PAW PRINTS

    Faith and Begorra!  Here ‘tis March agin, an’ St. Paddy’s day just around the corner.  Be sure ta wear your green or ya might make a Leperchaun peeved with ye. ;-)
    On a more somber note, PAWS’ next meeting is on March 15th, the Ides of March.  Linda, I’d be concerned if all the executive board surrounded you as you walked in the annex.  Et tu, Lainie?  ;-)
    This month’s meeting should prove exciting!  And that’s just the opportunity to visit and share with members!
    In Paw Prints this month, I’ve found some great articles.  Bill Johnson discusses the “Foundation of Storytelling,” Alicia Rasley helps our writing become more “Subtle and Sensual,” and Cynthia Sterling gives us great tips in “Fifteen Ways to Polishing Your Prose.”  This months grammar lesson focuses on pronoun case, especially the troublesome “Who vs. Whom” debate.
    So sit back with your favorite Leperchaun and enjoy.
    Remember to register for the OWFI conference in May.
    As always, send any ideas or articles to me via e-mail at kellimcb@chickasaw.com, or give them to me at the meeting.  If you have any ideas, contacts, or programs you’d like to see/give, send them to Pat.  Let’s make this year one where all of our members get involve and help strengthen our club.
     April articles are due April 5th.

    Just before the turn of 1900, the head of the U.S. Patent Office suggested that it be closed because everything had already been invented. Now, a hundred years later as we sit in front of our TV and VCR eating microwave popcorn, waiting for one kid to get off the internet and the other to bring home one of the cars, we laugh at that poor, short-sighted fellow. Technological breakthroughs have only just begun. Improbabilities have now become the ordinary.
    Everyone of us aspiring authors have heard that the publishing "sky is falling"; that the probability of any of us making that first sale shrinks daily. Every agent and editor interview I read says the market is incredibly tight, and publishers are taking fewer chances on unknown writers. That's all fine and dandy, but every month I read lists of "first sales" and know that it still happens. It can happen and it will happen if we continue to cherish the dream within us.
    In a climate of shrinking markets, closing lines, publisher buy-outs, and the hew and cry of Chicken Little, it helps to remember that fellow from the patent office.

    The Shawnee News Star asked Doris Novtony to write a bi-weekly article for their paper and she has accepted.
    Elaine Carmen Wells sold her first confession, MY STEPDAUGHTER TRIED TO RUIN MY MARRIAGE.
    Kelli McBride had her column, “Daydream Believer,” reprinted in the March 1999 OK-Corral.

1. Tone-- What is the tone of your book? Look for sensory details that enhance your dark, light, epic, comic, or lyric tone.
A. Word and image choices create tone: if you choose gloomy, grim, dusky words, you'll create a dark tone. If you choose amusing, ridiculous, clever images, you'll create a light tone. The way to make this subtle rather than heavy-handed is to make sure most of the words are in common use (that is, "dark" rather than "tenebrous"), and the images are accessible to most people (a cave, not the interior of the small intestine).

    You've done it! After a lot of hard work, you've finally finished your manuscript. Your novel or short story is out of your head and onto the printed page. Allow yourself a moment of celebration at your accomplishment. Now it's time to get to work.
    You've mined the rough gem of a story from your imagination. The labor of polishing your piece will make it shine like a priceless jewel.
    Below are fifteen steps I take in revising my manuscripts, which you may find helpful in polishing your own work.

    Have you ever been stymied by the “who vs. whom” question?  If so, then you are a victim of pronoun case.  This month’s grammar lesson focuses on pronoun case.  I have taken the following information from Lunsford and Connors’ book Easy Writer, and the Grammar Gym Web Site (http://athena.english.vt.edu/~ruggiero/grammar/workout13.html).
    Most speakers of English know intuitively when to use I, when to use me, and when to use my.  Our choices reflect different use of case, the form a pronoun takes to indicate its function in a sentence.  Pronouns functioning as subjects or subject complements are in the subjective case (I); those functioning as objects are in the objective case (me); those functioning as possessives are in the possessive case (my).
 

