by Bobbie Christmas
Q: I have a question regarding one of your “criticisms.” On several of the pages you edited you circled the word “And” and made a note not to start a sentence with a conjunction. Fair enough, but I have seen endless examples of writers doing just that.
The word “but” is also a conjunction, and I have also seen many writers beginning sentences with that word as well. Bradbury, Tolkien, Paul Coelho (The Alchemist), Richard Adams (Watership Down), Robert Parker, W. Somerset Maugham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, not to mention Dan Brown’s thriller The Da Vinci Code. And the list goes on. I find it difficult to believe that all these well-respected and renowned writers have been writing incorrectly for the past hundred years.
Your notation left me baffled. I have seen sentences beginning with “And” and “But” for so long that I naturally assumed that it was fine to do so, and I’m in the habit of doing so myself. Could you explain what you mean?
A: If you’re in the habit of starting sentences with conjunctions, you’re not alone. As you said, many bestsellers use similar construction. Let me explain why that habit is still a good one to break.
Formal writing follows the standard rules of grammar, which state that starting a sentence with a coordinating conjunction such as and, but, for, and yet creates a sentence fragment, and sentence fragments are unacceptable. Creative writing, however, often snubs grammar rules, but it still has guidelines. One guideline is to avoid unintentional repetition. In my decades of editing manuscripts, I’ve noticed that writers often fall into a habit of starting sentences with conjunctions, and a single manuscript can have dozens to sometimes even hundreds of such sentence fragments. Using the same sentence structure hundreds of times in a manuscript constitutes unintentional repetition and is therefore a sign of weak writing.
Sentence fragments can, when used sparingly, lend power to a statement. Look at the following example: Darcy stood on tiptoe, leaned over, and peered down the deep well. But dark holes can be dangerous.
Did you notice how the fragment makes the reader want to know why Darcy should not have leaned over the well? Using a sentence fragment in this case added impact. When a writer overuses sentence fragments, though, the effect is lost.
In creative writing, sentence fragments are a style issue, rather than a grammar issue, and overuse of any word, phrase, or structure detracts from an author’s style. For that reason I point out sentence fragments and let writers choose to break rules only for impact or write with repetition and risk having their manuscripts rejected.
My evaluations have a disclaimer that explains that writers do not have to stick to every grammar rule, because the result might sound too academic, but strong writers find a happy medium that works with their genre and type of writing.
Q: I’ve been submitting my manuscript to several publishers and agents. Although I’ve had only rejections so far, some of them are “near misses.” One publisher gave lots of praise for the submission but said it didn’t accept unagented manuscripts. One agent said he “saw the talent,” but said he’d had problems placing similar proposals. Do these niceties mean anything, or are these people just letting me down gently? How should I interpret these rejections? How can I avoid rejection and get an acceptance letter?
A: Most agents and publishers have little time to let people down gently. Most rejections are sent by preprinted letters, boilerplate emails, or in the past, rubber-stamped rejection notices on your cover letter. Agents and publishers have nothing to gain by taking extra time to write a nice note.
I know facing rejection is difficult, but when one includes a personal comment of any kind, it is rare, and when that comment is complimentary, frame it and hang it on your wall! You have the rarest form of rejection letter, and it means you are getting close. Keep revising and submitting your work. Keep creating more. Ponder the point that similar proposals have been difficult to place. Think how you might revise your proposal or your entire book to make it more marketable. Look at bestseller lists to see what’s selling.
I know rejections hurt, but if you hope to sell your work to a publisher, keep going, keep learning, keep improving, and take pride in the “good” rejections.
Bobbie Christmas, book editor, author of Write In Style: Use Your Computer to Improve Your Writing, and owner of Zebra Communications, will answer your questions, too. Send them to Bobbie@zebraeditor.com.