SENTENCE VARIATIONS

SENTENCE VARIATIONS

     For next week, take the sentence, "I will always remember you" and try "variations" of the sentence.  After ten minutes thinking about it, I came up with this fairly acceptable version:  "Near far, wherever you are, I believe that my heart will go on."
     Actually, I'm only joking.  But that line from the song would be one "variation" of that sentence.
     This is an exercise at several levels of writing.
     First, of course, it is an exercise in synonyms.  Remember what a synonym is supposed to be:  a word that means (almost) the same thing, such as house, home, hut, castle, mansion, cave, etc.  Obviously, context will eliminate (take away) many of these synonyms, and you can't say of a rich person that he lives in a cave.  Still, synomyms are useful to a writer.
     Second, this is an exercise in syntax:  because the writer must learn to be in control of syntaxt and decide when to put an idea first, middle, or last, etc.
     Third, it's a lesson in grammatical substitution:  that is, the writer must learn when to replace one clause by an adjective, or an adjective by an adverb, one tense by another, etc.  Substitution is possible at all levels.
     In general, I wish you would keep to a single sentence format, although, of course, when you're writing (a song, essay, whatever) you are in control of your purpose, style, etc.  But for the sake of this exercise, try to keep to a single sentence.
     I will start you off, although you probably get the idea by now:
     Remember the model sentence:  "I will think of you always."
    Why not replace "think" with "cherish"?  "I will cherish you always."
     Now I can manufacture many such sentences replacing "think" with synonymic words.  (You must do it, not I!)
     Or:  "I will always think of you."
     So, even without changing words, but rearranging words we have, we can come up with variations.  You can work on that too.
     Or, "Thinking of you will never end for me."  Here, perhaps a little awkward (but declarations of love are sometimes awkward), I changed subjects completely, from "I" to "Thinking of you."  Of course, I also added other parts of the sentence, such as the phrase, "for me" to fit the other change(s) I made.
     But, kidding aside, you can see how that line from the famous song really says, "I will think of you forever."  So there are many things you can do with that line in the same way in the manner of "amplification" or adding material by breaking down each idea in the sentence and then finding substitutions:
     "However far you go from me, however long, whatever the misery I am in, whatever the trouble in my life, whoever I am with at the time, whether I am alone or with one other person or many, and in sickness or health, in good or bad weather, in valleys or on hilltops, in poverty or riches, fortunate or unfortunate, nothing will ever remove you from my heart, I promise.
     So now we have variation and amplification (expansion/expanding) together.
     If you need further advice on this exercise, please email me.  It is due next class session (not tomorrow).  You should aim for many of them, say fifty (is that too many?).  In the classical (old) exercises, the writer reached about 200 variations.
     As I said, this exercise will help you practice at several levels.
     1.  Obviously, you must understand syntax, and how to change word order.
     2.  Also you need a book of synonyms, finding words similar to the word(s) you replace.
     3.  You need practice in amplification:  you should learn how to expand your material, as our student in class showed with her amplification of Winter (which other students failed to do).
     4.  You also need to learn grammatical substitution; when to use an adjective instead of an adverb; an infinitive ("to talk," "to sleep") instead of a gerund (talking, sleeping), etc.  "Remebering you will be forever."  Here I replaced the verb ("remember") with the gerund (remembering).
     Good luck.

As for the word "deluxe," here is what my dictionary says:  "of special elegance [from French, of luxury].  In other words, the meaning, to use two simple words, is "better" not "bigger."  A car can be deluxe and still be small (it has many things, like a James Bond car); a pizza can be deluxe (it has many toppings) and still small (you can order a small, medium, or large deluxe pizza).
     Still, it is good to question words.  The best writers trip up on words.  And, of course, many fine native speakers and writers use words without really knowing what they fully denote (refer to) although they know how to use the words correctly.