How do you construct your sentences?

Do you mean how do I come up with what I think of as my peculiar grammatical habits or my word choice? Not that what you actually meant matters all that much, since I'm so arrogant that I believe you want to know the answers to both questions and I will thus unhesitatingly answer them. In great, boring detail.

But first? A bunch of long and boring exposition about my peculiar background/history with the English language. Because it is not physically possible for me to use less than fifty words to say the exact same thing a sentence of three words could. (And, as an aside, if you could see my Word document right now you'd see green lines yelling at me for blithely and willfully writing two fragments back-to-back.)

My peculiar grasp of grammar comes from three four five six-and-a-half sources.

First, the prestigious prep school that I went to didn't believe in teaching grammar. No. Seriously. Up until I hit High School (my school being a K-12 institution) I never really had a teacher sit me down and go: "This is a verb, this is a noun. This is what a subject is. This is what an adjective is. This is how you use a comma. This is how you use a semi-colon. This is an adverb. This is what an adverb can modify. There must be subject-verb agreement." My primary education was, unfortunately, during a time of educational 'reform' -- in particular, the "show, don't tell" approach to learning important things like, oh, grammar. And, sadly, this state continued up until my Sophomore year when my favorite English teacher took one look at the gaping grammatical holes in his students' work and spent the rest of the semester doing remedial grammar classes (as well as the other, required work).

Second, I was lucky enough to be born 'smart'; my IQ is pretty good, I can learn the basics of most things pretty easily -- enough to fake knowledge well enough to seem actually intelligent. My reading comprehension is insanely good; I was reading (and understanding) Shakespeare when I was about 8 -- didn't like it all that much, but I could read it and understand the basic crux of what was going on. And since I didn't really talk much (or interact with people) and my parents were hitting that rocky place in their relationship when I was naught but a wee lad and thus yelled a lot, I spent a lot of time reading (Ahh, escapism). Which is, really, why a lot of my stuff sounds so similar to good, published authors. I'm sure that if I had a better long term memory I could actually go back through my fics and point out which I author I was reading when I wrote that particular fic; especially the early fics. So a lot of my actual grammar skills have been learned through, well, osmosis. I did, in fact, learn grammar through "showing" -- but this "showing" method of learning only gave me a basic outline of what grammar really is. I have a map of the country of Grammdonia, but lack anything beyond the basic shape of the country and a few very peculiar, isolated, landmarks. (As an unrelated side note, this is also how I learned how to spell. There were no phonics for me to become hooked on -- which spared me the hassle of having to go to PA (Phonics Anonymous) meetings and seek help for my addiction to spelling words like they sound and not as they actually are, well, spelled.)

Third, my actual knowledge of the...not nuts and bolts, but the artifacts, I suppose, of grammar -- the direct object, the passive voice, the pluperfect tense, subject-verb agreement, what a subjunctive is -- is all due to my fascination with languages. I've got three solid years of Latin under my belt and five-and a-half of French (and a burning desire to learn German, but that's just because I'm in love with the word seigen, which is pronounced kind of like "sch-VEE-ghen"). True, I can't remember vocab, and I need both a dictionary and a cheat sheet of verb conjugations and noun declensions if I want to translate Latin, and my French accent is just truly atrocious, as is my listening comprehension/speaking abilities/lexicon. But still. I remember enough of the grammar to be able to look at what I'm writing in English and at least recognize the component parts of a sentence now. Although my word order is, indeed, quite funky, largely because I think I still have forgotten remnants of non-English grammar floating about my head. This is because English is, really, quite poor grammatically and it can be a hell of a lot more fun to write sentences in Latin (though not French; writing or reading or listening to French is truly painful for me). French and Latin have much richer grammatical tool boxes at their disposals; they can do things like drop subjects and clearly indicate direct objects and have ways of indicating a plural 'you' and a 'he' different than the subject, and they actually have perfect and imperfect cases to indicate the duration of past events -- something that I do truly wish English possessed, because it'd make my life so much easier. On the other hand, their nouns have gender, so I think I'll stick with English.

Fourth, I've recently been reading a lot of "nitpickers" grammar guides -- books like "Lapsing Into a Comma" (Bill Walsh) and "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" (Lynne Truss). Which are really so much easier to digest than things like "The Elements of Style" (Strunk) or "Woe is I" (Patricia O'Connor). So, now, in the waning years of my academic life, I'm suddenly gaining an insight into how the English language is actually put together. Which is why, now, I'm (a) over using the comma, (b) carrying on a not-so-secret love affair with the semi-colon, and (c) always putting my punctuation outside of quotes like "this one". Because it just looks better that way to me. Of course now I'm just proving that a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing indeed, since after reading those books I'm suddenly quite self-conscious about my grammar usage -- that is, except for when I'm just jumping blindly into the fic, shouting "Wheee!" and letting the consequences damn me to the blackest pits of Grammar Hell.

