Writing starts with a sentence

Writing starts with a sentence. There’s one. And there’s another. It’s easy to get started, but increasingly difficult to continue. Where do we go from here?

Let’s start with the basic building blocks. All you need are two components: subject and predicate. That’s it. I’m not kidding. Subject and predicate are like flour and water: simple ingredients that can be kneaded into an infinity of variations. Sometimes you’ll add yeast or salt, and you’ll certainly need a little heat to make it edible; and as for the fillings – well, the choice is yours. But whatever you put in your sandwich, you can’t do without the flour and the water. They are the essence of the sandwich.

So it is with subject and predicate. Once you’ve got a subject and predicate, you’ve got a sentence. And a sentence is nothing other than the unfolding of a universe in thought. Take a bite out of that.

The subject of a sentence is usually a person (or thing) who is doing something, or is having something done to them (or it). It could be anything, anything at all, from a headmaster to a flying monkey, from a little piece of heaven to the very concept of freedom. And the predicate is literally everything else in the sentence: actions, reactions, other people, other things.

Writing starts with a sentence. Writing is the subject. Starts with a sentence is the predicate. Smoosh them together, and bingo – you’ve got yourself a sentence.

There’s something intimidating about grammar. The terminology is arcane, the rules opaque. We construct grammatically flawless sentences all the time, but when it comes to actually explaining what it is that we’re doing – describing the syntactical base beneath our conversational superstructure – we’re likely to get our past participles muddled up with our split infinitives. My advice, which works just as well for grammar as it does for life, is this: don’t sweat the small stuff. You don’t need to know what demonstrative pronouns are (this, that, those). You don’t need to know what coordinate conjunctions are (and, or, but). You don’t need to know what interrogative adjectives are (which, whose, what). The only thing you need to know is what nouns and verbs are.

A noun refers to people, places, things, and abstractions. A verb indicates the action that sets these people, places, things, and abstractions into motion – or stops them in their tracks. Think of nouns as the heroes of the story you want to tell, and verbs as the heroes’ daring deeds, or epic failures, or bouts of paralyzing indecision. The partnership between noun and verb is an elegant one, a push-and-pull between a state of inertia and a flow of movement. A verb is a kind of kinetic energy that shunts nouns ever forward.

The more abstract the noun, the more it needs a verb to animate it, to get it up and running, to cheer it across the finishing line. The problem with academic writing is that abstract nouns are often accompanied by verbs that lack vitality and exuberance. Instead of choosing lively verbs that fizz with energy, academic writers tend to reach for lifeless verbs that cause the action to grind to a halt. Take this example, from the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management:

Organic farming (OF) is defined as a balanced ecosystem of a permanent nature that maintains and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles, and soil biological activity, while banning the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides but encouraging techniques such as local and renewable sources (i.e. crop rotation, mulching, cover crops, hand weeding, green manure, and composting) as well as biological pest control agents (i.e. predators, parasitoids, pathogens, and competitors). In other words, OF is a holistic production management system that maintains and promotes the health of soils, ecosystems, and people. The main goal of OF is not just the production of high-quality products and food, but also maintaining the highest possible level of biodiversity in the natural environment. (Yazdanpanah, et al., 2022: 908)

Organic farming is the hero of this story. It’s a pretty abstract noun, but that’s ok. We just need a strong verb to loosen it up a bit. But what do we find? Is, is, is – a verb that makes organic farming seem like a rigid, unchanging thing when it is in fact a dynamic process, one that involves biological cycles, pest control, and food production. There’s barely any movement here, no lightness of touch. The passage advances like a steamroller, slowly flattening everything under its weight.

There are other problems with the passage, of course. The sentences are too long; the subclauses are confusing; and the parantheses are distracting. But fix the verbs and you’re halfway to fixing the rest of the paragraph:

Organic farming is a balanced ecosystem that seeks to maintain biodiversity, natural cycles, and soil health. Instead of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, organic farming uses sustainable practices such as crop rotation, mulching, cover crops, hand weeding, green manure, and composting. It also relies on biological pest control agents, such as predators, parasitoids, and pathogens. As a result, organic farming produces high-quality food while also maintaining the highest possible level of biodiversity in the natural environment.

You can even populate the passage with real people and add more verbs to the mix:

Organic farming is a balanced ecosystem that seeks to maintain biodiversity, natural cycles, and soil health. Instead of using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, organic farmers use a range of sustainable farming practices: they rotate their crops, apply mulch to the soil, grow crop cover, compost plant and food waste, and spread green manure on their fields. They also rely on biological pest control agents, such as predators, parasitoids, and pathogens. As a result, organic farmers produce high-quality food while also maintaining the highest possible level of biodiversity in the natural environment.

This is the lesson of nouns and verbs, the only grammar lesson you’ll ever need: choose your hero (or villain) wisely, describe their special powers, and then show us what they can do.