Writer's Options (Unit 3)

The relative clause, a tool useful to revising your writing, helps create more economical sentences and control focus in your paragraphs. By replacing a noun or noun phrase with a pronoun (which, that, who, whom, or whose), you are combining two sentences and constructing a relative clause.

When replacing nouns with pronouns to construct a relative clause, you must choose carefully. The pronoun you choose should be based off of whether or not the noun refers to a human. For example, when it does not refer to a human, you can use the pronouns that or which. When referring to a human, it's better to use the pronouns whom and that.

By determining how the clause relates to the meaning of the sentence, you can determine the punctuation you should use. When using a relative clause without commas, you are implying that the information in the clause is true of only certain things or people mentioned in the sentence. When you use a comma, you are implying that the information in the clause is true of all things or people in the sentence. When using a comma in a relative clause, you must use who, whom, or which.

Relative clauses also allow for sentence clarity. When two sentences sit next to each other, it can be unclear which sentence is the main idea. Adding a relative clause gives a clearer picture of what's the main idea and what is merely supporting information.

The Writer's Options (3-14)

Although all writer's have their own style, most utilize the same composing process - prewriting, drafting, and rewriting. Many authors will move back and forth between these steps as they write, and they'll even repeat steps. Prewriting means to plan and think before you begin drafting, drafting is to get your writing down on paper, and rewriting is to modify your written draft. It is important to use these steps in your own writing process.

Listing, focused free writing, and the reporter's formula. Three solutions to your writer's block. It's difficult to know where to begin when you are first starting a piece of writing, so it's helpful to have a starting point. List ideas of things you'd like to write about, and list information about those things. It will help you brainstorm and give you many writing options to choose from. Focused free writing is to write nonstop for a certain period of time. It's possible that a majority of it won't be helpful, but parts of it will spark new ideas, and get you started on something much bigger. The reporter's formula is to ask questions used by newspaper reporters, "who, what, where, when, why, how?" Ask yourself these questions to generate ideas for your writing and to learn new information about it.

Once you decide who you're writing for and the reason you're writing, you'll be able to determine which main idea you want to focus on. Once you focus on one main idea, everything else becomes "blurred out" in a sense, so it's important to pick an idea relevant to the purpose of your writing. 

Writers on Writing

This article talks about several different ways to improve your writing, some much more specific then others. For example, his first point is to "never open a book with weather." Your readers are looking for details on your characters, not what the weather is like.
He also talks about never using a verb other than "said" to carry your dialogue. When you get too wordy or use words that no one knows, you'll lose the interest of your readers and interrupt the flow of your story. Keep it simple.
The same goes for using adverbs to modify the word "said." If you do this, you'll become too wordy and complicate your story. You may lose the attention of your reader.
I also learned that you want to avoid detailed descriptions of your characters. It's important to provide description of your characters, but keep it simple. By keeping it simple you aren't over-complicating your story, but you are still giving your readers the chance to understand your characters.

Lastly, you don't want to go into too much detail describing places and things, similar to your characters. By rambling on about the setting or the brisk wind, you are interrupting the flow of your story and losing the attention of your readers.