Fourth, part b, I've also started reading a lot of fannish Meta on things like grammar and language use, and that's certainly influenced a lot of my grammar usage. Because reading Meta essays is like combining 'Fourth (part a)' and 'Second'; I get educated and I get inspired by the writing styles of others. And then I get self-conscious again and write terrible, awkward fics.

Fifth, despite all of this, the way I construct the word order of a sentence is ultimately, mostly, a reflection of my personal speech patterns: hesitant, choppy, fragmented, filled with qualifications and asides. As I mentioned before, I'm not really very verbal. I tend to freeze up and stammer when I have to speak in front of large groups of people. But I'm also a philosopher and I've surrounded myself with intelligent, argumentative, highly verbal friends and we have long, crazy, convoluted discussions on many, many topics, filled with tangents and asides so numerous that we often have to preface them with 'Okay, conversational sign post moment' just to keep track of what's going on. Which is, really, why my sentences are both very, very long and full of sometimes rambling interjections (and why said interjections are often not culled from the truly important bits of the sentence and set aside in a neat, little corral). Because sometimes I have thoughts or images or whatever that are completely appropriate to the moment but don't fit in nicely to the sentence -- different feel, too explanatory (like this one), just too short and choppy to be really deemed essential knowledge for the reader to have -- which I either like too much or think they add a nice element of depth to leave them out altogether. This is also why you get sentences from me like the last one, where you have to really search to figure out what the hell I'm talking about; and those sentences where, about half-way through, I forget that I haven't typed the subject and just end the sentence. Or, worse, you get sentences where I completely forget the point because I get so sidetracked by the tangents and asides, and you're left with a sort of "WTF?" moment. This is also (partly) why my fics are filled with these little one-word lines and sentences that cut off in the middle of the thought, then repeat that thought in the next line. Because I think like that, in jumps and fits and starts and long, run on sentences that look like they're the grammar equivalent of German words. Although, sometimes, those sentences are actually technical creations that are meant to create a sensation of haste, of pressure, of speed, of movement and pacing, to lead right up to a point. And then stop. And be a contrast. 'Cause I like things like that.

Sixth, and lastly, a lot of my constructions are just personal preference. When I was in High School, I dabbled in debate and sometimes did an event known as Spar -- Spontaneous Argumentation. In this event, each side had something like two minutes to present their side of an argument and then five minutes to go head to head and a minute to wrap things up. So, what was really important, was getting as many points in as fast as you could. This is a trait that's followed me into many aspects of my life. Which is all a preface of explaining why a lot of my sentences are just a bunch of action verbs and exposition strung together like an unruly team of sled dogs. Because I suck at describing actions so I want to get as much of the action out of the way as possible, I want to rush through pretty boring bits of positioning and stage-setting. And it's entirely possible that I have a fear of periods, considering how often I use commas and semi-colons to string together a plethora of distinct-yet-connected moments. Also, I hate reading continual repetition of "he verbed, he verbed, he verbed", or seeing too many sentences in a row start with "he", so I try to avoid that by just going "he verbed, verbed, adjectives, adjectives, verbed, possibly a noun. Verbed. Verbed. Verbed-subject, adjective, indirect object, blah blah blah". Which doesn't really make the story pretty (or easy to read), I'll admit, but anything that lets me imply the subject, or hide it among a bunch of other stuff, makes me happy. Because I just. I can't stand repetition. It's so boring to me, and it's also a holdover from my actual education on writing -- don't start two sentences in a row with the same word (although I don't always adhere to this) and don't start two paragraphs with the same word. It's visually unappealing.

And that's, pretty much, all I can say about the actual, physical structure of my sentences.

Word choice, however, is a lot easier to explain. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I am, at the heart of it all, an artist who can't create actual, tangible pictures. If I could draw like Spub, then it's possible that I wouldn't write nearly as much as I do.

See, I'm an incredibly visual, senses oriented person. The inside of my head is rather like a private movie theater; black most of the time but when I read something good, I experience it in vibrant Technicolor everything -- sight, smell, touch, taste, sound (though, oddly, this is the rarest of the senses that I experience mentally). I can become cold even in the middle of a boiling summer, or become as thirsty and parched as if I was lost in the desert, or feel my heart speed up and my body quiver with adrenaline and excitement. All just because of words; a fact which has continually impressed upon me the utter importance and beauty of words, of language. And I'm just a senses-whore even without this mental playground. Because I'm continually amazed by the stupidest little things, like the way you can pass by a tree for days and days and months and months, walk by its bare branches throughout all of January and February, and see nothing but grey bark and lumpy knots and then, suddenly, without warning, there'll be buds on the tree, little, green, fuzzy things that seem so improbable and innocent. And every day it'll be a different tree, every day it'll be like the kid on the monkey bars who's showing off for his best friend and shouting, "Look at me! Look at me!"

