Picture Flow

Renoir "On The Terrace"

Writing, much like Renoir's composition pictured above, is a work of art. It is a form of expression, meaningful, and creative. Writing is also an important form of professional and academic communication. As we look at writing in the latter example, we may find it hard to see the art form to our composition.

I promise you, it is there! And we find it most readily in "Flow."

Flow is a mysterious part of any composition. Whether we are looking at a painting, listening to music, reading a poem or even a memo at work, flow plays a huge role in its success.

What is "flow?"

My abbreviated definition of flow is the movement of meaning from beginning to end.  

Renoir's painting is just one excellent example of flow. Looking at flow in this way, we can see that the artist purposely directs our attention to the red hat the woman is wearing. He does so by placing the bright red in the center of the canvas. However, he does not stop there. Once he has our attention on this color, Renoir strategically places the same hints of the red hat elsewhere in the painting. He controls the flow of his composition by placing the red in the hat of young girl, in her cheeks, and in the lips of both females.

He also controls the flow by incorporating the same red in the basket in the lower left hand corner of the painting just as he does in the red roof structure in the upper left hand corner. We can even see red in the boats on the water and in some of the leaves tangled on the railing. Therefore, he controls our eye movement over the entire masterpiece.

Just as Renoir achieves flow through painting, we must achieve it through writing.

Unlike a paintbrush, most of us have been using language flow since birth. When we learn "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" as children, we are learning the flow of our language. We change the complexity of our flow as we get older. Our parts of speech become more complicated. So do our ideas.

The hard part is converting this familiar flow into a composition. Much like Renoir's red hat, writers must point specifically to a subject, and then refer back to that subject frequently. Doing so will artfully moving the reader through the composition.

Of course, achieving flow is difficult for any of us. Thankfully there are tricks we can learn to help us with these difficulties.  Using transitions is one color on our pallet to use in our composition.  Words or word phrases like "however," "likewise," "also," "besides," "after all," "in other words", etc, can be used to move the reader from point to point. We can also use pointing words such as "those" and "this" as well as pronouns to help us color our composition artfully.

In other words, looking at a paper like a painting can be a helpful trick to achieving flow. In fact, one could even highlight words that directly link back to the subject of the composition to visually recognize how often it appears throughout the paper.  If we highlight these types of words in red, then red should move our eyes evenly over the composition in the same manner we see in Renoir's red.  

Writing to Read

As I sat in my Intro to Grad Studies in English course and listened to the professor talk about our upcoming colloquium, I began to panic.

How am I supposed to write something interesting and original enough for people to want to listen to me read it for two minutes let alone twenty minutes?

How can I make reading it sound captivating and entertaining, and not like Ben Stein in a Clear Eyes commercial? (Sorry, Ben Stein, but you would put us all to sleep in no time.)

And so I began to worry, but I was not and am not alone. There are not only my classmates who feel the same way about presenting a paper to an audience full of professors and fellow students, but there are people all over the world agonizing about giving a presentation: in class, at a conference, at work.

Wherever they may be, anxiety is flooding through their veins as they anticipate that moment when they have to stand in front of a room full of people (who look like a firing squad ready to take their speaker down at the first fumbling of words or gap in logic)

and impart their knowledge and/or argument.

It is intimidating. No one likes to make mistakes or to embarrass him or herself. And even less people like to admit they just don’t have the answer to a question shot out from the firing squad (the audience) in the Q & A portion of their presentation, because no one likes to look “stupid.”

So, how can you or I or anyone around the world make our writing better for a piece of work to be presented orally?

I think one of the best things anyone can do is remember our audience; the rest falls under this umbrella of advice.

If we wouldn’t want to listen to our paper be read aloud, the odds are – no one else will either. So, the best place to start is to pick a topic that we are interested in and passionate about in some manner.

Once we have our topic, draft the paper. Edit, and draft again until you feel it is “just right.” It should be organized in such a way that it is cohesive, not all over the place. If we lose our audience in the first two minutes of our presentation, they will most likely stay lost (or start checking their Facebook) for the remainder of the allotted time.

