Ms. Sauce's English Corner

Lessons on Grammar, Writing, and English for speakers of other languages

[berkeleygirl3]

[litafficionado]

“If you give children a vocabulary that’s large enough and complex enough to express their emotions and their ideas, you give them access to complex feelings and emotions in themselves. So that if you talk to a teenager and all they can say about how they feel is BAD, and they haven’t got, you know, a larger vocabulary for lonely, abused, insecure, frightened…I mean there’s this huge panoply which…I remember when my daughter was just telling me that she just felt bad, I bought her a thesaurus. I said, “Look up, is it sort of over lonely, or is it insecure…and look up under lonely, you’ll find two hundred words for lonely. Which one?” But what that does is that it makes you feel that there’s this huge complexity of emotions and there are words for all of them. If you want children to feel less frustrated and less disenfranchised and less unable to even feel comfortable with their own emotions, you’ll have to give them a vocabulary that’s as complicated as their inner lives. And one of the things we see in children is this incredibly reduced capacity for reporting their inner lives to the exterior world. One of the things is just teaching them poems, just teaching them to memorize poems in school, they don’t have to interpret them, if they just internalize the language of the poem, the complexity of the emotion in the poems…” -Jorie Graham, in a conversation 

[tinyghosts]

“I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it’s thrilling. We’re all enlivened by it. We don’t have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water.”

— Marie Howe, Boston University’s 2016 Theopoetics Conference  (via mothersofmyheart)

[artemis-howl]

Marie Howe:

I ask my students every week to write 10 observations of the actual world. It’s very hard for them.

Ms. Tippett:

Really?

Ms. Howe:

They really find it hard.

Ms. Tippett:

What do you mean? What is the assignment? 10 observations of their actual world?

Ms. Howe:

Just tell me what you saw this morning like in two lines. I saw a water glass on a brown tablecloth, and the light came through it in three places. No metaphor. And to resist metaphor is very difficult because you have to actually endure the thing itself, which hurts us for some reason.

Ms. Tippett:

It does.

Ms. Howe:

It hurts us.

Ms. Tippett:

You naming something.

Ms. Howe:

We want to say, “It was like this; it was like that.” We want to look away. And to be with a glass of water or to be with anything — and then they say, “Well, there’s nothing important enough.” And that’s whole thing. It’s the point.

Ms. Howe:

It’s the this, right?

Ms. Howe:

Right, the this, whatever. And then they say, “Oh, I saw a lot of people who really want” — and, “No, no, no. No abstractions, no interpretations.” But then this amazing thing happens, Krista. The fourth week or so, they come in and clinkety, clank, clank, clank, onto the table pours all this stuff. And it so thrilling. I mean, it is thrilling. Everybody can feel it. Everyone is just like, “Wow.” The slice of apple, and then that gleam of the knife, and the sound of the trashcan closing, and the maple tree outside, and the blue jay. I mean, it almost comes clanking into the room. And it’s just amazing.

Ms. Tippett:

In some basic level, what they’ve done is just engage with their senses.

Ms. Howe:

Yeah, and have been present out of their minds and just noticing what’s around them, which is — we don’t do. And again, not to compare it to anything. They’re not allowed. And that’s very hard for them. And then on the fifth or sixth week, I say, “OK, use metaphors.” And they don’t want to. They don’t know how. They’re like, “Why would I? Why would I compare that to anything when it’s itself?” Exactly. Good question.

So then you think, why the necessity of a metaphor? Why do you have to use a metaphor now? Not just to do it to avoid it, but to do it to make it more there. And it’s very interesting.

Marie Howe — The Power of Words to Save Us | The On Being Project

The words and silences we live by. The rituals that sustain us. The poetry of ordinary time.

[sourdough-seal]

"why did you stop writing your story!!! never stop writing!!!!!!!!!!!" well you see the character had to drive one mile to a new location and the sentence "she got into the car" was quite simply my undoing

[juleskelleybooks]

I feel this on a deep and personal level and I know you're making a joke but I do also want to take this opportunity to pass along the biggest small piece of advice I've ever gotten: You don't have to explain every step of how something happened unless something unusual/important happens along the way.

You can simply cut to the next scene when she's at the location, without explaining how she got there. People will fill that in. Now, if something important happens in the car on the way there, then sure, mention it. But if she's just driving? Nah. Delete that sentence, pop in a scene break, and keep writing.