And, God, fall. Oh man. I'm so much in love with everything about the fall that most days are pretty much like one big sensory-fuck. And, oh, I love the little quirks of human life, and the way I can walk down Broadway, or go over to Rockefeller Center and just look at the amazing contrasts of architecture -- like how there are these huge, towering, arrogant sky scrapers and between them are these beautiful, gothic churches, or these tiny little town houses that are all covered in shifting-green vines. And all of my memories are sensory, are embedded in touch, in sight, in smell (oh, God, certain smells just grab me and force me back into such painfully sweet nostalgia; like the smell of oil paints always make me think of the first guy I ever really loved), in taste and, sometimes, in sound. Although, really, I don't 'hear' things very often. I think I'm too busy concentrating on whatever piece of music I'm playing to 'hear' anything. (And I have now realized why deafness seems more terrifying to me than blindness, because I need that noise.)

Right. Okay. Back to the point. Because there was a point there, and that was that my senses are such whores that the world isn't enough, and my imagination is so hyperactive that it'll gleefully oblige the little sluts by creating this shockingly realistic images in my head, images so detailed and perfect that if I could draw or sculpt or create tangible art with my hands I'd spend my entire life trying to capture them, to capture how moonlight falls just so and the clouds drift and curl in just this way.

So maybe it's a good thing that I can't draw.

Anyway, because I can't capture the actual image in my head in hard, concrete lines, I try to use words to get at least the vague outline. Which is, really, where all the strange words come from, where I get the inspiration to contrast such shocking images as "innocent" and "used" in one breath. Because I'm trying to use the gigantic vocabulary that I've built up to tell you all about this image I have, to try and explain the way church bells can make me ache in a fashion that is like a nostalgia for something that never actually existed but was always dreamed about. And there are times when conventional words aren't enough, or the conventional way they're used isn't enough, and I have to twist them until they properly fit. This is why I have to give bizarre characterizations to things like the senses, why sometimes a sentence is just a string of rowdy adjectives that bump and jostle each other like children on a field trip who think the teacher isn't watching. And this may be why I'm able to go into that dark place so easily and lead people into it like some twisted Pied Piper -- it's because I can experience (though usually and thankfully only in brief flashes) those scary moments of humanity, of human darkness.

[As an aside, this is really why I'm always so disappointed with what I've written. Because I don't think it ever manages to convey the image I have in my mind. And this is also why so few of my fics actually have a plot, why they're all really just character pieces of varying lengths. Because when I write fic, I almost never see everything that happens. I usually just see a series of semi-coherent images that need to be bridged, and so anything that isn't an attempt to describe one of my mental home videos is an attempt to get from home video A to home video B. And, really. That doesn't leave a whole lot of room for plot.]

So this urge to describe is mostly why I use the words I use; where the phrases I pull from thin air actually come from; why there is a good chance that at some point you might actually see me seriously use the word "un-light" in an attempt to describe the way a cell can be dark without being gloomy, how there can be just this sort of faint, very low, indirect light -- like light from a corridor, from some peripheral light source -- that can turn everything a sort of comforting grey that isn't dark and depressing at all, but just sort of is, a light that isn't quite enough to make things be seen clearly but isn't absolute darkness, isn't the darkness of despair. But there are a couple of other things that influence my word choice. Although I must warn you now that very little of the actual writing I do is conscious; fic happens to me, usually, I don't happen to it (except in a few very, very rare instances).

The flow of a sentence/paragraph/story always makes me a little more careful about what words I choose -- and by careful, I mean sometimes I take a look at what I've just heaved onto the page and I go, "Hmm, not quite" and find a similar word that has the connotations I know, instinctively, that I want. And a lot of the words/phrases I give to the boys or slip in are words/phrases that I've read and liked; or just phrases that I use a lot or think would be funny in this situation. For example, having Keith think Also--and this was how Keith was sure that he wasn't in his own bed anymore, Toto-- was just too damn funny for me to pass up. Again, my reading material (and my viewing habits and what topics I'm currently interested) leaves little traces of its influence in my writing. I'm more likely to use philosophical terms right now than I would have been a few years ago. And I certainly use 'Eh?' a lot more now than I used to -- largely because of anime and taking Japanese.

So, yeah. That's it.

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As two semi-related notes. One, can't recommend Bill Walsh and Lynne Truss enough. Both are very, very funny and extremely helpful in terms of at least outlining basic punctuation.

Two, the whole "un-light" thing just further illustrates that, in many ways, English is a terribly underdeveloped language. Because there needs to be a word like "un-light", damn it! There needs to be a word that can describe almost-pure-darkness as comforting without resorting to "shadow"-esque words or "gloom"-esque words. Stupid, limited, hamstrung English!

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