Intro to Word Groups

For example, Dracula vs Twilight

Here's an example of how looking at the grammatical mechanics of a piece of writing can give you insights and ideas.

Below are two snippets, one from Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, a modern vampire novel published in 2005, and the other from Bram Stoker's Dracula, the original vampire novel, published 100 years earlier in 1897. 

We have highlighted:

  • People
  • Things
  • Actions

Use the highlighting to compare the passages. Do you see any major differences between the two?

The street was lined on both sides by blank, doorless, windowless walls. I could see in the distance, two intersections down, streetlamps, cars, and more pedestrians, but they were all too far away. Because lounging against the western building, midway down the street, were the other two men from the group, both watching with excited smiles as I froze dead on the sidewalk. I realized then that I wasn't being followed.

I was being herded.

I paused for only a second, but it felt like a very long time. I turned then and darted to the other side of the road. I had a sinking feeling that it was a wasted attempt. The footsteps behind me were louder now.

Twilight(2011)

This time, after going to the far side of the Pass, he suddenly turned down a narrow roadway which ran sharply to the right. Soon we were hemmed in with trees, which in places arched right over the roadway till we passed as through a tunnel. And again great frowning rocks guarded us boldly on either side. Though we were in shelter, we could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled through the rocks, and the branches of the trees crashed together as we swept along. It grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery snow began to fall, so that soon we and all around us were covered with a white blanket. The keen wind still carried the howling of the dogs, though this grew fainter as we went on our way. The baying of the wolves sounded nearer and nearer, as though they were closing round on us from every side. I grew dreadfully afraid, and the horses shared my fear.

Dracula(1897)

What do you see?

Both stories are written from the narrator's point of view, so they both use I/we phrasing. 

But in Dracula, only half of the actions are attributed to people (we were hemmed in, we swept along, I was dreadfully afraid, etc)—while the other half are attributed to things:

  • The narrow roadway ran sharply
  • The trees arched right over
  • The great frowning rocks guarded boldly

In contrast, in Twilight almost all of the actions are attributed to the people, in particular the narrator:

  • I could see
  • I froze dead
  • I was being herded

What does that mean? 

In Dracula, the landscape is an active force. The narrator is travelling in a carriage while the landscape arches, hems, guards, moans, whistles, bays around him. 

In contrast, the environment in Twilight is static, like a low-budget film set—some gloomy flats extending into the distance. Almost all the action is from the narrator.

With this insight, you can examine the effects created by each approach, and experiment with them in your own writing—you might use ideas from Dracula to make your landscape more active and rich (or you might use ideas from Twilight to make it more static and simple).

For example, say you were writing that scene in Twilight and you wanted to capture more of that Bram Stoker feeling, you might wind up with something like this:

A moment later I made a sharp right turn, crossing beneath the overpass and away from the railroad tracks. Overhead the freeway loomed, and along its underside its concrete ribs reflected a ghastly green light, as if it were breathing poison. Cars and trucks thrummed high above, drowning out the sound of my footsteps as I ran into a narrow road below. Around me dark warehouses slumped, choking the street, and beyond them to my right a colossal factory reared up, steam heaving off its iron flanks. A cold wind slithered across the pavement, between dirty papers and torn plastic bags, tossing them onto barbed wire fences and leaving them to hang like dead birds. The shattered footpath snapped my ankles, and deep black puddles soaked through my shoes and chilled my bones. The warehouse walls, thick with grime and smoky grease, carried echoes of the men in the dark, gaining on me now, first their footsteps, and then their sinister, snickering laughter. I felt horribly sick, and I ran on my sickness.

Having written that example above, you could use the same analysis to critique it: Stoker balanced environment and narrator 50/50. The example above skews more like 80/20 towards the environment.

Is that too much? Do we need to see more of the narrator? Does the effect become overblown?

That would all be for you to think about, discuss, and decide.

Where are the fancy grammar terms?

You might have noticed in the exercise above that we used very simple terms: people, things, actions. 

But most grammar terms are more fancy-sounding than that. For example, we could have instead used noun groups (for people and things) and verb groups (for actions). 

But sometimes those terms are not the tools you need, and what's important here is to realise that grammar is a tool for you to use to examine and manipulate writing—it's not this arbitrary body of terms and rules for you to submit yourself to.

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