Information and examples taken from Image Grammar:Using Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing and a conference presentation by Jeffrey

House

Improving Sentence Patterns

Participles and participial phrases are verbs and verb phrases acting as modifiers.

They can add details and specificity that can improve writing.

“The storm clouds drifted across the sky”Revision:“Massed and darkening, storm clouds drifted

across the sky”What meaning does the revision add?

Expanding Sentences through Participles and Participial Phrases

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.

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway: appreciate the richness of his description

Absolutes are formed by adding a noun to a participle or participial phrase.

“The guitarist plucked at the strings.”Revision:“Fingers flying, hair streaming to his

shoulders, the guitarist plucked at the strings.”

Absolutes: a close cousin to participles

The scream froze in her throat. The thing was coming towards her—towards Henry, who stood with his back to it—moving with a weak, shuffling gait, arm outstretched before it, the dust rising from the rotting linen that covered it, a great smell of dust and decay filling the room.

Anne Rice: notice the chilling description the absolutes add to The Mummy

Appositives are phrases added directly after a noun that rename or describe that noun

“My friend does not like to ski, but he does like to skate. He is the man wearing the brown coat.”

Revision“My friend, the man wearing the brown coat,

does not like to ski, but he does like to skate

Appositives can shade the meaning of an image giving it depth

A collection of trash—tiny starfish, moss, sea conchs, crabs, pieces of kelp—sit atop the lobster’s shell.

Note the depth that the appositive adds to this description of a lobster shell

“The large, red-eyed, angry bull moose charged the intruder.”

Note that the reader must wade through too many details before finding what is being described.

Revision“The large bull moose, red-eyed and angry,

charged the intruder”Note how not only the subject becomes clear

sooner, but “red-eyed and angry” also receives more emphasis.

Adjectives shifted out of order can change emphasis and add rhythm

And then, sudenly, in the very dead of night, there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakeable.”

Note the emphasis that is put on the qualities of the sound by shifting the adjectives out of order.

Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles