, you’re hooked on their story and if that resonates with you, they’re half way to signing you up.

So, their reason WHY, becomes YOUR reason WHY!

You buy the why, not the how and certainly not the what. It’s a backpack for crying out loud.

Back to About pages. If you run a business and especially if you’re in an established field, like real estate or gold mining, then I know as well as you do that the core of your business is the same as everyone else’s.

Hard truth right there.

Your business is, essentially, on an even keel, product- or service-wise, with your competitors' business.

I know you’re stressing now. Something in your brain is saying, “BUT I GOT INTO BUSINESS TO CHANGE ALL THAT!”

And you’d be absolutely right. But it’s still gold bars or suburban homes, right?

Look again at that question: “Why did you go into business?”

Forget money or income (that’s merely an outcome). Forget “being your own boss” – that’s a platitude. And everyone works to provide for their families – that’s universal.

What part of your life’s mission was served by going into business. Why are you doing it? What gets you excited about going to work in the morning?

I’m not going to answer that for you, because we all have different answers. It’s emotional.

It’s personal, and that’s the point. Our personal drives shape our lives. Your next customer very well might choose you because your reasons why resonate with hers or his.

How are they ever going to connect with you without knowing ABOUT you?

Hence the ABOUT page. It really is that important.

In many ways, my ABOUT page is all about YOURS – telling that side of you is hard, because translating the emotional side into words is hard. But doing that is one of the things I like to do. It’s why I’m here writing this…

Get in touch!

Which Books Changed You?

Inspired by a link provided by my friend George Aranda of Science Book a Day and the World Book Day, I thought I'd catch up, in the spirit of their 10 books that influenced your life project.

How to pick your most influential books? Do you go by life events? Or by ideas that shaped who you were, who you are, and who you would become?

Or, is a book influential by virtue of how much you enjoyed it?

I tend to think that at any given point in your life (perhaps this is the cynic in me) you will have different “most influential” books. For two reasons – one, as life gets longer, new things happen, and this throws a different perspective on what has come before. Two, our memories are fallible, so, who knows what really triggered that change and created that inspiration at the time? Time is the ineffable destroyer and creator, with only Entropy as its final guide.

I am a writer by trade these days (you must forgive the fusillade of commas in the previous paragraph). This is both personal and professional. Equally, almost none of these have writing as a subject. Yes, I have read many books on writing and the English language—it is a passion of mine—but rarely have they changed me.

I have gone for a short list of books where I can honestly say they influenced my life. This is an introductory 6.

Without further ado, here goes, in no particular order:

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Little need be said by way of introduction. I was introduced in high school to this masterpiece, and despite being taught it as a compulsory text, I fell in love. It was probably the first book where I appreciated the actual language. Fitzgerald’s prose is sublime, and it stands out, for me, as an example of beautiful writing to which anyone may rightfully aspire. Further readings have emphasized that he not only mastered language, but story structure as well. In fact, key beats of the story happen at precise points in the story that can be measured by their page number. None of that matters, though, because his words carry us gracefully, languidly, like words in a current…

The Abyss of Time: Changing Conceptions of the Earth’s Antiquity After the Sixteenth Century

Claude C. Albritton Jnr.

If you’ve never heard of this, I forgive you. It’s not on the bestseller’s list, anywhere, as far as I know. Yet, it captures our historical obsession with time and its measurement so well. The Earth has been around for about four and a half billion years. That’s mind boggling enough, but then just think what we had to do to come to know that! If you’ve ever wondered about weirdo conceptions like the Creation Research Society and ideas like biblical time, then take a look at the strange route by which scientific time has taken to evolve. Fascinating and something that took me to honours-level research in geology and geochronology.

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins

I struggled mightily with my library of Dawkins’s books here. Which is most significant? I will state here that I regard “The Selfish Gene” as one of the most important scientific literary works of the 20^th century and of modern science generally. Its follow up, “The Extended Phenotype” is equally remarkable and it’s extremely difficult, in the face of such might, to push them out of the top 10 for me. However, they have been, for one simple reason. I did not come to Dawkins’s ideas through school or any other means. I read these works after reading The God Delusion. So, if I am to be honest, The God Delusion must take precedence.

I was already an atheist when I read it, so there’s nothing in that, and, I am a geologist by scientific training, so deep time and scientific thought was no stranger to me, but biology had not been in my background. Dawkins’s book started me on a wild ride through evolutionary thought, in his multitude of fabulous science books and into the general real of evolutionary science and philosophy through such amazing writers as Daniel C Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. It started me on an intellectual journey that is still in the making.

Many criticize Dawkins for an inflammatory style, but for me, that criticism has always been political correctness of the bad kind, the kind that seeks to stamp out merely opposing views, as opposed to political correctness of the good kind, the one that stamps out cruel and harmful opinions. Dawkins became somewhat of a hero to me, if a slightly tinged one!

What is this thing called Science?

A.F. Chalmers

Later, I discovered the serious business of the Philosophy of Science. And it was in large part due to this wonderful book by Chalmers, that stands as the best introduction and discussion of what science is all about that I have ever read. It started me out on Popper and Feyerabend and Kuhn: icons of the philosophy of science. It also has a lovely grinning (smirking) cat on the cover. Hard to argue with that.

Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them

John Yorke

So many books have been written about “STORY”. Storytelling, narrative, these are like awful buzzwords that swarm about you and create hives of “creatives” and queen bees that bite you. No, that’s off-metaphor. Anyway, Yorke’s book came out of the blue to me, and started me really putting down complete ideas in narratives, even after years of writing in various forms. Yorke sent me down this creative path and he deserves credit therefore. It is a stunning book. Worth reading if you haven’t yet read the other three thousand six hundred and eighty-seven books on the subject (ok that might not be an exact number).

Three Dollars

Elliot Perlman

As Penguin (publisher) says, this is about “an honest, compassionate man who finds himself, at the age of 38, with a wife, a child and three dollars. How did he get that way? And who is Amanda?”

I was about 20 years old when I read this and the protagonist’s views on the world, the environment, his love of science and the reasons he became a scientist/engineer were the reasons I went back to university and studied geology. The notion of living life without doing what is important to you was horrifying - and that impulse made me reassess my life. I should probably read it again!

I can say that with some certainty – I had this book in mind when I applied for and enrolled in my geology degree. I don’t know, now, if that was sensible in any way, shape or form, but I can put my hand on my heart and say this is probably one of the most influential books in my life, even if the book may, on face value, be a little prosaic. It’s just beautiful. It’s so powerful that I sometimes actually wonder what I would have done with my life had I not read it. That’s a pretty powerful test, if you ask me.

There are more, books that don't come to mind right now, and I will share when they do... for now, how about yours? Tell me...