Note that WHO, like personal pronouns (he, she, etc.) comes in three cases: subjective WHO, objective WHOM, possessive WHOSE. The cases of WHO most closely resemble the cases of HE, so let's compare them to clarify the who/whom distinction.

Note the similarities between HE and WHO.  HE and WHO both end in vowels.  HIM and WHOM both end in -M.  HIS and WHOSE both have a possessive –s, but no apostrophe.
    You can make use of this similarity to determine whether you need WHO or WHOM in a relative clause: the he/him-who/whom test. In this case, you will have to be sexist and substitute HE for any noun you are testing, whether the noun represents a male, a female, or a genderless creature, object, organization, concept, etc.
    To apply the test, think of a sentence containing a relative clause as a combination of two original sentences.  Let's separate the clauses and then put them back together.

1) The man wouldn't leave his name.  He called last night.

    We will convert HE (the subjective case of the personal pronoun) to WHO (the subjective case of the relative pronoun). Since HE/WHO is the SUBJECT of the subordinate clause, it is already in the initial position in the clause. All we have to do is to plug the now-subordinated clause into the first sentence, which is to become the main clause in the complex sentence

The man WHO called last night wouldn't leave his name.

2) Our dog Rusty came home last night.  We dearly love him.

    We will convert HIM (the objective case of the personal pronoun) to WHOM (the objective case of the relative pronoun). Being the direct object of the subordinate clause, HIM is not in the initial position in the clause, where it would need to be to function as a tow bar word. (It's as if the word HIM had been carried in the trunk of the car--we have to get it out and put it on the front.) So we have to move it to the initial position, producing WHOM we dearly love. Now we can plug the subordinate clause into the main clause.

Our dog Rusty, WHOM we dearly love, came home last night.

3) The student was absent today.  I borrowed his notes.

    We will convert HIS (the possessive case of the personal pronoun) to WHOSE (the possessive case of the relative pronoun). Like HIM in example 2, HIS is not in initial position in the subordinate clause, so we have to move it, and since possessives are determiners and are therefore attached to nouns, we have to move its noun too: WHOSE notes I borrowed. Now we can plug it into the main clause.

The student whose notes I borrowed was absent today.
(In this case, you might use the HE/WHO-HIS/WHOSE test.)

    Since the only error most writers make with WHOSE is to spell it as *WHO'S, this workout will not address WHOSE. The exercises below concern WHO vs. WHOM.

OK. Let's apply the test. Consider the following example.

The woman was elected.  She was best qualified for the job.
    When we combine these sentences, will we use WHO or WHOM? Well, apply the test. SHE is the subjective case, like HE. SHE (or the substitute) is the subject of the second sentence. So when we convert SHE or HE to a relative pronoun, we use the subjective form WHO: The woman WHO was best qualified for the job was elected.

The woman was elected.  We liked the woman best.
    When we combine these sentences, will we use WHO or WHOM? Well, the woman could be replaced by the personal pronoun HER. HER is in the objective case, like HIM, so we will need the objective case of the relative, WHOM. We'll move it to the front of the clause in tow bar position, and we get The woman whom we liked best was elected.

The children were dressed as characters from Star Trek.  We saw the children.
    OK--the children are what we saw, so children is the direct object, so it could be replaced by the objective case of the plural personal pronoun them, which is like him, so we need the objective case of the relative pronoun whom:  The children whom we saw were dressed as characters from Star Trek.

    When many people consider how to tell a story, they think in terms of plot and character. While these are often the most visible aspects of a story, there is an underlying foundation of principles that support a well-told story. These principles could be compared to a house foundation. Without a solid foundation, the other effects of a house -- its character and design -- cannot be fully enjoyed. In the same fashion, these principles of storytelling are also mostly out of sight, but a badly laid story foundation has effects just as damaging as a badly constructed house foundation.
    While these story principles are presented in a particular order, a storyteller can come at these issues from any direction. There is no inherently right or wrong way to understand them.