Building blocks of writing

Whenever students are asked to write even on a familiar topic, they draw a blank partly because they lack the ideas and partly because they falter in understanding the mechanics of writing skill. The students also feel reluctant to write in their own language. Moreover, their aversion to invest time and effort, which are the prerequisites for learning any skill, happens to be the major impediment.

When the insecurities are ossified either by teachers’ discouraging feedback or by students’ own lack of enthusiasm, a strong demotivation to writing skill is natural. Nevertheless, learning about the building blocks of powerful writing is the best way to get inspired.

The panacea is to build the writing habit in students. It can be achieved first by making them feel comfortable as writers in English because their willing participation will lend verve to whatever they write.

As John Stuart Mill states in his A System of Logic that the parts of speech represent fundamental categories of human thought, a writer’s addictive use of adjectives or adverbs reflects his personality and thought process. In the 1995 movie, Outbreak, Kevin Spacey’s character confers to a fellow character: “It’s an adverb, Sam. It’s a lazy tool of a weak mind.”

The extravagant use of adjectives particularly in close vicinity reeks of sychophantic undertones the writer wants to camouflage, particularly when the belief in the argument is weak or sincerity of thought, absent. However, when adjectives are deployed prudently, they lend strength to the sentence and save the writer’s style from becoming ornate.

When one hasn’t submitted enough data through specific nouns and active verbs to convey the idea, one gravitates towards hurling the epithets ostentatiously. It happens mostly with attributive adjectives. Fowler quotes a line in his Modern English Usage: “The operation needs considerable skill and should be performed with proper care.” The adjectives “considerable” and “proper” are redundant, nay, they weaken the writer’s point. Voltaire warns: “The adjective is the enemy of the noun.”

Students must know there are two kinds of adjectives: attributive ones usually precede the noun they qualify, while predicative adjectives follow “to be” or similar linking verbs e.g. become and seem. One can be answerable to one’s boss but not an answerable employee. “Answerable” is exclusively a predicative adjective. Albeit, most adjectives work both ways: They are a happy family; the family looked happy. Every authentic dictionary uses these labels with adjectives.

Students must be vigilant on the use of comparative and intensifying modifiers with supposedly “absolute” adjectives like perfect, unique, equal, and the ilk, as most of the grammarians aver that “more unique/perfect” is incorrect. But exceptions are always there and in language, exceptions pave the way for novelty and growth: a line from the US Constitution “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union....”; George Orwell’s classic “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

One must strive to lasso the exact word to avoid redundancy which is sometimes spawned by improper use of adverbs. How many times does one notice such sentences: “she smiled happily” or “he wailed inconsolably”? The adverbs “happily” and “inconsolably” are redundant because the emotional state of the subject is already implied by the verb. Actually, the adverb is the sworn enemy of the writing mantra “show, don’t tell”. For a concise and more dramatic writing, always swap verb+adverb with a stronger verb.

It doesn’t mean the adverbs be ostracised from writing. Their use varies per different writing genres. In description and narration, they must be abandoned because here we have to show, not tell whereas in argumentative writing they are resorted to, to enhance the force and impact of argumentation. However, in précis writing, they had better be replaced with stronger verbs.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 12^th, 2024.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.