Rhetoric

An Element of Fiction

Rhetoric, as an element of fiction, is another and perhaps not as put-offing word for grammar; in other words: the study of how to use language effectively to communicate. One meaning of the word still is, “a book about grammar and use of language”, one sample of which is William Whyte’s An American Rhetoric, the grammar that John Gardner unequivocally recommends to read and learn and take to heart.

This said, what I’ll cover in this element of fiction is how writers, critics, and grammarians view the effective use of language.

For another great definition of the word, I turn (as so often) to Jacques Barzun: “Rhetoric is the craft of setting down words and marks right.”

To which Philip Gerard adds, “Grammar is not a set of arbitrary rules concocted by a committee in Zurich. It’s a system whereby words can be combined in the head to make magic.” Which, to me, is another wonderful definition.

Back to Barzun, “Rhetoric shows you how to put words together so that the reader not simply may but must (my emphasis) grasp your meaning.”

Another brilliant grammarian, E.B. White, contends, “English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment, and education — sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.” Oh, well.

Says Lu Chi in Wen Fu, “I take the rules of grammar and guides to good language and clutch them to heart and mind.”

Jorge Luis Borges, with a little tongue in cheek I suspect, “There is nothing more human (that is, less mineral, vegetal, animal, and even angelical) than grammar.”

And please heed Barzun when he says, “You may think the sense of motion and pleasure depends on the subject matter. That is not so. It depends on tone, rhythm, sentence structure, selection, and organization.” In other words, it depens on well-applied elements of fiction, I might add.

John Gardner advises, “Before stirring an inch in the direction of fiction, is a review of the fundamentals. No one can hope to write well if he has not mastered — absolutely mastered (my emphasis) — the rudiments: grammar and syntax, punctuation, diction, sentence variety, paragraph structure, and so forth.

“With the proper help and the proper book, any good student can cover the fundamentals, once and for all, in two weeks. The proper book, in my opinion, is W.W. Watt’s An American Rhetoric, the most accurate and efficient book on composition available, also the most interesting and amusing.”

Back to E.B. White, “The Elements of Style was Will Strunk’s attempt to cut the vast tangle of English rhetoric down to size and write its rules and principles on the head of a pin.”

John Fowles expresses his very English sentiment, “If you write, then surely you must respect things like grammar. Grammar is a bore as an academic subject, but it’s the basic good manners of writing.”

William Zinsser summarizes this element beautifully, “Unlike medicine or the other sciences, writing has no new discoveries to spring on us. We’re in no danger of reading in our morning newspaper that a breakthrough has been made in how to write a clear English sentence — that information has been around since the King James Bible. We know that verbs have more vigor than nouns, that active verbs are better than passive verbs, that short words and sentences are easier to read than long ones, that concrete details are easier to process than vague abstractions.”

Ursula K. Le Guin also stresses the importance of grammar, “Our standards for writing are higher and more formal than for speaking. They have to be, because when we read, we don’t have the speaker’s voice and expression and intonation to make half-finished sentences and misused words clear. We have only the words. They must be clear. And to be clear to as many readers as possible, they have to follow the generally agreed-upon rules, the shared rules, of grammar and usage.”

And more poetically, Karen Elizabeth Gordon, “I see grammar as the choreographer of our language.” What a great sentiment.

The original Bible on style and grammar, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style” also makes a clear summary statement of the fruits of grammar, “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, and a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

John Gardner suggests, “Dropping commas is all right except if one’s purpose is to increase the rush of the sentence and thus suggest emotion not justified by what is being said.”

Quips Le Guin, “People who don’t worry at least a little about semicolons aren’t likely to be writers.”

Henry James is obviously a writer then, “The true measure of civility is the proper use of the semicolon.”

Barzun adds, “The semicolon’s power to hold apart equal portions of thought more sharply than the comma and not so sharply as the period is very useful.”

“If you aren’t interested in punctuation,” says Le Guin, “or are afraid of it, you’re missing out on a whole kit of the most essential, beautiful, elegant tools a writer has to work with.”

She then adds, “Very long sentences have to be carefully and knowledgeably managed, solidly constructed; their connections must be clear, so that they flow, carrying the reader along easily.”

She also suggests, “To make a rule to ‘never use the same word twice in one paragraph,’ or to state flatly that repetition is to be avoided, is to throw away one of the most valuable tools of narrative prose.”

“I would argue,” says Stephen King, “that the paragraph, not the sentence, is the basic unit of writing — the place where coherence begins and words stand a chance of becoming more than mere words.”

Philip Gerard also stresses the importance of good grammar, “If you can take control of your sentence, then you can write your whole book. There is no such thing as an unimportant sentence: Each sentence must contribute to the effect of the book. Each subject — the doer of the action — ties into your greater subject; every predicate — the action itself — is a mini-drama. Every direct object completes a thought.”

All this said, I’ll leave you with a great Elmore Leonard quip, “A piece in Time magazine said that in my books grammar was irrelevant. Actually, it’s not irrelevant — it’s expendable. Out it goes if it gets in the way.”

And if you have not had enough grammar talk by now, pay your nearest grammar store a visit.

© Wolfstuff