It should flow in a way that makes it easy to follow, even if a printed copy is not available for the audience to read along. Good transitions are a key point in avoiding losing the audience. They act as guideposts. They let the audience know where we are and where we are heading. Once we have all this down on paper…

Practice, practice, practice. And practice some more. Present it to an audience of one in the mirror. Read it to some friends. If they are good friends they will tell us, “Dude, this is SO boring. No one cares,” or they will say, “I really didn’t expect to be that interested in it, but that was really intriguing.” Feedback is our friend in this situation: good or bad.

That mirror or those friends will let us know when something is awkward or confusing. Practicing also gives us a better idea of our timing: how long will this take to read? If there is time for questions, when do we need to start wrapping up the presentation? If we have humor or an emphatic point embedded in our presentation, how many seconds can be allowed for laughter or applause (it could happen) before moving on to the next lines?

Thinking about all of these things as we write will help us become more engaged with the material and how to arrange it in just the right manner to keep our audience as engaged as we are.

Of course, the point of these sorts of presentations is to “Wow!” the audience. It helps our self-esteem to know we did a good job, and it is even better if we did a great job. Hearing the applause at the end or being asked engaging questions at the end are just a couple ways to tell bad from good, and good from great. They will also boost that self-esteem or knock it down a couple notches, but that will most likely come as a direct result of how much time, thought, and effort was put into the work presented.

So arise, go forth, and conquer that writing and reading!  Oh, and try not to sound like Ben Stein.

Strengthening Sentences: Parallelism

There are two very important issues on the table today:

1.) Going to "blooger.com" will not get you anywhere near the blogosphere.  My fingers and brain were apparently at a disconnect this morning -- I wanted to write a blog while they wanted to purchase a new domain name.  I'm not even sure what one would use "blooger.com" for anyway.  It sounds illicit.  And unwashed.

2.) Parallelism.  We're going to spend the majority of our time on this one today, mostly because it's the more important of the two.  And also because I'll feel the urge to shower if I say "blooger" too many times.

So what the heck is parallelism, anyway?  I mean, sure, everyone learns the difference between parallel and perpendicular lines in third grade, but how does that have anything to do with writing?

Parallelism as related to writing (according to the smart folks over at American Heritage Dictionary) is "the use of identical or equivalent syntactic constructions in corresponding clauses or phrases." 

Sweet.  A bunch of fancy-pants English major jargon.  Put simply, parallel structures in writing are sentences with multiple parts (usually a list of clauses) that are put together with the same kinds of pieces.  Usually parallel sentences flow rather nicely.  In fact, one of 'em snuck into the beginning of this blog post:

"I wanted to write a blog while they wanted to purchase a new domain name."

If we throw on the x-ray goggles and take a look at how these individual parts play out, it would look something like this:

[subject] + [infinitive verb] + [direct object] while [subject] + [infinitive verb] + [direct object]

See how the structure is identical on both sides of the "while"?  That's parallelism.  The same basic premise applies when you're working with a list of activities.  Let's take a look at two quick excursions into Bob's morning, one built with a parallel construction and the other without:

Not-So-Parallel: Bob threw a poodle out the window, is going to the store, and he might slash the tires on Stephen's Celica.

Ew.  Not only is he a jerk (and apparently apt to damage my property), Bob can't build parallel sentences to save his life.  It checks out something like this with the grammar glasses on:

[subject] + [past-tense verb] + [prepositional phrase] /// [infinitive verb] + [prepositional phrase] /// [subject] + [auxiliary verb phrase] + [object]

Now let's take another foray into Bob's cruel existence, this time spiced up with a dash of parallelism:

Parallel: Bob punched a kitten in the throat, threw an old lady into traffic, and purchased weapons at WalMart.

Geez ... he's still a jerk, but at least this sentence flows a little nicer.  That's because all three of those share the same grammatical construction:

[subject] + [past-tense verb] + [direct object] + [prepositional phrase]

Now, even if you're not so familiar with the specific parts of grammar, you can still check sentences for parallelism by asking yourself a few questions.  The guilty party is most often the verb.  Keep them in line by considering the following:

Are my verbs the same tense?
Are all of my verbs doing the same job in the sentence?
Am I using the same kinds of verbs?
Does it sound odd or choppy when read aloud?


Read this out loud to yourself.  No, I don't care that your roommate is staring at you.  Throw a shoe at him (or her) and do it anyway: I enjoy long walks on the beach, eating gourmet food, and to stargaze on a clear night.