Be free.

[bugthingsdaily]

today's bug thing are these cotton ball bugs!

[official-snail-posts]

official snail post

[twodiamondhoes]

I just saw Superman so the first oneshot for wildstorm au is probably going to come out sooner than anticipated

[helenvaughans]

📢📢📢

[sauceteaches]

how do recommend starting a longer fic/any sort of writing??? getting past the first sentences (and being happy with it…) is one of the hardest parts of writing to me💔

Hi Kayak!! Hope you're well, I'll try to make my thoughts make sense here for you. Honestly I should make a powerpoint about some of my personal writing processes to see if it helps any of yall as baby authors.

Reminder that I am not a professional! Some of this advice might not work for you, I'm just sharing what I do <3

okay! How do I start a long fic?

For me, I've found that long fics happen by accident mostly. Margin of Error was ball parked to be 25-30 chapters but only because I was aiming for shorter chapters. We've learned now that MoE ranchers like to YAP and that I can cover a lot more plot in less chapters, so now she's 20 chapters :) She's one of those fics where I know what I want to happen, but figuring out the inbetween is something I tackle by chapter.

Last night I was talking about how I want Despair to be about 10-11 chapters, limiting the story so I can stretch it into a possible trilogy. The thing with Despair though, is that I've had plans for that to be big from the start. I had a little idea and ran away with it with the hopes of being like, the best thing I've ever written...

compared to sticks, a story with a start and end point that doesn't require me to tell every aspect of it, because it's told in oneshots. I can skip over a ton of time to get to a plot point and if I want to add to it later, then I can go back and add another one shot. This is a perk of doing a series of works compared to one long term fic.

okay, so you have an idea! Here's what I do:

Rotate the idea. Gather ideas about people and places. WRITE THEM DOWN. make a silly outline (it's okay for this outline to change)

Figure out what you want to happen! this is the main conflict or even just scenes you think you might want.

A good example of this, for me, was Margin of Error. Before it had a name, the first 14K written in my doc under "rancher college au" , back when Tango was a biker and it was a totally different story--I wrote all the good scenes first. I bascially had a few ideas of scenes I liked, and then I wrote them. so this is like the chapter 4 porch scene, and a kiss scene in what was orginally chpater 3, and another kiss scene that's now (I think?) chapter 9. I started by throwing out ideas, writing what made me the most excited and then letting the scene die when I wasn't having fun anymore.

This is a thing I do A LOT with MoE. I write till it stops and I figure out the rest later. There's no pressure to know everything right at the start. In fact, figuring it out as you go will help you come up with ideas/transitions that fit the story better. Compared to forcing them into a box that hasnt been built yet.

Take your scenes and start to build a time line.

For MoE, I picked a difficult conflict--emotions. There is no physical villian in MoE that I can plan around. if I were writing a super hero au, lets say, I would have a bad guy that I could plan a weakness that my characters would use to take him down. With emotional conflicts everything is internal and relies on the charaters thoughts and actions to be overcome. With most emotional conflicts, there might not be a satisfying ending. For MoE it's going to finish with a very big "it's not over, but we're working through it" feeling. It won't be as resolute as a physical conflict that will have a total ending.

having said this! pick a general conflict and then pad your scenes around it. As you write all those disconnected scenes you'll find the world will start to build itself. you'll notice things carrying through them, you'll write three or four of them, then realize theres an order in your head. maybe scenes two comes after three, then four followed by one. Use that and tack them down.

I'll use sticks as a visual example here. I have a string of ideas about sticks, one of them was Unsportsmanlike Conduct. I knew Countercurrent would come immediately after it and that sticks 3 (I really gotta name that) would come about a week after. I know that I want Tango to come see Jimmy play a game, I also know that I want that to be before Tango gets a concussion and can't play for a bit. I don't know the time between them, but I know I want it at some point.

You now have a timeline! Start figuring out how to fluff up the bits around each event.

I want my ranchers to kiss! they are gonna kiss after their first coffee date (in this example), how do we get to the coffee date? what happens on the date? what happens after the kiss? the questions you ask to build a scene are a lot more simple than you think they'll be.

one of these charts is helpful! you can use a chart like this for EVERYTHING. The whole story, a chapter, a scene. Keep in mind that the falling action happens much quicker than the rising action. Prepare for the climax to hit, and then the resolution to come tumbling quickly after. (The climax for MoE is chapter 17 of 20, as an example)

you have all the bits for an outline! how do you write it now?

