Universal Style for Audio Writers

Strunk and White’s little pamphlet on style has been in use for decades and provides helpful principles for writers.  Their guide is a classic and is full of useful advice.  The advice should be followed judiciously, however.  Sometimes characterisation requires us to break these rules (some characters are meant to be pompous, overly formal, wordy, or difficult to understand) but in general, unless you have a specific reason not to, the advice should be followed.

Use the active voice

Passive sentences are weak.  Instead of a subject acting upon an object, the object is acted upon by the subject and the clarity and power of the sentence is lost.

Here is some passive dialog…

• JIM: I was given another deadline by the boss.
• BOB: Really?  I was given one too.
• JIM: I wonder if the same project was given to both of us?
• BOB: Maybe.  Projects are being handed out all over at the moment.  Too many to be unrelated.

It communicates, but it lacks immediacy.  Rewritten actively we get.

• JIM: The boss gave me another deadline.
• BOB: Really?  Me too.
• JIM: I wonder if he gave the same project to both of us?
• BOB: Maybe.  He’s been giving too many out for them to all be unrelated.

Remove small-talk and needless statements

Small talk and chat generally slows down and sucks the life out of dialog.

• BOB: Hi Jim.
• JIM: Hi Bob.
• BOB: You heading over to Macey’s?
• JIM: Yup.
• BOB: The one on fourth again?
• JIM: Nah.  The one on seventh.
• BOB: You don’t think they share their files?
• JIM: If they do, I’ll get thrown out quick smart.
• BOB: More likely they’ll call the cops.
• Dropping the small talk and clarifications immediately improves this dialog.
• BOB: You heading over to Macey’s again, Jim?
• JIM: I’m hoping the different stores don’t share their files.
• BOB: You know if they recognize you, they’ll call the cops, right?

Put statements in positive form

Negatives (indicated by the word “not”) weaken statements in dialog as well.

• BOB: You’re not honest.
• JIM: Sure.  But you didn’t pay attention to my warning.
• BOB: You’re warning wasn’t important.  It didn’t even make sense.
• JIM: Nah. You just don’t remember it.

In positive form the same dialog reads…

• BOB: You lied.
• JIM: Sure.  But you ignored my warning.
• BOB: It was pointless and confusing.
• JIM: Nah. You just forgot it.

Use definite, specific, concrete and commonly understood words.

General, indefinite, abstract and unfamiliar words take the wind out of sentences.

• JIM: Jack was disconsolate during the unfavourable weather.

Rewritten with more specific and familiar terms, the above sentence is greatly improved…

• JIM: Jack was upset during the storm.

Preference short words over long

Long words slow the pace of a sentence and tend to make lines sound pompous.

Compare

• JIM: I find brandy most efficacious for the alleviation of cerebral tribulation.

With

• JIM: Brandy eases my mind.

Omit unnecessary words

It is almost always the case that written speech can be made shorter and given more punch through the removal of unnecessary words.  Words that reflect characterisation are not unnecessary, but inefficient speech can always be tightened up without cheapening the characterisation.  Shortness is not a goal in itself but, when writing dialog, the real aim is to make every word count.

There are lots of common phrases, easy to reproduce in our writing because we hear them so often, that should be discarded as soon as they are discovered.

Compare…

• BOB:    Why are you looking so sour?
• JIM:     It’s due to the fact that I hate cheese sandwiches.

With

• BOB:    Why are you looking so sour?
• JIM:     I hate cheese sandwiches.

Or compare

• JIM: I want to talk about Maths because it is a subject which is close to my heart.

With

• JIM: I want to talk about Maths because it is close to my heart.

Unnecessary words creep in as additions to phrases as well.

Compare

• TOM: His story is a strange one.

With

• TOM: His story is strange.

Phrases such as “who is”, “which was”, and the like are often unnecessary.

Compare

• MICHAEL: Let me tell you about Jack, who is a member of the local police force.

With

• MICHAEL: Let me tell you about Jack, a member of the local police force.

Construct short direct speeches

Creating a wall of text can be intimidating, even for the best of actors.  Where possible, a writer should aim to break exposition up into shorter sections of speech.

In the film Charade (written by Peter Stone and directed by Stanley Donnen) the character of Mr. Bartholomew must deliver a long speech in a restaurant.  Below is a reworked version of the speech delivered in one long block.  Following that is the speech as it was delivered in the film.

• SCENE: (INT) FRENCH RESTAURANT (EARLY EVENING)
  (REGINA, BARTHOLOMEW)
• SOUND: RESTAURANT AMBIANCE (CLINKING CUTTLERY, CROCKERY, ETC. PEOPLE SPEAKING LOW) – ESTABLISH AND UNDER.
• SOUND: FRENCH ACCORDIAN MUSIC – UNDER
• REGINA: (SCARED) Mr. Bartholomew: what is all this about? 
• BARTHOLOMEW: (TALKING IN A SLOW CONFIDENTIAL TONE) In nineteen fourty-four, five members of the O.S.S.- the military espionage unit – were ordered behind German lines for the purpose of delivering two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold to the French underground. The five men were, of course, your husband Charles; the three men who showed up at his funeral yesterday; and Carson Dyle.
• Instead of delivering the gold, they stole it by burying it then reporting that the Germans had captured it. All they had to do was come back after the war, dig it up, split it five ways. Quarter of a million dollars with no questions asked.
• Everything went smoothly enough until after the gold was buried. Then, before they could get out they were ambushed by a German patrol. A machine gun separated Scobie from his right hand, caught Carson Dyle full in the stomach.
• Carson Dyle was dead but Scobie was able to travel, so the others finally got back to the base and waited for the war to end, only Charles couldn’t wait quite as long as the others. He beat them back to the gold, took everything for himself, and disappeared. It’s taken Gideon, Tex and Scobie all this time to catch up with him again.
• REGINA: (DISTRESSED) But if they stole all that money, why can’t you arrest them?