Doesn't that sound funny?  Obviously "it sounds right" won't always going to lead you to the correct answer, but often times it will help you nail sentences with parallelism issues.  So go, grasshopper, off into the fields of writing, never to be perplexed by parallelism again.  And while you're at it, come up with a good use for blooger.com.  That's going to bother me all day.

Freeing the Flow

One of the most common issues students request help with in the Writing Center is "flow."  People want writing to move smoothly from one point to the next, and in student writing, any speed bumps in that process find themselves slashed with red ink.

The body of your paper can be hard enough when you have a lot of ideas to tackle, and trying to get them all to flow nicely together sometimes feels like an insurmountable task.  The longer the paper, and the more ideas you're trying to work with, the trickier it can get.  Thankfully, it's not too hard to implement a method into your madness.

It's preferable to actually going mad, right?  I mean, seriously, no one wants to see a broken college student shuffling around campus muttering about hamsters and ficus plants to himself (or herself). That'd be sad.

To prevent such tragedies, we've compiled some tips and tricks to help make sure the journey through your paper is as painless as possible, for both you and the reader.

1. Obvious transition devices aren't the Devil.
Don't be afraid to be straightforward when you're moving from one point to another.  There seems to be this fear of overt usage of transition words, as if the key to "flow" isn't showing your reader how your ideas are moving, but was instead the acquisition of some perfectly sublime cipher that subconsciously draws the reader through your words like the Lazy River. 

It's not nearly that difficult.  In fact, if you try too hard to be subtle and tricky with your transitions, you make it more likely that your reader will get lost or frustrated.  Remember, what seems obvious to you may not be obvious to your reader.  You've got all those facts and context smooshed up in your grey matter.  The reader just has what's on your page.

Often, writers use signal phrases, which are just words (or phrases ... surprise) that give the reader a heads-up of something going on in the text.  Transitions are just one place where you can use these kinds of signals to keep your reader following the same road you're on.  (We'd hate for them to zig where they should have zagged and end up at some creepy hotel run by a murderous psychopath and his three pet koalas.) 

There are a plethora of good words and phrases that you can use to transition from one idea into the next, especially if you've already established that you plan on moving through several points.  Here are a few:

Similar Ideas - Also, just as, besides, similarly, likewise, furthermore, moreover
Contrast - However, instead, in contrast, conversely
Sequence/Timing - First, second, third (etc), next, then, finally, before, after, later
Exception - Besides, however, except, nonetheless, excluding, outside of, save, barring
Emphasis - Of course, even, in fact
Additional Evidence - And, also, again, as well, additionally
Cause and Effect - Because, so, therefore, thus, as a result, consequently


2. Utilize topic/closing sentences. 
One of the greatest places to give your reader an idea of where you are going is at the end of a paragraph or the beginning of a new one.  Sometimes the two even get together for tea and share the same goal.  Check out the example below:

In a recent study, koalas who were exposed to rainbows for three hours a day were reported as being much friendlier by their keepers.  They mauled fewer interns and stopped urinating on the wall within seventy-two hours of their exposure.  However, this is just one of the variables that have been known to affect koala behavior.

Recently, this same group of scientists discovered that koalas fed Cocoa Puffs suffered from horrible flatulence, leading to severe irritation.  Blah, blah, blah ...

See how the underlined sentence ties the two together?  (Bonus points for noticing the signal word) 

The transition lets the reader know that we plan on continuing our discussion on koala behavior, but also shows them the upcoming shift in direction.  Look at the ideas being discussed in your paragraph and see how it relates to the paragraphs before and after it.  (If you can't find any connection, you may need to work on organization.  You might find a more fitting spot for it closer to a more similar topic.)  Figure out what's changed.  Is it your point of view?  The approach?  A different side to the debate? 

By nailing down what the differences and similarities are between the two paragraphs, you can forge a transition that will stand the test of time!  ... Or at least your teacher's red pen.

3. Get a second set of eyes. 
Like I've mentioned in my earlier discussion on organization, your brain has ways of tricking you.  Have you ever had a moment where a snippet of conversation reminds you of something, which reminds you of something else (and so on and so forth) until you've made the mental jump from Grandma's favorite cookies to recent serial killer victims?  No?  Well, you haven't lived then.