My biggest advice when writing a long form story is to write it out of order. I'm so serious, don't fall into the that BS of having to start at the begining and build it up. Write whatever makes you happy, jump around when you get stuck, if the flow stops take a break and do something else.

MoE chapters take me forever, yeah, but that's because I don't force a scene. I move on to a different one and keep thinking about what caused the other to stop. Taking over three months to write chapter five has given me a ton of time to think about transitions and to make sure the characters and their motivations feel right.

Follow your train of thought, write things down before you lose them, let inspiration guide you. I cannot tell you how many times I've been writing a scene and just gone,

Flowery sentence about how the character feels and lifting a hand to do-- insert action--. the character then says "line of dialog"

like guys, it doesn't have to be perfect on the first draft! Not everything will present itself right away. If you have the middle and end of a scene but now start, that's okay! write the middle and end, then come back to it.

I also recomend rubber ducking your friends. If you don't know what rubber ducking it, it's a thing computer coders do! When they have a problem they can't solve, they talk about it outloud to a rubber duck. Often, when you explain a problem and lay it out for someone else to understand, you'll solve it yourself. I've done this to stuffed animals, to pets, my dad (who had no clue what I was talking about). It's a lot better if you have friends who can toss some ideas at you, but physically talk it out. If you cant do that, type a string of thoughts. as if talking out loud, start to lay out the problem and talk yourself through it. I have the perfect example for this and its a massive spoiler so I cant share it >:( ug.

either way!!! That's like all the advice I can offer??? I hope this helps?

UH, when it comes to gathering inspiration I turn to music. I make playlists and spin the idea around and talk about it. then I just write what my fingers want to.

Just write it! write it bad, write it scared. Bad writing is still writing. Put it on paper and fix it later.

(If I am not happy with a scene. I will sit on it. I will wait until I can find what makes me upset about it, then find a way to fix it. It will not be perfect on the first try.)

[sauceteaches]

not sure if this is the place to ask but im curious; do you listen to music or have anything on in the background while you write? :>

Good morning Haru my love!!!!

I do! I'm a brain that constantly goes and never ever stops and If I want to lock in, it NEED music. All my playlists are linked under this post but I have a few others that aren't linked that I'll toss you if you'd like!

easing you into metal, is a playlsit I made for Bidoof but has been banger because its like metal genre whiplash if you put it on shuffle.

LOCK TF IN is simply Lillyisthatyou discography but THIS made be write for two hours straight and finally finished a MoE five scene, goodness me. along this line of "locking in" music is my baby playlist ukg grind or die

I have a playlis JUST for MoE five! Titled tipping point

I have been on a kick lately of just putting on those cute fruit themed jazz playlists? I wrote all of Countercurrent and most of sticks3 to those. (my favorite is star shaped cucumber) and I am a long term lover of Audible adderall, since I was in university and needed it to lock in on essays.

I'm ALWAYS making playlists and updating the playlist masterpost. if I start yapping about a new au there is probably a playlist for it (I cannot help myself <3) I write bet to club hits?? or to metal, something about the beat makes brain go brrrrrrrr.

I do gotta say though, writing unsportsanlike conduct? I was first of all, pushing out 16k in like 6 days (like the crazy person I am) and got so overstimmed while working on it that I wrote the entier lockerroom scene in silence. like I was visiting my parents. I sat on their couch in SILENCE and wrote hockey smut. and it worked. so sometimes that's the banger move.

(In the midst of my awful writers block last month I also tried pink noise and just asmr in the a background and I found that works very nicely for getting the brain to quiet and start plot lining again.)

[sauceteaches]

hey, so I haven’t had the gall to ask but do you have any fanfiction tips? like how to get people to beta, or just things you like to incorporate into your fics? like general tips because I’m out here struggling lol

Hello my love!!

Fic writing is a very personal process (for me at least). I used to be a creative writing major but before I could get into any prose classes, I switched over to TESOL. (there is still room in grad school though!)

For me, writing a story is a long haul process. I like to start with the biggest most exciting scenes of an AU (MOE is still using some of these scenes). I never start at the begining because it can be daunting and hard to connect to what I want to happen. So, I write all my fun scenes to get them out of my system (when I started MOE, I wrote 14K in 2 days) and then I look at them and start thinking about how to connect them. Point B, working backwards to A.

