It may surprise you to realize that if you worry about how well you write, you have the instincts of an artist. An artist is someone who believes that shapes and forms carry meaning, that making something with skill, a sentence or a paragraph for example, is one of the ways we humans share our thoughts and ideas with others. And when that communication is important enough to us, we make the time and effort to learn the elements of a particular art.

We can say that, for its part, the art of writing has three primary elements: words, phrases, and clauses. We shape those three forms in various ways to produce many different sentence designs. Each change to our first draft constitutes a revision, and through a number of such changes we arrive at our final artifact. And that is precisely the word for our final draft, because an artifact is literally something skillfully made. Rarely is our first draft a final one, and it is in the revisions between those two points that we manipulate these three elements to compose language that befits our ideas. The way is rarely smooth. Here’s an example.

A student explained to me recently that he had written this sentence in a draft and was not pleased with its predictably plain and level structure: My neighbor is remodeling his apartment, and the hammering and sawing are driving me crazy. Instead of this balanced, compound sentence which presents two thoughts to the reader in equal weight and force, he wanted a subordinate arrangement which would place the hammering and sawing in the background, giving sole prominence to the first clause. He analyzed his draft and composed this revision: My neighbor is remodeling his apartment, the hammering and sawing driving me crazy.

That revision does not work. My student knew that, but he wanted to know why. And knowing why, of course, is what skill is all about. The original compound sentence comprised two independent clauses, and in order to push the ideas of the second clause into the background, the writer converted that clause into a participial phrase. That phrase retained the compound subject hammering and sawing, but deleted the verb was to retain just the present participle driving. That created what is called a nominative absolute phrase, the purpose of which is to describe the circumstances in which the action of the main verb is occurring—exactly the ostensible arrangement my student intended to construct.

The reason this construction does not work here is logically subtle but effectively real. We might call the nominative absolute a scenic technique, a way to paint in words the scene in which an event is unfolding. The unfolding event in the sentence is that a neighbor is remodeling his apartment, and it could be the case that while he is remodeling, he is raising a lot of dust. All that dust would be part of the scene, and so we could compose a sentence like this: Dust rising everywhere, my neighbor is remodeling his apartment. Or it could be that what is part of the scene is intangible and only in the mind of the neighbor. We could then write Money always being a concern, my neighbor is remodeling his apartment himself, adding the intensifying pronoun himself to tighten the connection between the worry over cost and labor.

But using the phrase the hammering and sawing driving me crazy as a nominative absolute steps outside the scene: the writer (or the narrative voice, whoever that might be) is not part of the scene, physical or mental, in which his neighbor is remodeling his apartment. The craziness to which all the hammering and sawing is driving this poor soul is in effect offstage, and that is exactly why this revision doesn’t work. Here, then, is a revision on the way, so to speak, the final artifact still to be found on the road ahead. But that is just the artist’s way, and if we can accept that, we will gain both patience and confidence in our work.

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There is in the study of language a phenomenon known as nominalization. (That sentence I just wrote is, arguably, an example of it.) The term derives from the Latin noun for noun, nomen, and when overworked, it refers to the habit of building too many sentences with too many nouns. Or better, the habit of too often preferring a noun where a good old-fashioned transitive verb is looking for employment.

Here’s an excellent example of habitual nominalization: My moist eyes were noticeable to me and I wondered whether they were noticeable to her. Let’s be clear from the outset that there is nothing wrong with this sentence, if by that censure we mean some grammatical problem or logical tangle. We could in fact compliment the writer by noticing its balanced arrangement (seven words on one side of the conjunction and eight words on the other) and its parallel elements (both halves of the balanced pattern conclude with the same adjective and a prepositional phrase). One could quarrel over the absence of a comma after the pronoun me (on the ground that when the subjects of two clauses joined by and are different, a comma is usually necessary), but the simple concepts and plain structure of the sentence are enough to override that grammatical statute.

