Composition Exercises
I will not require these. But you would do well to follow these exercises. If you want me to check them, I'll be glad to.
Here are some suggestions for journal exercises:I will not require these. But you would do well to follow these exercises. If you want me to check them, I'll be glad to.
1. Direct copy of a text. "He came in." = "He came in."
Simply copying paragraphs and pages from a good piece of prose is very useful in imprinting on the mind good style or basic sentence structure.
2. Indirect dialogue as direct dialogue. "He said he was sick." = "'I'm sick,' he said." "'I'm sick,' he sighed."
3. Direct dialogue as indirect dialogue. "'I'm sick,' he said." = "He said he was sick."
Of course, you can always elaborate too: "He shot me a look of misery and lamented how sick he was."
4. Paraphrase. "He said he was sick." = "He claimed to be unwell."
5. Epitome (summary). "He said he had a fever and a cold." = "He said he was sick."
Strictly speaking epitome and summary are different. Epitome keeps the specific language of the original but takes out anything that can be sacrificed and still keep the essential point; while summary generalizes more freely. Epitome is more like condensing a 300 page novel for a weekly journal of 50 pages; summary is like what you read on the back of a book jacket that tells the reader what is the general plot and characters. Both are useful exercises; they force the reader to read a piece several times; understand it, and then find synonymic words to keep the length down.
6. Elaboration. "He said he was sick." = "He had a fever and a cold." Better: "He said he had a fever and a cold and all kinds of vague symptoms he was unable to describe, but which kept him in bed the whole time." (In principle, elaboration is unlimited. See #15)
7. Dialogue elaboration. "He was sick." = "'I am sick," he cried. 'Don't you believe me? I can't drink, I can't keep my food down, I throw up everything I eat, I sneeze constantly, my wife can't stand to be around me. She says my wheezing ruins her television shows when we watch together. Even my dog hides from me. Finally, my children are afraid they'll catch worse colds if they're in my presence.'"
8. Decombination. "The hot pepperoni pizza sizzled on the table." Make this: "The pizza was on the table. It was hot. It had pepperoni topping. It sizzled."
9. Combination.The opposite of the above: "The woman was beautiful. The woman wore earrings. The earrings were made of silver. The earrings dangled to her shoulders." Make this: "The beautiful woman wore silver earrings that dangled to her shoulders."
10. Prose paraphrase (from poetry). "Whose woods these are I think I know / His house is in the village though" (Robert Frost). = "As I journeyed through the woods, I guessed the name of the person who owned them. As it turned out, his house was in the village."
11. Poetic paraphrase (from prose). "I wondered why the English did not teach their children the language. After all, Norwegians and Greeks teach their respective languages to their children!" = "Why can't the English teach their children how to speak / Norwegians learn Norwegian, the Greeks are taught their Greek!" (My Fair Lady).
12. Variation. "I loved that song." = "That song thrilled me." "I was overwhelmed by that song." "That melody enraptured me." "If music be the food of love, play that song again." (Note, I copied the first phrase from Shakespeare; but no-one would call that plagiarism because it's a famous line and I'm clearly referring to it.)
13. Substitution (replacement).
a. Polysyllabic words by monosyllabic (one syllable) words. "That melody enraptured me." = "The tune thrilled me."
b. Monosyllabic words by polysyllabic words. "I would love to have your help." = "I would be particularly honored to receive your benevolent assistance." (The last is also known as periphrasis: that is, saying something in a long-winded way, which is sometimes a sign of bad writing.)
c. Proper nouns by noun phrases. "Bob Miller yelled at the top of his lungs, 'You're fired!'" = "The deceived hot-tempered employer yelled at the top of his lungs."
14. Imitation. "It was a cold day and I huddled underneath the only shelter in the woods." = "It was a hot evening and I cooled myself in front of the sole air conditioner in the house." Imitation need not be exact, so long as most of the sentence structure is kept.
15. Extended elaboration. "He died." = "The feeble aged man, sick now for many months, and barely clinging to life, finally, after making out his will, and croaking out maudlin farewells to his relatives, all of whom expected to be part of the old man's substantial largess when his last will and testament were read in court, reluctantly went the way of all flesh." Another kind of periphrasis, which can be bad writing unless it's used for special effect.
These are 15 ways to practice English. This kind of writing is probably better than more personal writing, because you're consciously making language choices (words, grammar, syntax) and exercising your mind. It takes effort to think of a word to replace another word, or to find another way to write a sentence: "She walked up to her apartment." "Up she walked to her apartment." By placing "up" first in the sentence it imitates the effort of walking. The English novelist, Charles Dickens, used these reversed sentence structures a lot.
Next week we'll talk more about these exercises and also developing ideas. Here's one model we talked about in class:
I keep six honest serving men;
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
—Rudyard Kipling
See the picture of the Communication Triangle too. In my next email I will give you next week's assignment so you don't get mixed up.
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