The BIGGEST tool for writing a plot, is to yap about it. I am not joking. Any friend, I have had many not in the fandom, to listen to you talk about the story. The friends that follow along and help you headcanon are the best ones. I don't think MOE would be as deep and flushed out character wise if not for June (the all knowing beta). She bounced ideas back to me and played with dialog and is overall the reason Margin of Error is still even updating. It certainly helps that she's also an author, because she understands the struggle.

There are friends you can mak on tumblr too! I have made a few mutals by networking my fic on here, and they all help me with hard character questions. Kit (Hi kit, love you kit) the phenominal WixWrites on AO3, has let me yap non-stop about chapter five and Tango's morals as a character. without her, Tango would be making some pretty out of pocket choices I'm sure.

For Betas, find some people you trust and ask them to read your work! I beta for some friends, some friends beta for me. My Betas (the hellions they are) are my friends that I met through minecraft (lethal company orginally actually, but thats a whole story). Good friends won't judge your writing, and if you ask them to look for specific things (and you should be if you're asking someone to edit for you) then it should be easy for everyone!

I ask my betas to look for specific grammar mistakes I'm prone to making, cohesion, character vibes ect. I have a list at the top of our doc and I encourage them to correct me where ever (I do this because I have confidence in my writing, and know what comments to ignore and what to keep. when letting others edit your work don't just accept all the comments. It's your work and you have control over what you do and don't change)

When it comes to adding things into a fic, say a fandom reference, its kind of up to you. sometimes its fun to toss things like that in, sometimes you don't even need/want them. For heavier themes, my advice is to look at the overall story and decide if it fits.

Margin of Error deals with themes on greif, drepression, and some fucked up family dynamics. I have the choice to add more themes or to let the plot breath. There was a point where I was considering bringing sickness back into plot, but decided it was heavy enough killing off Jimmy's mom. You kind of pick and choose your straws, and discussing with a friend will also help you gauge if something is too much. in the end, it's you're story. Write it for you and no one else. If you like something, then like it with your whole heart, don't let people on the internet take it away.

I'm very proud of your AU's you've been posting about. I think you'll make a great author. Try not to over think it, just write. Write it bad, write it scared, at least you're writing. plus, the joy of editing is that if you dont like the fist draft, its a draft you can change it.

much love! good luck!! xoxox sauce

[sauceteaches]

Not a question! I just wanted to say, as someone who graduated with a double major in writing and history, and is now staring at colleges debating if a Masters and PhD is worth it, you, and MOE Tango are an inspiration, and I love seeing you geek out over linguistics and culture, because I also share this fascinating.

So, thank you! And I look forward to learning more from this blog!

Hi hi!!

Welcome to the classroom! Congratulations on a double major, that's very impressive! I'm also considering a masters degree, it can certainly be scary, but the joy of education is that it never stops. You can go back for more degrees whenever you want. (One of my closest friends is a 53 year old man, also doing his undergrad. Non-traditional students are cherished and very important). You'll come to a decision soon, I'm sure.

We're gonna crazy over here, starting with a bunch of punctuation and rhetorical writing lessons! Please feel free to share any resources or lesson suggestions, I bet with your big brain we could cook up something fun.

Looking forward to learning with you <3

[stygiansauce]

HI friends! As many of you know I am an English teacher and I've been pretty big about pushing yall you use your critical thinking brains when it comes to reading Margin of Error. I have some (slightly cheesy) sources here from one of my classes that I wanted to share with you all. These are based around revision, editing, and nominalizations for creative work AND academic essays.

Because I've had a lot of questions about my writing process, editing process, and general views on story boarding. I will try to offer reasources that I have learned from that have shaped my writing. (if i make enough of these posts I'll make a tag for it)

Take a look, take some notes, and feel free to come into my ask box or the comments of this post with questions or discussion. I just thought they were good sources and that many of you might learn something from them.

What Is The Difference Between Editing & Revising? (and how can you accomplish both? )

So You've Finished a First Draft: Reverse Outlining

VIDEO: How to edit and essay | 6 editing tips

Nominalizations- know them; try not to use them.

Happy editing!!

[stygiansauce]

Here are the class notes I took based off these readings!

Many of them focus on academic writing, so I added notes that would pertain to creative writing--For those of us that don't need to apply revision techniques to essays. :D

And also an example of the in-class activity on nominalizations.