Observe, though, that the conceptual simplicity of the sentence hinges on the logical contrast between the first and last clauses: my moist eyes were noticeable to me and whether they were noticeable to her. This opposition is what the statement is all about, and so we should ask whether the grammatical structure the writer chose is the best one possible. Each of these two clauses employs the verb were, the simple past tense of the infinitive to be. Used as it is here, the verb were is a copulative, which does no more than state an identity, not an action, between a subject and a noun or adjective in its predicate. To say that my moist eyes were noticeable means logically that my moist eyes were something noticeable. An adjective is really just a noun in a different form (traditional grammar books, in fact, used to refer to both as substances, a noun naming something, and an adjective naming a quality of it). The sentence, therefore, involves two entities (moist eyes and something noticeable) but no action. It’s right here that we can see the enfeebling effects of nominalization.

To identify one thing with something else is to make a statement about the state of being of that thing: to describe or define it rather than say what it is doing. We cannot write well without describing and defining what we are talking about, but when that practice becomes a rigorous habit (as it has in much professional writing), we preclude the vivid presence and lively impression that could otherwise carry our ideas to the reader. What would happen to our example sentence, for instance, if we converted the predicate adjective noticeable into its corresponding transitive verb? With a few simple changes to the pronouns, we could produce this revision: I noticed my moist eyes and I wondered whether she noticed them too. Or this: I noticed my eyes were moist and I wondered whether she noticed too. Or this: I noticed my eyes moist and I wondered whether she noticed that too. Each of these revisions points up the logical contrast by means of the transitive verb noticed, and that is why they strike us as more active and vivifying realities.

Our reader is interested in what’s happening: what is doing what to what. Not every sentence we compose can employ a transitive verb, and nominalization in itself is not the problem. The habit of nominalization, however, is a troublemaker. It assembles many a weak and uninteresting passage because all those nouns and adjectives work against the reader’s otherwise unaffected frame of mind, the natural curiosity we all have about what’s going on in the world. Look for nouns and adjectives and forms of the verb to be, give them all something to do, and watch what happens.

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It is not true that life is one thing and philosophy another, that what’s obviously going on is what’s real and that what subtleties we see are just the result of thinking too hard about nothing at all. The truth, instead, is that the purpose of an art, the art of writing included, is to help us see what we don’t ordinarily see in our common, active life. To do that, the arts rely on each their own body of materials and techniques—understanding which, our appreciation and pleasure grow.

In John Steinbeck’s short story Flight, there is an exchange between a young brother and sister about their older brother’s suddenly leaving home. What is of interest here, both grammatically and literarily, is how the two speakers refer to their brother’s going away:

“We will have no breakfast,” said Emilio. “Mama will not want to cook.” Rosy did not answer him. “Where is Pepé gone?” he asked. Rosy looked around at him. She drew her knowledge from the quiet air. “He has gone on a journey. He will never come back.”

The objective grammatical difference between the verb constructions of Emilio’s is gone and Rosy’s has gone is straightforward enough to understand. We recognize gone as the past participle of the verb go, and when a past participle is used with a present auxiliary verb, the two together form the present perfect tense. Modern, contemporary English has fixed the rule more tightly and now requires that the auxiliary verb always be some form of have, as we would today regularly write, for example, has come, or as I just wrote earlier in this same sentence, has fixed. Rosy, in replying to Emilio that their brother has gone on a journey is in keeping with the contemporary construction we are all familiar with.

But how are we to understand the unconventional way Emilio posed his question? He does not ask, “Where has Pepé gone?” but “Where is Pepé gone?” The auxiliary verb, in other words, does not conform to the standard rule, and there is both a grammatical observation and literary conjecture to make about that. The verb go is intransitive; it denotes action, a movement, that is not directed at anything, but rather stays within the subject itself. We do not speak of going something, for example, in the way in which we would speak of saying something or eating something. These two verbs have an object (something) to which their action is directed, and we call such verbs transitive. Intransitive verbs do not have an object, transitive verbs do.

