Orion's Toolbelt

Spot Goes to School

A Primer in Avoiding Primer Style

by The White Lily

Anyone who’s read a picture book lately will recognise the familiar sing-song tone and simple phrasings of a reading primer. In a primer, the style is deliberate, making the books easy to understand and follow for an inexperienced reader, making it easier and more fun to read for a small child. But in a serious story, the tendency to fall back into overly simple or repetitive sentence construction can be a curse.

It’s particularly on my mind this month, since I’ve been reading The Lost Colony aloud to my husband, and been severely disappointed by the climactic chapters. There certainly wasn’t any lack of action or emotional tension. But still, it didn’t suck me in. And why?

Because it read like a picture book.

 

Part 1: How to Recognize Primer Style

Artemis walked to the window. Juliet was already standing there. Artemis put his hand on her arm. He cleared his throat.

Juliet turned around. She had tears in her eyes.

Are you asleep yet? This is primer style at its most basic – simple sentences with single purposes, limited vocabulary, no descriptions, no feelings, no connections... Boring, boring, boring.

But primer style can be more insidious than this, because even inserting some descriptions, larger words, emotions, and joining these sentences together to make more complex and varied structures doesn’t always help…

Artemis walked to the window. Juliet was already standing there with sunlight silhouetting her form. Artemis put his hand on her arm and cleared his throat because he couldn’t think of anything to say.

Juliet turned around and Artemis saw that she had tears in her eyes and shiny trails on her cheeks.

Better. Much better. But… erg, still boring, isn’t it? What about:

Artemis walked to the window where Juliet stood, silhouetted against the evening sunlight, and placed a hand on her arm. Unsure what to say, he cleared his throat.

Tears shone in Juliet’s eyes as she turned to look at him, just beginning to spill over to make their glistening way down her cheeks.

Wow. What a difference. But what makes that difference, really?

 

Part 2: I’m convinced. Primer Style=Bad. But how can I tell if I’m writing it?

Tip 1:Read it aloud. Read it aloud. Read it aloud.

I’ve got a whole stack of half-started articles for Orion’s Toolbelt, and most of them seem to have this as Tip Number One. I can’t emphasise it enough.

Find a willing victim, whether that’s a friend, your little sister, or a potted plant. Then read it aloud.

You’ll notice.

Tip 2: Compare the first word in each sentence.

This is your single biggest tip-off for primer style. If each sentence starts with a name, that’s definitely going to be snore-inducing, no matter how much description or emotion you try to include. Go back and have a look at my examples – see how it falls into a rhythm? “Juliet did this. Artemis did that. Juliet did this.” It’s very, very tempting to overuse sentences starting with a name. They’re really easy to use when describing what’s happening. But they just don’t make what’s happening leap off the page and go for the reader’s throat.

It’s not just names, although they’re the worst offender: “Juliet did this. The dark-haired boy did that. She did that,” isn’t much of an improvement. In fact, I broaden this to all nouns, including names, pronouns (she) and modified nouns (the dark-haired boy). I don’t let any two sentences in a row begin with the same noun. And I try not to let three sentences in a row begin with a noun at all.

Tip 3: Compare the first word in every paragraph.

As for the first word in every sentence, but for every paragraph. This is particularly important, I think, because it’s totally obvious to a reader. It makes it feel formulaic on a larger scale.

This was what bugged me most about the climax of The Lost Colony. Almost every single paragraph, for two chapters, began with a character name. In this case, it was also indicative of a deeper stylistic flaw – POV switching – but that’s a topic for another day. (I liked The Lost Colony, by the way. I just wasn’t sucked in by the climax and so I set about working out why.)

Tip 4: Compare the punctuation marks in each sentence.

Fear not the dash, the semicolon, the colon, ellipses, or parentheses. Interesting punctuation is great for varying your sentence structure. But the keyword is varying. If you’re building up the same sentence structure each time – if every sentence has a semicolon, or every sentence has parenthetical remarks set inside dashes – you’re still going to fall into the same trap of having every sentence look and feel the same. Playing with punctuation has another advantage, too; it allows you to write more complex, but still explicable and correct sentences.

Tip 5: Check where your conjunctions sit in each sentence.

Just like punctuation, “and”, “but”, “because”, and all their friends can sit in the same places in every sentence, giving everything a similar structure. Look at the last two sentences of my second example. Sure, the chunks in between them aren’t quite the same size, but having two three-part sentences in a row starts to get that rhythm established.

 

Part 3: I’m not sure about this, Lily. Surely it’s not that easy to turn primer into perfection…

You’re absolutely right. And there’s a number of pitfalls along the way that trying too hard to get out of Primer Style can leave you vulnerable.

Pitfall 1: Don’t lose your meaning.

Possibly one of my greatest flaws in writing, at least that I’m aware of, is writing long, complex sentences, filled with so many clarifications, parenthetical remarks, and long-winded digressions that anyone so unfortunate as to be doing my initial beta requires a compass, a map, and an explanation from me to work out what I’m actually trying to say. Er… exactly. And that was only 59 words – the first draft of my HP short fic Vanquish contained a 209 word sentence. Having the occasional incredibly long sentence is fine – as long as it’s still easy and enjoyable to read.

Pitfall 2: Vary your sentence length.

The point is not to make all your sentences long, complex, tacked-together strings. It’s to make your sentences interesting and different from one another. Intersperse long sentences with short sentences. Take the reader on a digression with a series of long sentences and then hammer a point home with a series of short ones. Think about where your story is, about what you’re saying right at this moment, and suit your sentence length to the situation.

Pitfall 3: Know your grammar.

Don’t get all that lovely variation at the cost of being correct. Learn what a run-on sentence is and how to avoid it. (Hint: It’s not just a really long sentence.) Learn what a comma splice is and how to use a semicolon. If you’re not sure how to use a colon, a dash, or ellipses, find yourself a good grammar guide. Last month’s issue of The Observatory included a quick and dirty guide to each of the major punctuation marks. I can also recommend this more comprehensive one, which honestly taught me everything I know about punctuation and sentence construction.

Pitfall 4: Don’t get out of primer style only to fall into purple prose.

You can’t fix primer style simply by adding so many adjectives and adverbs that it makes it impossible to fall into the traditional singsong rhythm. I promise. You’ll just sound like Dr. Seuss, which is hardly an improvement for prose.

Pitfall 5: Don’t use this as an excuse to avoid deliberate repetition of structure.

I’m hoping that Dim Aldebaran will eventually give us an article on parallel construction, which she does so brilliantly, in Writing With Grace, but for the moment I’m just going to mention it to make sure you don’t mistake it for something it’s not.

Using similar structure for thematic sentences or phrases can be a hugely effective technique. As long as you’re thinking about it and doing so deliberately. Repetition is a fantastic tool for emphasis; it’s just that it can be bad when it’s unintentional and thus emphasises the wrong thing.

Primer style is, all in all, a darn sight better than incomprehensible, incorrect, and inelegant prose. Don’t try so hard that you lose sight of the ultimate goal of telling a story. Most of all, just remember: you’re not just trying to give a factual recounting of events. You’re trying to draw the reader into a world of your imagination and emotion.

So, good luck, and happy writing!