All cookies and pre-meditated murder aside, it's easy to see the context of your own writing.  You know that subconscious Lazy River effect I mentioned earlier?  That does happen sometimes ... to us writers.  It's easy to leave out little bits and pieces that seem completely obvious without realizing their importance. 

Having someone to look it over like a trusted friend or your Friendly Neighborhood Writing Center (I very much wanted to say Spider Man) can really help you locate those spots where your assumptions leave the reader in the dust.

Slippery Punctuation and an Ostrich

(Take a deep breath........Read!)

Sometimes it’s hard to tell where to place a period because it seems as though all of the thoughts sort of run together due to the fact that I am writing one thought after the other and these thoughts just seem to be trickling out of my head without pause so where should I put this period at, I don’t know? Oops, it didn’t even turn out to be a period, it was a question mark, but I thought that the beginning of the sentence should have had a period and then it took a turn in another direction and all of the sudden: BAM: there’s a question mark and what am I supposed to do about it? Oh, no! Another one! And exclamation points! I can find where to put this period maybe I could put it in my sock drawer so that when it’ll never get out and I’ll know just where it is at all times but then what if it sneaks away? It did it again! I want all of my sentences to mold together into one giant sentence that lasts three pages long so that the reader can never take a breath and their face will turn blue and they might even fall over because I couldn’t find my period it wasn’t where I left it oh, there it is.

NOTE: This run-on sentence was not picked up by Microsoft Word.

NOTE: Run-on sentences are also called fused-sentences

What is a run-on sentence?

A fused sentence, or a run-on sentence occurs when two main clauses are connected without punctuation. Comma splices fall under the same category because they are sentences that aren't punctuated correctly. If you see that your sentence runs on for three or more lines, or if you have a hard time reading it without turning blue in the face, then consider revising it. If your sentence seems like a question and a statement, consider separating it into both with the proper punctuation. Remember, the most important thing in all of this is that what you are trying to say comes across as clearly as possible. Other times you will find that you have an incomplete sentence. The best place to find the rest of it is on either side of the period or punctuation. This is where it usually hides, like an ostrich with its head in the sand.

"Hey, Larry, is it safe yet?"
"What?"

Why You Should Actually Attend Readings

No doubt you've seen advertisements about readings being held throughout campus. Perhaps you've gone to a few that relate to your class work, or whose topics interested you. But have you ever considered how attending readings and presentations may impact your own writing?

The truth is, hearing a paper read aloud is completely different from reading it silently to yourself. (This is, in fact, a great proofreading skill.) When listening to someone read aloud, you get a sense of flow and rhythm, an idea of how words sound. If you pay close attention, this can affect how you yourself put words and sentences together—pattern yourself off of the patterns of others. It's okay to take inspiration from others, as long as you avoid outright plagiarism.

It also helps to attend readings and presentations that you otherwise wouldn't attend. For example: if you are an Education major with an English concentration, perhaps you should attend a reading about plate tectonics. Sounds boring, right? But just think—not all of the writing in the world revolves around teaching English. There's a lot you can take away from a geology essay. Use of terminology, for example; or the way the presenter may take information that is otherwise boring to you, and make it fun and engaging (believe me, this actually happens). If you're going to be teaching English to a room full of high schoolers who don't care about the symbology of the letter "A" in The Scarlet Letter, you'll need to engage them somehow.

Voilà! Any reading, any presentation, can help you with your own writing. You just have to pay attention—if not to the subject matter, then to the way it's read, or the way the presenter delivers the information. This may mean adding a few more "to-do's" onto your already-busy schedule, but believe me, it pays off in the long run. And who knows—you just may have some fun. (Really!)

New Handout: Transitions

New to the "Resources for Writers" page this semester is a handout simply titled "Transitions." The handout is located in the "Grammar & Style" section of the page.

Ben Potmesil, the Presidential Graduate Assistant for the Writing Center, was the lead author of the handout, and the document offers advice on how to achieve that mystical thing called "flow" in your writing.

Put another way, writing that has strong "flow" is cohesive. It has coherence through the use of effective transitions.

A writer can overdo transitions of course, so that's something to watch for, but as the handout relates, "You can't assume your reader is going to have the same conclusions you do, so as a writer you need to make it clear why one idea is connected to another by using transitions and signaling words. These words and phrases connect ideas within a sentence or paragraph and also between paragraphs."

We hope you find the handout helpful.