Now it used to be the case in English that intransitive verbs in the perfect tenses did in fact employ forms of the verb be (Emilio’s is) as an auxiliary with intransitive verbs, limiting the use of the auxiliary have (Rosy’s has) to transitive verbs. Nowadays we require have with both transitive and intransitive verbs, and so Emilio’s construction strikes us as a bit odd. But what is the literary result of that anachronistic use? It could be that Steinbeck simply wanted to portray the unpolished language of a young boy to mark his ineducation or naivete. But it could be too that such innocence, grammatical and personal both, played hand in glove for Steinbeck in making a larger philosophical comment about the world these siblings’ older brother had disappeared to.

For the result of using a form of the verb be as an auxiliary, if it’s not just a solecism, is to emphasize the present circumstance of the departed brother, his state at the moment and not just the action of leaving he recently performed. Emilio’s question, “Where is Pepé gone,” is ambiguously constructed: we can understand the verb is as that earlier auxiliary to the principal verb go in its present perfect tense, or we can read it as the principal verb in the simple present tense with gone as a predicate adjective. Is the boy in his innocence and insight asking where his brother, having gone, is now in his thoughts, or is he just asking with mistaken grammar where his brother has gone? That is to say, is he thinking about his brother’s present state of being, even the state of his soul, or is he merely curious about the direction of his travel and his geographical location?

That obliquity is rich, and it rises, accidentally or not, as a veil to be pierced when we read for more than merely what appears on the surface of the narrative. Emilio’s language makes us wonder what kind of journey his brother has really undertaken, and whether it might not be a journey of an unaccustomed kind.

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Abstractitis is a term of art in the study and practice of writing, and it refers to what we might call literary inflammation, sentences whose meaning is constricted because they are so swollen with abstract nouns. Here’s an example: Last month a department management process evaluation analysis was submitted by district administration. This, we should note, is a particularly serious case of the disease.

To appreciate just how debilitated a sentence like that is, let’s compare it to a version not entirely healed itself, but nonetheless solidly on the road to recovery: District administrators submitted last month an analysis of the way managers evaluate how their departments receive, fill, and ship orders. We will compare the diction and structure of the two sentences in a moment, but we should first observe how differently the two statements strike us. A generalized haze has overcome the first sentence, and we have been asked to look in a certain direction without being told what to look for. The revision has dispersed that haze to some degree by adding details of actors and action.

It is very likely the case, I believe, that abstractitis arises from our predilection for writing in the passive voice. Voice is a verbal property, and it refers to whether the subject of the verb is in fact the enactor of the action. English verbs have two voices, active and passive, and in the original version of our example, the verb was submitted is in the passive voice because the performer of that action, district administration, has been displaced into a prepositional phrase. The grammatical subject of the sentence, a department management process evaluation analysis, is no longer real, but merely formal.

But the etiology of abstractitis is abstraction. What we call an abstraction is an idea, a notion we have in  our mind instead of a concrete something we perceive in the world around us. All nouns name things, wherever they are, and in grammar we make the distinction between concrete nouns and abstract nouns: concrete nouns name something we can perceive in the external world with one of our five senses (a fork or car or building, all appealing to sight or touch), and abstract nouns name things we perceive with only our mind (hope or anxiety or peace). We find ideas, though, in the things around us, and so the work of good writing is to stay in this world and make sentences and paragraphs with a judicious mix of both kinds of nouns—abstract nouns to express ideas and concrete nouns to show where we saw those ideas lodge themselves. We must, in other words, think abstractly but express concretely—at least as concretely as the subject will allow.

When abstract nouns predominate, however, linguistic inflammation sets in, and when the environment includes a passive verb, the prognosis is not good. To see how we might improve our chances of recovery, let’s compare the example with the suggested revision. Notice first that the passive verb of the original has been converted to the active voice. To do that, we found in the abstraction administration the individuals who could act, thereby giving the verb submitted an actual subject: district administrators submitted. Notice, too, that we pushed the phrase denoting time, last month, out of its primary position, yielding that important space to what is arguably most important, the subject and agent of the action.

