When I was a very little girl my Uncle gave me my first grammar lesson. I listened intently and stored away my newfound knowledge for future reference. “…Two noons make a noun…”
In the sixth grade we learned about nouns and when asked if we knew what they were, I raised my hand and with all authority stated, “…Two noons make a noun…”.
A few students giggled because it sounded funny. Thankfully my teacher just smiled and the moment passed without humiliation!
When scribing today’s Telling Tale I found myself undergoing another lesson in grammar. Noting I had used the word ‘swiftly’ not five, but ten times, I took refuge in my thesaurus in desperate search of several words to replace at least half of these. I came across the words ‘updraft’ and ‘down draft’ and noted the peculiarity that ‘updraft’ was one word whilst ‘down draft’ was written as two. I called my editor and the lesson began. It was short and to the point. ‘Up is a preposition and can be appended to another word; ‘down’ in this context is an adverb and thus listed as a word in itself. There you have it. Your grammar lesson for the day. Gramercy!
Today’s Telling Tale has a lot of action and adventure in it and despite being only 1761 words in length, took four hours to write! When writing action and speed, one creates the intensity of what is going on by slowing down the description and inserting more detail. It’s a very effective technique, but can be quite labour intensive; there’s a fine line between creating drama and maintaining interest.
A word to the wise. Forget technique, write the story!
Anika King 