Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Elements of Writing



There are eight parts of speech. Can you identify them? Words are based on these eight parts of speech. They are:
noun, pronoun, adverb, adjective, preposition, conjunction, interjection


noun - a person, place or thing.
verb - asserts something about the subject. It is the action of the sentence.
pronoun - a substitute for a noun: he, she, it, which, etc. (tricky these pronouns are. Do your research!)
adverb - modifies a verb,  adjective, phrase or clause
adjective - modifies a noun or pronoun
preposition -  links the nouns, pronouns, phrases to other words in a sentence
conjunction -  more tricky words: but, and, or, for, so, yet
interjection - is a word added for emotion! For excitement. (Remember schoolhouse Rock) Yay! Aww... Hey! Eeek!




Pronoun cases (subjective, possessive, objective)
verb tenses: active or passive?
Can you pick out phrases and clauses? Would you know how to punctuate each?
Then there’s the punctuation usage. (Yes, I over use the exclamation mark!)


All this to become a writer? Is it even worth all the effort for you to put into it? For me it wasn’t, but for others, they’ve went on to great success in the writing world and have become published authors. I could go on and on about perseverance, and hanging in there, and push yourself to the limit. But after nine years of persevering, mentoring, teaching other folk the craft of writing, and giving my all to the writing world, it took one bad crop to spoil every ounce of hard work that I put in and now, I don’t write like I used to. I don’t really care to write anymore. No more writing site, no more writing friends and colleagues, I have within my grasp, a blog. That’s it.


Sure I love writing my blog posts, I write poetry also, but a grammarian? I have never reached that level. I wrote because I loved to write! Knowledge was a bonus, but no one is perfect. I’ll add that if you’re going for perfection in your writing, then you’re going at it all wrong.


The link provided for Grammar, gives an individual rundown on each of these essential elements. You will need to study these elements whether in a class, course, or by other means: library, internet, so that you know the proper way to write a sentence. To write a paragraph, you will surely want knowledge of how to write the sentence first. Improper usage of the words can make you appear not very knowledgeable in a field where you need knowledge.


There are many courses out there for you, whether for a fee: Writers Digest offers many seminars on writing for a costly fee, then there are sites for a low fee, but not many active classes so people run away. Then there is you, the writer; ready willing and able to go at this writing biz, full steam ahead.


My best advice is this: Find a site that suits YOUR needs. Whether you work alone on gaining grammar and writing knowledge, then post to the writing site to help you get some critical feedback, but be very careful of becoming ‘friends’ in the community setting. Just as in real life, they may be there to help you but they can also be the ones who put a halt to your dream, out of jealousy? Envy? Whatever the case may be, protect your heart before oozing it to the public, for sure you’ll meet with a dead end.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the quick lesson. I get rapped on the knuckles a lot by the Grammar Queens. :) I always need to remind myself of the rules!

Cheers,
Anna Soliveres

joni said...

Your welcome Anna!
I'm no grammar queen, per se, but I'm always on the lookout for grammar errors!

Hey, we're writers, we all make them. :)

Happy Writing