Here is the version of the speech as scripted and delivered in the film…

• SCENE: (INT) FRENCH RESTAURANT (EARLY EVENING)
  (REGINA, BARTHOLOMEW, WAITER)
• SOUND: RESTAURANT AMBIANCE (CLINKING CUTTLERY, CROCKERY, ETC. PEOPLE SPEAKING LOW) – ESTABLISH AND UNDER.
• SOUND: FRENCH ACCORDIAN MUSIC – UNDER
• REGINA: (SCARED) Mr. Bartholomew: what is all this about? 
• BARTHOLOMEW: (TALKING IN A SLOW CONFIDENTIAL TONE) In nineteen fourty-four, five members of the O.S.S.- the military espionage unit – were ordered behind German lines for the purpose of delivering two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold to the French underground. The five men were, of course, your husband Charles; the three men who showed up at his funeral yesterday; and Carson Dyle.
• REGINA: Oh.
• BARTHOLOMEW: Instead of delivering the gold, they stole it.
• REGINA: How?
• BARTHOLOMEW By burying it then reporting that the Germans had captured it. All they had to do was come back after the war, dig it up, split it five ways. Quarter of a million dollars with no questions asked.
• REGINA: May I have a cigarette, please?
• SOUND: SOFT TEARING NOISE AS FILTER REMOVED FROM CIGARRETTE – LET IT FINISH
• BARTHOLOMEW: You tore the filter off?
• REGINA: I can’t stand those things; it’s like drinking coffee through a veil.
• SOUND: CIGARETTE LIGHTER – LET IT FINISH
• REGINA: (DRAWS IN AND BREATHES OUT)
• BARTHOLOMEW: Everything went smoothly enough until after the gold was buried. Then, before they could get out they were ambushed by a German patrol. A machine gun separated Scobie from his right hand, caught Carson Dyle full in the stomach.
• REGINA: May I have another cigarette?
• BARTHOLOMEW: What was wrong with that one?
• REGINA: Nothing, I guess. What happened then?
• BARTHOLOMEW: Have you any idea what these things cost over here?
• REGINA: Please go on, Mr. Bartholomew: what happened then?
• BARTHOLOMEW: Carson Dyle was dead but Scobie was able to travel, so… 
• WAITER: Pardon. La soupe, c’est pour qui?
• REGINA: (TO THE WAITER) Pour moi.
• SOUND: CLATTER OF CUTTLERY ETC. AS SOUP IS DELIVERED – LET IT FINISH.
• BARTHOLOMEW. Where was I?
• REGINA: Carson Dyle was dead.
• BARTHOLOMEW: Yes, Carson Dyle was dead. The others finally got back to the base and waited for the war to end, only Charles couldn’t wait quite as long as the others. He beat them back to the gold, took everything for himself, and disappeared. It’s taken Gideon, Tex and Scobie all this time to catch up with him again.
• REGINA: (DISTRESSED) But if they stole all that money, why can’t you arrest them?

In the second (actual) version of the script, the speech is broken up by interruptions of various kinds.  The interruptions turn it into a series of short speeches and make it easier to listen to (by giving the audience a rest from the exposition) and easier for an actor to speak.

Avoid a succession of loose sentences joined by conjunctions (childish speech)

Unless actually writing dialog for a child (and even then, it can feel exaggerated and unrealistic) avoid connecting clause after clause with conjunctions.

The following is flawed

• TIMMY: And Roger fell down the well and he was yelling and yelling but Mikey got scared and wanted to run away and the more scared Mikey got, the more scared the rest of us got too, and we could hear Roger splashing, trying to stay afloat but he was getting weaker so we ran to get help and I hope he’s not dead and can you please come to the well and get him out.

But the repetitive monotony of the following is worse still

• JAMES: Roger fell down the well and he was yelling for help.  Mikey got scared and the other children became frightened.  The children became more frightened while Roger grew tired of trying to stay afloat.  The children ran for help but many of them thought it might be too late.  The adults were asked to rescue Roger but the children thought Roger might be dead.

Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form (write according to the same pattern in the second idea as the first)

This is an easy error to make and quite difficult to catch.  Reading the text aloud often reveals the lack of symmetry.  Generally, we just feel that something isn’t quite right.

• BOB: In the past, science was taught by the textbook method, while now the laboratory method is used.

Rewritten so that the pattern of expression in the two clauses matches we get…

• BOB: In the past, science was taught by the textbook method, while now it is taught by the laboratory method.

Keep related words together

Rather than splitting the subject and principal verb of a clause, it is better to keep related words together.  Of course, this doesn’t apply when the writer is attempting to build suspense or a relative clause is being used.

Avoid

• JENNY: The iron, when mixed with an appropriate amount of carbon, makes steel.  For generations, in the manufacture of our swords, we’ve been employing this steel.

When you could say

• JENNY: The iron makes steel when mixed with an appropriate amount of carbon.  For generations we’ve been employing this steel in the manufacture of our swords.

Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end

We have noted that a speaker responds to the final word delivered in dialog by their conversation partner.  Likewise, we have noted that afterthoughts tend to weaken sentences.  For both these reasons, it is important when writing dialog to make the last word of every speech count.

• JENNY:  Our steel is principally used for making swords, because of its hardness.

The above line invites the next speaker to respond to the word hardness.  But it is more likely that our characters want to talk about swords and forces the conversation to pursue a different track before being brought back around to the point.  The presentation of “because of its hardness” as an afterthought also weakens the sentence.

Compare it to

• JENNY: Because of its hardness, our steel is principally used for making swords.

Let’s conclude our discussion of sentence style with three more pieces of advice about common issues.

Avoid connecting complete sentences with commas.

This is a surprisingly easy mistake to make.  The difference is subtle, but quite significant.

• BOB: Then came the jokes, some of them were very amusing, while some others failed to raise a laugh.

Bob’s speech contains two sentences.

Then came the jokes.

Some of them were very amusing, while some others failed to raise a laugh.

One way to fix the issue would be to simply correct the punctuation (adding the full stop/period between “jokes” and “some”).  Another option is a grammatical fix; turning the second sentence into a pair of dependent clauses…

• BOB: Then came the jokes, some very amusing, others failing to raise a laugh.

Watch out for ambiguous pronouns

Sometimes our writing is ambiguous because we have been unclear about what our pronouns refer to. 

Here is an ambiguous line.

• SALLY: Several members of my family have died of cancer and I didn’t know if it was hereditary so I decided to find out.

Does the pronoun “it” refer to “cancer” or “death”?  Obviously, cancer is more likely, but the sentence remains a little unclear.  The following expresses the idea more effectively by clarifying what the pronoun refers to.

• SALLY: I decided to find out if cancer was hereditary because several members of my family have died from it.

The rules are actually guidelines

Every one of these guidelines can be deliberately jettisoned for a variety of good reasons.  Dialog is often messy.  People don’t talk in neat grammatically correct forms.  Sometimes, effective characterization requires the imitation of grammatically incorrect forms of speech. That said, dialog is not a direct imitation of real life.  Rather, it is a stylised, more efficient, and focused form of expression, where every word is calculated for its contribution to the advancement of the story.  As such, with allowances made for the needs of characterisation, the writer of audio drama is still looking for the best way to communicate dialog.  And the rules of grammar, style and expression, when applied well, provide just the tools and clarity we need.

Copyright Philip Craig Robotham © 2021 .

The post Basic Grammar for Audio Writers Part 4 – Style and Sentence Construction appeared first on Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama.

This week we turn our attention to the practical use of grammar and how understanding it can help improve our writing. 

Sentence Types

Declarative – Makes a statement about something.

Interrogatory – Asks a question.

Imperative – Provides an instruction.

Exclamatory – Makes an exclamation.

The following exchange contains each of these.  But in any dialog the majority of your sentences will be declarative.

• SERVANT: Ma’am?
• MADAME NORISS: (STARTLED) Oh!  You quite frightened me, Sally. 
• SERVANT: Sorry, Ma’am.  I need to be in town in an hour.  Is there anything you need?
• MADAME NORISS: Bring me a cup of tea.
• SERVANT: Yes, Ma’am

Sentences

As has already been stated in an earlier article, sentences are made up of a subject and a predicate and express a complete idea.  Phrases and clauses are not sentences.

Using Phrases and Clauses

“Down the street” is a phrase.  There is no subject acting, nor is there a verb that turns it into a complete predicate.

“while climbing on the roof” is a clause.  It depends on something prior in order to complete the idea it is trying to express.

Likewise, “he sat down for a moment before” is a clause.  There is a subject “he” and a complete predicate with a verb “sat down for a moment”, but the idea is left incomplete (as indicated by the connecting word “before”.

Does this mean we should only write in complete sentences?  No.  We can make use of phrases and stand-alone clauses in our writing, but we need to do so carefully.

If a character overhears a conversation, it is quite legitimate to present a phrase.

• SOUND:  JIM ENTERS THE KITCHEN
• JENNY:   (HURRIEDLY) …need to talk to you later.  Bye.
• SOUND: PHONE HANGS UP
• JIM: Who was that?
• JENNY: (EMBARRASSED) Oh, nobody.

In the dialog above, the phrase creates mystery BECAUSE it is not a complete sentence.

A broken radio transmission can do something similar…

• SOUND: INTERMITTENT BURSTS OF STATIC AT THE GAPS IN THE SPEECH THAT FOLLOWS
• RADIO OPERATOR:  Mayday.  Mayday.  The expedition is… (STATIC).  We’ve lost all our…(STATIC) … are dead and only (STATIC) remain alive.   (STATIC) …are being hunted.  (STATIC) …help urgently.  Mayday.

Generally, unless we deliberately wish to create confusion, clauses and phrases are used in a way that implies a complete sentence.

• BOB:    Where’d Jenny go?
• DON:   Down the street.

Don’s answer is a prepositional phrase, but the complete sentence “Jenny went down the street” is implied.

At other times the sentence has been interrupted (but the full sentence and idea remains intact).

• DON:   We’ve still got a little bit of time before…
• SOUND: GUNSHOT AND BREAKING WINDOW.
• BOB: Get down. Damn, that was close.  What were you saying? Time before…?
• DON:   (IRONIC LAUGH) Heh…before the shooting starts.

Despite the interruption (of the bullet) the full sentence “we’ve still got a little time before the shooting starts” remains.

There are also times where we will use a phrase or clause to imply that the character has completed a thought (a complete sentence), even though we do not find out what the sentence is.

