Transcript Image Grammar

The Five Brushstrokes
Compare the following images, the first written by a high
school student…
It was winter. Everything was
frozen and white. Snow had fallen
from the sky for days. The
weather was horrible.
The second by well-known novelist Brian Jacques…
Mossflower lay deep in the grip of midwinter beneath a
sky of leaden gray that showed tinges of scarlet and
orange on the horizon. A cold mantle of snow draped the
landscape, covering the flatlands to the west. Snow was
everywhere, filling the ditches, drifting high against the
hedgerows, making paths invisible, smoothing the
contours of earth in its white embrace.
The Writer as Artist
The writer is an artist, painting images of life with specific and identifiable
brushstrokes, images as realistic as Wyeth and as abstract as Picasso. In the act
of creation, the writer, like the artist, relies on fundamental elements. As water
colorist explains, “Pictures are not made of flowers, guitars, people, surf, or turf,
but with irreducible elements of art: shapes, tones, directions, sizes, lines,
textures, and color”. Similarly, writing is not constructed merely from
experiences, information, characters, or plots, but from fundamental artistic
elements of grammar.
-Harry R. Noden, Image Grammar
Participle
– An –ing or –ed word (usually) that acts as
an adjective.
– Adds more action to a description.
The snake attacked its prey.
Hissing, slithering, and coiling, the snake attacked its
prey.
Participles Painted by Ernest Hemingway
Shifting the weight of the line to his left
shoulder and kneeling carefully, he washed his
hand in the ocean and held it there, submerged,
for more than a minute, watching the blood trail
away and the steady movement of the water
against his hand as the boat moved.
--- Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest Hemingway
The dog ran to his owner.
Appositive
– A noun or noun phrase that adds a second
image to a preceding noun.
– It expands details in the imagination.
The raccoon enjoys eating turtle eggs.
The raccoon, a midnight scavenger, enjoys eating
turtle eggs.
Appositives Painted by Cornelius Ryan
Plowing through the choppy gray waters, a phalanx of
ships bore down on Hitler's Europe: fast new attack
transports, slow rust-scarred freighters, small ocean
liners, channel steamers, hospital ships, weatherbeaten tankers, and swarms of fussing tugs. Barrage
balloons flew above the ships. Squadrons of fighter planes
weaved below the clouds. And surrounding this cavalcade
of ships packed with men, guns, tanks, and motor vehicles,
and supplies came a formidable array of 702 warships.
--- June 6, 1944: The Longest Day
by Cornelius Ryan
The zebras turned to face the noise.
Adjectives Out of Order
– Placing adjectives in a different order can
be effective.
– Do not use too many “lists” of adjectives.
– Amplify the details of an image.
The large, red-eyed, angry moose charged the intruder.
The large moose, red-eyed and angry, charged the
intruder.
Adjectives Out of Order Painted by Doyle, Carr, and
Peck
And then, suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there
came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and
unmistakable.
--- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Pavilion was a simple city, long and rectangular.
--- Alienist by Caleb Carr
I could smell Mama, crisp and starched, plumping my
pillow, and the cool muslin pillowcase touched both my ears
as the back of my head sank into all those feathers.
--- A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The bunnies devour the plant.
Varying Sentence Beginnings
• Allows the writing to flow more
effectively
• Move a phrase or clause to the
beginning of the sentence — instead of
always beginning the sentence with the
subject.
The cat climbed the tree with great caution.
With great caution, the cat climbed the tree.
Long before the first rays of the sun proclaimed yet another
brilliant day on the Monterey Peninsula, Ted lay awake
thinking about the weeks ahead. The courtroom. The
defendant's table where he would sit, feeling the eyes of the
spectators on him, trying to get a sense of the impact of the
testimony on the jurors. The verdict: Guilty of Murder in the
Second Degree. Why Second Degree? he had asked his first
lawyer. "Because in New York State, First Degree is reserved
for killing a peace officer. For what it's worth, it amounts to
about the same, as far as sentencing goes." Life, he told
himself. A life in prison. (167)
--- Weep No More My Lady by Mary Higgins Clark
The red-tailed hawk looked powerful when it spread
its wings.
The startled frog grasped the leaf at the last moment.
Using Precise Language
- Make your writing more energetic with
action verbs.
- Use precise nouns, adjectives, and adverbs
to make your ideas stand out.
Being Verb: The gravel road was on the right side of
the barn.
Action Verb: The gravel road curled around the right
side of the barn.
Action Verbs Painted by Annie Dillard
A baseball weighted your hand just so, and fit it. Its red stitches, its
good leather and hardness like skin over bone, seemed to call forth a
skill both easy and precise. On the catch---the grounder, the fly, the
line drive---you could snag a baseball in your mitt, where it stayed,
snap, like a mouse locked in its trap, not like some pumpkin of a
softball you merely halted, with a terrible sound like a splat. You could
curl your fingers around a baseball, and throw it in a straight line.
When you hit it with a bat, it cracked---and your heart cracked, too,
at the sound. It took a grass stain nicely, stayed round and smelled
good and lived lashed in your mitt all winter, hibernating.
--- An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
Snow was on the leaves.