[stygiansauce]

Hey gamers! I'm gonna give you an entire lesson on hyphens, Em dashes and En dashes via tumblr, right now.

Lets preface with this: Grammar has two modes of use.

Prescriptive: A set of rules that dictate how a language "should" be used.

Descriptive: How grammar/language is ACTUALLY used.

This is an important distinction for this lesson because I am going to start with a powerpoint that explains the rules/uses of hyphens and dashes. THEN after, we will talk about the rhetorical effects dashes have on readers and how authors can use them to their advantage. COOL lets begin.

The first thing you all need to know about hyphens and dashes is what they look like.

Please note how the EM dash is the longest, the EN is next, then the minus, and the hyphen. The sizing and name of these dashes was historically decided because Em dashes were the size of an M and an En was the size of an N.

This is wonky now considering typing and fonts and all that jazz, but the size still matters (haha).

These are how you type them! I am a google docs user, and the short cuts in docs are weird. You will want to go into Insert then go down to special characters. Type in the dash you need, and click it to insert.

Hyphens so these things! What is a modifier? It's a word that MODIFIES the noun. like a light rain, or a long drive. these are adjectives/adverbs (depending)

Hyphens can link two modifiers. They can also link compound nouns.

These are the things Em dashes do! If you take a gander through Margin of Error (Chapter 4 would be best because that's where I learned the special character function) you'll see all of these examples in action!

En dashes aren't as common as EM dashes or hyphens. These are used strictly in a prescriptive sense. From my knowledge there is no way to use these rhetorically. only for clarity and these are the three times you'll see them.

COOL! Now lets talk about how Em dashes are used rhetorically. What does an Em dash do to your writing? How does it effect a reader?

Emphasis Em dashes create pauses in speech. If I were talking to you and I wanted to pause-- or cut myself off, I could use either an elipses or an Em dash. Where an elipses is more of a trail off... the Em dash draws the readers eye. It makes the reader stop and look at what is around them.

THATS IT! Thats what it does! It's more emphasis than a comma or a parenthetical. You could in theory use a comma, but think of how much stress you want on something.

FOR EXAMPLE, in this line from Margin of Error.

With no Puncuation: “Ah well Grian and I weren’t really getting along at the time…” He trails off in a way that screams I’m done talking about this something he does a lot when talking about his family so Tango moves the conversation in a different direction.

With Commas: “Ah, well, Grian and I weren’t really getting along at the time…” He trails off in a way that screams I’m done talking about this, something he does a lot when talking about his family, so Tango moves the conversation in a different direction.

With Em dashes: “Ah—well, Grian and I weren’t really getting along at the time…” He trails off in a way that screams I’m done talking about this—something he does a lot when talking about his family—so Tango moves the conversation in a different direction.

Notice how it's different? The commas certainly do their job at making the reader pause. They help insert the phrase, but its not the same as the dashes. The dashes make the reader LOOK at what is between them. it becomes the focus of the sentence. We are no longer worries about what Jimmy's tone is, but that he uses it often when talkin about his family.

Look at this example with parenthesis too, and see how those change the effect.

With parenthesis: “Ah—well, Grian and I weren’t really getting along at the time…” He trails off in a way that screams I’m done talking about this (something he does a lot when talking about his family) so Tango moves the conversation in a different direction.

Seeeee? it makes a difference! The parenthesis make it more of a passive thought. Something for the reader to consider, but is overall not important to the story. This is why us authors sometimes hem and haw over grammar! I certainly think that Em dashes can be used based off vibes (I do this all the time) but now you know what its really doing for your reader! I want to look at one more example of this before we wrap up.

With no Puncuation: “Your eyes are pretty.” Jimmy says wistfully suddenly like he can’t hold it in any longer

With Commas: “Your eyes are pretty.” Jimmy says wistfully, suddenly, like he can’t hold it in any longer

With Em dashes: “Your eyes are pretty.” Jimmy says wistfully—suddenly—like he can’t hold it in any longer

With Parenthesis: “Your eyes are pretty.” Jimmy says wistfully (suddenly) like he can’t hold it in any longer.

TADA! You can now use hyphens, em dashes and en dashes!!! Thank you for coming to class. Your homework is to play around with these in your writing. I will accpet questions via the Ask box or the comments of this post. Happy writing nerds, go use your new toy.

xoxo Ms. Sauce