• BOB: If Salvadore killed Ruby then that means he…
• DON: Bob?  You just kind of trailed off there, you know?
• BOB: Yeah, but I think I just blew this case wide open.  C’mon, let’s get down to Police Plaza.

Implied sentences can be of any length.

• GRANT: It’s stuffy.  I’m going to open a window.
• JACKIE: No!

Jackie’s one word, “No!” implies the much lengthier “You must not open the window”.

Here, presented by Elmer, is a two-word sentence.

• GEORGE:         What was that noise?
• ELMER:            Sally coughed.

Elmer’s sentence implies nothing – it doesn’t need to – and meets all the requirements of a sentence.  The subject is Sally, the predicate is coughed, and it contains a complete idea.

Sometimes. if our dialog feels confused or confusing, it’s because our phrases do not effectively imply or present complete sentences.  It can be worth going over our writing and, in our heads if not on paper, translating our phrases into full sentences just to be sure our meaning is clear.

Controlling Sentence Length

By controlling sentence length, we control pace and, to an extent, emotion in our writing.  It is good advice to keep dialog short and avoid employing any unnecessary words.  But, if dialog is cut too much, it can lose its meaning and power.  The decision regarding when a word is “unnecessary” is a judgment we make based on the context of our text and our intention in writing it.

Gary Provost wrote the following paragraph to illustrate this point…

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

Realism in dialog

There is a tension that every writer of dialog feels.  Dialog needs to sound as if it were being spoken by real people without accurately reproducing the way real people speak.

The apparent contradiction here is explained by listening to any real-world conversation.  In real life people repeat themselves incessantly, ramble, lose their train of thought, find it again, mis-speak, correct themselves, forget what they were trying to say, etc.  Real-world conversation is inefficient.  If we reproduce it for audio drama, our listeners will quickly become bored and switch their attention elsewhere.  Speech designed for entertainment needs to authentically express character but in a form crafted to maintain attention without drawing attention to itself.

A rambling sentence…

JIM: You know, he… well the curb.  He was hit by a car as he stepped off it.  Paying no attention to the traffic, just dreaming.  And it hit him… while he wasn’t paying attention.

It seems realistic – the stumbling words, the repetition, etc.  We all know people who talk like this in real-life.  But it is horribly inefficient.

The following is an equally inefficient sentence…

• JIM: He was struck by a car as he stepped off the curb, heedless of the traffic.

This sentence lacks the sense of character of the first and trails off with an afterthought that weakens it.

This sentence is more efficient and impactful…

• JIM: He stepped off the curb and was hit by a car.

In the mouth of a hesitant character it might sound something like this…

• JIM: He…  well, he stepped off the curb.  (BEAT) And he was hit.

The shorter, punchier sentence is always to be preferred over longer rambling sentences (even where the characterisation calls for a little bit of ramble).

The two most important parts of a sentence of dialog are the beginning and the end.  In a sense, we do well to think about sentences in terms of setup and payoff.  When we emphasise the beginning of the sentence we emphasise the setup and elaborate upon it as payoff.

• JIM:     George is acting crazy; he’s been muttering about spies all morning and now he’s talking to the water cooler!

In the above sentence we know what or to whom the sentence refers; George.  Everything else is elaboration.

When we emphasise the end of a sentence we raise a question in the setup and pay it off by answering it at the end (creating a kind of micro-suspense).

• JIM:     He’s been muttering about spies all morning and now he’s talking to the water cooler.  This insane behaviour just isn’t like George.

At times it pays to place the emphasis in the middle of the sentence, creating suspense and then providing an elaboration.

• JIM:  He’s acting crazy, so unlike George; talking to the water cooler and muttering about spies.

Interestingly, the majority of sentences in published plays and screenplays (50%) emphasize the end of the sentence.  While the remaining 50% are made up of sentences that place the emphasis at the beginning or middle of the sentence.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise, though.  In dialog, the end of the sentence provides the impetus for the reaction provided by the next character’s line.

The Importance of the last word

Dialog (like acting) is more often about reaction than not.  Each spoken line is an action that results in a reaction from another participant in the conversation.  As such it is important NOT to bury the point that will illicit the next line of dialog either at the beginning or somewhere in the middle of a sentence.  In dialog (as in life) speakers react to the last word spoken.

• JENNY: You think she killed all of them and then turned the gun on herself?
• KATHY: No.  I think we’re supposed to think that’s what she did.  This was done by someone else.
• JENNY: But who would set up a scene like this?  In such a public space?  Surely, they wouldn’t have time.
• KATHY:  Our perpetrator thrives on pressure.  The limited time would have given the situation extra excitement.
• JENNY:  If that’s the case, then the killer enjoys this kind of thing… and it’s probably not the first time.
• KATHY: Yep.  We’re dealing with a serial killer.

Grammar and Weak Sentences

Attention grabbing sentences are strong.  Beware of sentences that end weakly.  It’s easy to spot a weak sentence if it comes with a little addition after the main point has been made.

• New South Wales is better than Victoria in my opinion.
• In most states, a driver’s license is not granted to a person under the age of eighteen unless there are special circumstances, in which case a license may be granted.

Both of these sentences continue adding words after the point has been made.  Sentences are always stronger when they finish more emphatically.

• In my opinion New South Wales is better than Victoria.
• In most states, people under eighteen can’t get a driver’s license.

Another way that sentences are made weak is through use of the passive rather than active voice.  The passive voice places the emphasis on the thing being acted upon rather than the thing that is acting.

• The cricket ball was hit by the batsman.
• The picnic was enjoyed by the whole family.

It is much stronger and attention grabbing to say…

• The batsman hit the cricket ball.
• The whole family enjoyed the picnic.