Next, we’ve broken up the string of four adjectives (all nouns in their own right being forced into service as adjectives), replacing the abstraction process with the concrete noun way, to figuratively mean manner or means. We then converted the abstraction evaluation into its corresponding transitive verb evaluated, and found the managers in their departments. These changes constituted an entirely new sentence structure, which then easily prompted the necessary practicalities of receiving, filling, and shipping orders—all actions and things in the real world. The anemic pallor grows sanguine.

There will always be—and there should always be—a creative tension between the concrete and the abstract. That tension is in the very nature of things, things as they are and as we experience them. But art, the art of writing included, has to do with the embodiment of ideas, the making of images that bear the marks of our ideas. To achieve that goal, we keep our eyes on the form of what we’ve written, and when our linguistic health has lapsed, we try to observe the symptoms and apply other choices that are available. Writing can be a healing art.

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Frank O’Connor was a prolific Irish author of the twentieth century. He wrote a great number of short stories, one of which is entitled My Oedipus Complex. This curious tale of mother, father, and son includes a sentence which gives us a chance to review not a phenomenon of Freudian psychology, but an equally curious complex in English grammar called the participle. Which of those two topics is the more compelling will be yours to judge.

The scene in O’Connor’s story is this: a young son has grown increasingly impatient with all the attention his father has been giving his mother (and mother, father) since the father’s return from war, and one night the young boy had reached his limit. Here is the passage, and it is the participle chattering in the second sentence that is the subject of our topic:

But at the same time I wanted him to see that I was only waiting, not giving up the fight. One evening when he was being particularly obnoxious, chattering away well above my head, I let him have it.

These two sentences contain, in fact, four participles (waiting, giving, being, and chattering), but it is only the last one, chattering, which will occupy our attention here. Participles, like Oedipus, are a curious force to contend with, being elemental in their own way in depicting rich attending circumstance. That is because participles combine in one grammatical device the properties (or genes, we might say) of both adjectives and verbs. That, in fact, is the technical definition of a participle: a verbal adjective, and it is just because of their distinct verbal character that a sense of background action can be brought into a linguistic picture.

The suffix –ing marks chattering as a present participle (there are also in English a past and a perfect participle), and this noting of the participle’s time is all important. We usually associate verbal time, or tense, with real time, an hour of the clock. When the boy in O’Connor’s story says at the end of the second sentence, I let him have it, the verb let (idiomatically meaning allowed) is in the simple past tense, and we easily and naturally understand it to mean that this action occurred before the time the boy was narrating the story and enunciating this sentence, albeit in a fictional world.

Participial time, however, does not point to chronology. Instead, participial tense is relative to the tense of the main verb of the clause in which the participle occurs: a present participle (its name notwithstanding) shows time contemporaneous with or subsequent to the time of the main verb, and a perfect participle shows time prior to that main verb. In our example, then, since the main verb let is in the simple past tense, the present participle chattering must be indicating an action that was occurring at the same time the boy took his revenge on his father. And we must surmise the same coordination of action in understanding the present participle being earlier in the same sentence: the father was being particularly obnoxious at the same time that he was chattering and at the same time his son let him have it (just exactly how I will leave to the story).

But how would the scene look if we changed the present participle chattering to its perfect participle having chattered? The grammatical change would mean that the chattering had occurred at some time before the boy acted. And if in this revision we retained the present participle being earlier in the sentence, the logic would suggest strongly that the father’s obnoxiousness, not his chattering, was the immediate cause of the boy’s action, his father’s having chattered a remote, but still contributory, antecedent influence.

Time, it seems, is both a grammatical and psychological reality, sometimes actual and sometimes relative—but always meaningful.

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