Passive voice can be useful if we want to make a character sound pompous and unnatural, but the active voice is always to be preferred in dialog.

Compare

• JIM: I was taken by the soldiers to the prison.

With

• JIM: The soldiers took me to the prison.

Dialog is always improved where we rewrite instances of passive expression in the active voice.

Grammar and Ambiguous Sentences

Ambiguous sentences can be unintentionally funny when they aren’t downright misleading.  Many of these mistakes stem from problems with the placement of verbs.

• SAM : Walking down Main Street, the general store glittered with fresh fallen rain.

Oops.  Did Sam really mean to suggest the general store was taking a walk? Probably not.

• JENNY: Last night I saw my boyfriend in a new dress.

Was the boyfriend wearing a new dress?  Unlikely.

• BAXTER: I can recommend Simon as an excellent employee without any qualification.

Does Baxter mean that Simon is thoroughly unqualified?  Again, no.

We know what the intended meaning is, but the audience can’t help but be forgiven for finding the actual expression amusing.  The problem lies in the placement of the references (the way the verbs are associated with the nouns).  Dangling present participles (-ing words at the beginning of a sentence) often create ambiguous sentences because they do not reference (are not related directly to) an appropriate noun.

• SAM: As I walk down Main Street, the general store glitters with fresh fallen rain.

The walk is now associated with Sam through the pronoun “I” and the general store is left to “glitter with fresh fallen rain” as intended.

• JENNY: I wore a new dress when I saw my boyfriend last night.

The wearing of the dress is now associated with Jenny (through the pronoun “I”) rather than the boyfriend.

• BAXTER: I can sincerely recommend Simon as an excellent employee.

In this case we could have associated “without qualification” with Baxter but even that is freighted with unintended humor (since it suggests Baxter has no qualification to comment).  Eliminating the phrase entirely is the best option here.

These problems are only fixed where every action is associated with a noun identifying the actor.

Sometimes a sentence has the right number of nouns and associated verbs but the order in which they are expressed confuses the sentence meaning.

• MICHAEL: Rain moved the graduation exercises indoors which fell steadily all morning.

Did the indoors fall?  No.

Compare it with

• MICHAEL: The rain fell steadily all morning and the graduation exercises were moved indoors.

And

• MICHAEL: The graduation exercises were moved indoors because the rain fell steadily all morning.

Keeping the correct verb as close as possible to the noun responsible for the action fixes a great many issues with dialog.  

The placement of verbs is not the only contributor to ambiguity in sentences.  Occasionally, adjectives are the culprit.

• JASMINE: Sarah came down the stairs with a new hat on her head, all black velvet.

This time we are dealing with adjectives rather than verbs.  Was Sarah’s head made of black velvet?  No.  We fix this sentence by associating the adjectives with the hat, leaving Sarah to come down the stairs without confusion.

• JASMINE: Sarah came down the stairs wearing a black velvet hat.

Next

We have looked at sentences and how to use an understanding of grammar to improve them.  Next time we’ll examine word choices and some of the rules of dialog.

Copyright Philip Craig Robotham © 2021 .

The post Basic Grammar for Audio Writers Part 3 – Constructing Sentences appeared first on Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama.

This continues my series on the basics of grammar for audio writers.

We looked, in the last essay, at the traditional parts of speech and some ways that understanding them helps us to diagnose problems in our scripts.  This week we are looking at some other ways to think about and classify words.

Simple, compound and complex words

Simple words

Simple words cannot be broken down into component parts.  They tend to be short, like ball, mouse, soft, build, etc.  They can also be long like kangaroo, elevator, and alabaster.

Compound words

Compound words are made up of two or more simple words.  Some are written as a single word (like railway, airport, and daylight).  Others are hyphenated (such as make-believe, or push-button).  Others still are written as two words (such as town hall, post office, and high school).

Complex words

Complex words consist of a main part and one or more subordinate parts.  The subordinate parts are called prefixes if they come before the main part and suffixes if they come after the main part.

Consider the word transformation.  Its main part is “form” and it has two subordinate parts, a prefix “trans-” and a suffix “-ation”.

Complex words are best avoided where possible.  They can make writing unintentionally pompous (especially those words ending in -ation, -osity, -ousness, -ance, -bility, etc.).  Of course, if you are writing a pompous character, then they will be exactly the right choice.

Modifiers

A modifier is a word (or group of words) which expands, restricts, limits, or defines another word (making the meaning more exact).

As we saw in my last article, adjectives modify nouns.  To describe last Tuesday as a cold, raw day, is to give the audience a stronger sense of what kind of day it was.  The adjectives “raw” and “cold” expand and fine-tune the meaning expressed by the word “day”.

Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs.

• JOSEPH: She cooks miserably.
• MARY: (INSULTED, COMING TO HER DEFENSE) I think she’s very clever.
• JOSEPH: I didn’t say she was stupid.  I just meant she doesn’t cook very well.

In the first line the adverb “miserably” modifies the verb “cooks”.

In the second, the adverb “very” modifies the adjective “clever”.

In the third line we can see a third use, where the adverb “very” modifies another adverb “well”.

As noted in the article previous to this, it is usually better to make use of strong, active verbs, and specific nouns than to employ adverbs and adjectives where possible.

Clauses

Clauses, phrases and sentences (and how to get the most out of them in dialog) is the subject of a future article, so I will restrict myself to providing some working definitions here.

A sentence, at a minimum, has a subject (something the sentence is about) and a predicate (the part of the sentence containing a verb and telling us something about the subject) and forms a complete thought.  It may or may not include an object (the thing that the verb is acting upon).

A sentence, at its simplest, might be “He sits”, complete, in and of itself.  The subject is “he” and the predicate is “sits”.

A simple sentence with an object contained in the predicate might be “He hit the ball”.  The subject is “he”.  The predicate is “hit the ball” and contains the verb “hit” and the object (being affected by the verb) “the ball”.

Clauses differ from sentences in that they are not complete thoughts.  Look at the following example…

• “after the train stopped at the station.

It has a subject “the train” and a predicate “stopped at the station”, but it is not a complete thought.  Something is missing.  To complete the thought we could add some words at the beginning and it would become complete sentence.

• “She bought some cigarettes after the train stopped at the station.”

A clause may contain all the elements of a sentence but is dependent on another part of the sentence to make complete sense.  While it could stand alone, the presence of a preceding word connecting it to another part of the sentence helps us identity it as a clause. Words such as “although, because, since, while, after, where, when, which, who, that, if, whenever, wherever, why, or, else, whether, yet, and but” are among the most common.

Phrases

Phrases are groups of related words without subject and predicate.  In the same way that a clause can be part of a sentence, a phrase can be part of a clause or sentence.

An example of a phrase might be “under the bed”.  It has neither a subject, nor a predicate, and it is definitely not a complete idea.

The most common type of phrase is the prepositional phrase.  A prepositional phrase is introduced by a preposition such as to, in, for, after, above, below, beside, by, except, from, at, among, into, like, near, on, over, through, toward, under, upon, with, without, etc.

We shouldn’t be afraid of phrases in dialog.  We use them frequently in everyday speech.  As such they are sometimes the best choice.

• MAX:   Where did you put my scarf?
• BOB:    On the table.
• MAX:   Oh, right.  Thanks.

Simple, compound, and complex sentences

Like a word, a sentence can be simple, compound, or complex.

A simple sentence cannot be broken down into clauses.

• MAX: The shareholder’s report is due on Friday.

A compound sentence consists of two or more clauses that can stand by themselves.  They are tied together by a conjunction (such as and, or, or but).

• BOB: The shareholder’s report is complete, but I should append my sources to it.

A complex sentence has a main sentence (or independent clause) that can stand alone, plus one or more dependent clauses that rely on the main clause to give them meaning.

• MAX:   Give me the report, before I’m forced to hurt you out of impatience and frustration.

A complex sentence usually expresses a complex idea.  As a result, it is often more difficult to read and understand than the others.  They have their place, but where the writing feels confusing or difficult to understand, it can be helpful to look for the presence of complex sentences and break them down into simple and compound sentences.

Back to the Verbs – Verb forms

As the most powerful element in communication, it should come as no surprise, that verbs can also be among the most complex.

Verbs come in a variety of forms.

Infinitive

The simplest form of the verb is the infinitive.  It consists of the preposition to, followed by the stem of the verb.

• To strive
• To seek
• To find

It is often suggested that you should never split an infinitive by placing a word between the preposition and the verb stem e.g. “to boldly go”.  Personally, I think that’s nonsense and blame this belief on Samuel Johnson who, unlike those who codified the grammar of most of the worlds written languages, chose to do so without consultation with other scholars and prioritized the sentence structures of French and Latin over those of common English speech.

Split your infinitives if you so desire.  And if anyone complains, tell them an Australian English teacher gave you permission.  Just be aware that, if you do split your infinitive, you are likely to do so with an adverb (and adverbs can, potentially, weaken your point).

Tense

Tense is the form of a verb telling us when the action takes place – present, past, future.

Where the basic verb is “to see”, the present tense is “I see”, the past tense is “I saw” and the future tense is “I shall/will see”.  It is the basic way a writer directs a reader, backward, forward or toward the present moment.

Generally when writing for audio drama we want our lines to be as immediate as possible.  The preference, therefore, even when dealing with a reminiscence, is to aim to use the present tense.

• TIM: (TO THE ASSEMBLED POLICE) I headed for Joe’s place next.  (BEAT) So, I’m injured.  Badly limping up to his front gate.  Just as I swing it open, I hear a snuffling noise and the largest dog I’ve ever seen leaps at me baring its teeth and scaring what little life remains out of me.

Participle

English verbs have two participles.  The present participle is easy and ends in -ing.

• Singing, shooting, fighting, slicing, etc.

The past participle is a little more complex and usually ends in -ed, -d, -t, -en or -n.

• Danced, heard, kept, written, seen.

Principal parts

In verbs, the principal parts are those basic forms of the verb from which the others are, most frequently, derived; the present tense, the past tense, and the past participle.

One way to identify the correct form of these principal parts is to form a sentence with the verb beginning “I…”, “Yesterday I…”, and “I have just…”.

• I see.  I kill.  I bake.  I walk. (present)
• Yesterday I saw.  Yesterday I killed.  Yesterday I baked.  Yesterday I walked. (past)
• I have just seen.  I have just killed.  I have just baked.  I have just walked. (past participle)

Past and past participle verbs are formed, typically by adding -ed, -d, -t, -en, or -n (as above), but there are numerous irregular verbs as well (drove, went, swam, swum) and these can be quite a challenge to get right.

When writing dialog an understanding of the principal parts can be quite useful.  Educated characters and characters from an upper-class background have usually mastered the irregular verbs and would rarely, if ever, make a mistake using them.

Less well-educated characters, or those who were not raised with English as their primary language, or those raised in a more working-class environment, are prone to add the wrong endings to words.

• JACK: (LOFTILY TO THE CROWD) I have just swum the English Channel for the third time.
• BILL: (HECKLING) Is that right, mate?  Well, I swimmed it meself, once.  Not the whole of it, ‘course, but enough to not be terrible impressed by the likes o’ you.

Even to the native-born, it can be difficult to navigate the irregular verbs in English.  Keeping a

Dictionary handy for the tricky ones is well worth the effort.

Word Order

Word order has a huge effect on the meaning of sentences.  As we close this article, take a moment to read each of the following eight sentences.  By moving one word to a new position each time, the meaning of the sentence is drastically altered.

When you discover a sentence that is unclear, ambiguous, or doesn’t quite capture your meaning, it is worthwhile to go back and check if a rearrangement of the word order doesn’t salvage it.  Sometimes a rewrite is required, of course, but some care with word order can save a great deal of time.

• Only the police officer ordered me to take the weapon.
• The only police officer ordered me to take the weapon.
• The police officer only ordered me to take the weapon.
• The police officer ordered only me to take the weapon.
• The police officer ordered me only to take the weapon.
• The police officer ordered me to only take the weapon.
• The police officer ordered me to take only the weapon.
• The police officer ordered me to take the only weapon.

Next

Now that the basic definitions are in place we can begin to discuss the construction of sentences, in particular sentences that form dialog.  That’s where we’ll pick up next time and we’ll look at how to use sentences (and their grammar) to achieve particular effects in a script.

Copyright Philip Craig Robotham © 2021 .

The post Basic Grammar for Audio Writers Part 2 – More Definitions appeared first on Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama.

A while back I was looking at Aristotle’s poetics and thinking about how they applied to audio drama writing.  I worked my way through the first 19 chapters and then came to a grinding halt.  The 20^th chapter was about grammar – specifically ancient Greek grammar.  Besides being irrelevant (since its discussion concerned a language I have no interest in), the chapter basically stole my enthusiasm for continuing with the exploration.  But the more I’ve thought about it, the more a short exploration of grammar has come to recommend itself to me.

You see, I never learned grammar at school.  I just happen, like every Australian my age, to have been at school during the years when grammar was dropped from the curriculum in Australia.

This essay is for those, who like me were either taught English during the years that grammar was dropped from the curriculum or who may never have been taught it. 

You can still write (and well) without a formal understanding of grammar, of course.  Particularly if you have a good ear for the way people speak in real life (and you understand the rules of punctuation).  But grammar is useful, among other things, for understanding how to repair sentences that have broken down and need to be “fixed”.

I came to grammar late.  I wasn’t taught it at school, and I always felt at a disadvantage because of it.  It wasn’t until I began studying other languages at university (German, Japanese, Hebrew, and Greek – none of which I am any good at) that I actually had a chance to learn grammar and discover its usefulness.

I promise that I will unpack the relevance of this for improving audio scriptwriting before we’re through, but to start with, I want to examine the basics.

THE PARTS OF SPEECH

For many of my vintage, grammar is an unknown country.  A scary place full of esoteric labels and rules and cultural practices that we easily fall afoul of.  And like visiting another country, grammar takes years of immersion to really understand (multiple volumes have been filled with the detail of English grammar).  However, the basics aren’t that difficult. 

To change the metaphor, understanding grammar is a little like learning to drive a car.  You don’t need to be an expert in the combustion engine, and torque, and the way the parts must be tuned, in order to drive a car.  There exists a bare minimum that you must know (and a great deal more that you could know) but the minimum will suffice to make driving possible.

To drive, you need to know three things.

1. The car’s controls (brake, accelerator, gear-shift, steering wheel, lights, indicators, mirrors, wipers, ignition, etc.)
2. The purpose and operation of those controls (speed up, turn, slow-down and stop, etc.)
3. The rules and techniques of driving (right of way, traffic signals, speed limits, how to drive in a straight line, turn, parallel park, etc.).

The minimum understanding of grammar needed by the writer isn’t that different.

1. The basic parts of speech
2. What the parts of speech accomplish
3. That rules govern their use.

So, this is my primer on English grammar, for those, who like me, might find such a thing useful.

Let’s begin with the parts of speech, namely: verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections.

Verbs

Verbs are action words. They reveal what someone or something did (active verbs).  What was done to someone or something (passive verbs).  They also reveal its tense; when something happened (in the past, present, future, or if it is occurring right now).

• John hit (active, in the past) vs John was hit (passive, in the past)
• John hits (active, in the present) vs John is hit (passive, in the present)
• John will hit (active, in the future) vs John will be hit (passive, in the future)
• John is hitting (right now) vs John is being hit (passive, right now)

Good verbs (vivid and striking) bring writing to life (particularly if they are active – verbs are always stronger and more arresting when they are active).

• Billy slugged Bobby.
• The tires squealed to a stop.
• The wind warbled through the trees.
• The surf tore at the breakwater.

Nouns

Nouns are the names of people, places, or things (including ideas, qualities, or actions).

There are two types:

Proper nouns (names, always capitalized, that denote particular instances rather than groups) such as Daniel, Melbourne, Apollo Bay, Jane Eyre.

Common nouns (all other nouns, without capital letters, that denote groups or categories) such as man, woman, donkey, city, water, book.

Adjectives

Adjectives describe nouns.  They are the primary way we add meaning to (or modify the meaning of) nouns.  By adding an adjective we expand our understanding of the noun in some way.

• An outrageous man.
• An antique motor car.
• A cruel child.

Sometimes nouns are used as adjectives.

• A woman driver.
• Christmas decorations.
• Bedroom furniture.

Adverbs

Like adjectives expand our understanding of nouns, adverbs tell us something about verbs (indicating why, how, where or when the action takes place).  Without adjectives, actions are very general and vague.

• He stood.
• She sang.
• The car ran.

Add an adverb and the phrase becomes far more specific, and easier to visualize.

• He stood impatiently.
• She sang badly.
• The car ran poorly.

Most adverbs are formed by adding -ly to an adjective.  But some are formed differently; how, where, when and very, today, here, often, then, somewhere, nowhere and never.

Simple adverbs can be used to begin a sentence (referring back to what came previously)

• He watched television.  Then we just talked.
• The movie was awful.  Never have I  see worse.

Pronouns

A pronoun takes the place of a name, usually the name of something or someone recently mentioned (for example, he, she, and it).  The pronoun eliminates awkward repetition of the noun.

• When Martha came to work at the old brownstone, she changed many things.
• When Martha came to work at the old brownstone, it was badly in need of renovation.
• When Martha first came to work for Jim as his housekeeper, he seemed afraid of her.  He would lock himself in his study until she had completed her duties.

Martha is referred to by the pronoun she;  Jim, by the pronoun he; and the old brownstone by the pronoun, it.

There are many kinds of pronouns, but the most common are personal, relative, and indefinite pronouns.

Personal pronouns are specific and include I, me, we, us, he, him, she, her, you, it, they, them.

Relative pronouns tie sentence parts together and include who, which, whom, that, whose, of which, etc.

Indefinite pronouns are more general and include anybody, everybody, one, any, everyone, other, all everything, several, few, etc.

Prepositions

Prepositions connect the thing that is acting in the sentence (the thing to which the verb belongs – also known as the subject of the sentence) to other words in the sentence (including the object – the thing that is acted upon). 

Ten propositions account for 95 percent of all those used in writing.  These key prepositions are with, from, to, for, on, by, of, at, in, and like.

A prepositional phrase includes the preposition, the noun, and any added obejcts.

• “on the table”.
• “at the side of the road”
• “by the stream”

Conjunctions

Words that connect other words, phrases, and sentences are called conjunctions.  These include and, but, for, although, as, since, because, when, and while.

An example of conjunctions connecting words can be found in H.M.S. Pinafore…

• There stood his sisters and his cousins and his aunts.

An example of phrases being connected would include…

• He hated her with a passion, but he was drawn to her despite, or perhaps because, of that hatred.

While taught as bad grammar by many (if not most teachers), it is not unheard of, in dialog, for sentences to sometimes begin with a conjunction (joining them to a previous, but interrupted, idea or connecting an afterthought to what has gone before).

• But I didn’t do it.  I never left the house.  And I’d know, wouldn’t I?

Interjections

These are words or syllables that stand-alone, unconnected (grammatically) to those around them.  Examples include: Ah! Oh! Well! Eh?  Huh?  Phooey!  Etc.

Using the parts of speech to diagnose problems with dialog

People do not use perfect grammar in their day-to-day speech.  For this reason, alone we could be forgiven for wondering what relevance grammar has to the writing of dialog.  Hopefully, this will whet your appetite to stay with me in these essays.  Before I go, I want to leave you with two tips regarding issues that an understanding of the parts of speech can help the script-writer with. 

Have you ever felt that your dialog has come off a little weak, but you can’t quite put your finger on the problem?  While I want to wrap this particular essay up shortly, I did want to quickly identify two ways that understanding the parts of speech helps us diagnose problems in our dialog.

Firstly, there is a kind of “order of importance” to the parts of speech.  The best word to express a given idea is usually a verb, the next best is a noun, the next after that is an adjective or an adverb. (The remaining four parts are grammatical machinery and not really important for this discussion).

To illustrate, read the following sentences.

• GEORGE – I ache to be a writer [emphasizing the verb]
• GEORGE – I constantly ache to be a writer [employing an adverb]
• GEORGE – My ambition is to be a writer [emphasizing the noun]
• GEORGE – I am an aspiring writer [employing an adjective]

It is clear that the strongest, most arresting sentence is the first.  If your dialog feels a little weak, check whether an adverb or adjective is draining some of its strength.  Then check whether you have expressed the idea with a strong verb in place of an emphasis on nouns.

I am constantly caught out by how often I sabotage my writing by constructing sentences of dialog around nouns instead of strong verbs.

Secondly, specific nouns and verbs tend to make meaning clear, while generic nouns and verbs modified by adjectives and adverbs tend to obscure or muddy meaning.  If your writing feels vague and muddy, chances are it is due to the choices you have made regarding nouns and verbs.

Consider the following sentence…

• TEACHER:        Forcefully utilize a large nail.

By using an adverb attached to a weak or generic verb (“forcefully utilize”), the language already feels forced and artificial.  The adjective attached to the more generic noun (“large nail”) makes the line weaker still.

Now, compare it to…

• TEACHER:        Hammer the spike.

The more specific verb, “hammer”, without being weakened by the addition of an adverb, and the more specific noun, “spike”, create a much stronger and clearer sentence.  The sentence is more vivid (easier to picture), less ambiguous, more natural, and more forceful (impactful).

Next Time

Next time we’ll take a look at another way of classifying words that is helpful to our writing, explore what phrases, clauses, and common sentence types are, and take a deeper look at verbs.

Copyright Philip Craig Robotham © 2021 .

The post Basic Grammar for Audio Writers Part 1 – The Parts appeared first on Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama.