LitComp1: The Big Four

Hello everyone, and welcome to the first lecture in Literary Composition! I'm your host, TheGoodDr.

Firstly, let me tell you a little bit about what to expect from this course. Literary Composition will not be a class about character creation or world design, but rather about the actual mechanics of writing. To put it into a car perspective, this class is not about the paint on your car or the people in it. This class is about the body of the car and the engine. Without an engine or framework, your car won't be going very far at all. We will be building from the ground up, starting with basic grammar and sentence structure and then moving up.

Like anatomy for artists, grammar is our bricks and mortar. Without understanding the very basics of language, one cannot truly grasp how to change a word into a tool. As writers, we aspire to write great works that move and entertain the people that take the time to read them, to reward them for their investment. Unfortunately, one cannot do that with words. Words, individually, have only limited meaning and aren't capable of moving much other than a pencil. Words put together is where we begin to make strides in the right direction, as sentences craft correctly can provoke thoughts and emotions, and illicit a desired response. But the biggest hurdle to overcome is what pushes words from writing into an art form which we call Literature. It is not a question of content, although it certainly helps. The biggest step into literature is something called rhetoric. Rhetoric is word craft, the art of taking a word and making it a tool, be that tool a weapon or a builder. As stated further above, without learning the fundamentals of grammar, one cannot possibly understand how to make a word into a tool if you don't know everything that it is for. So, without further ado, let's begin.

The first and best things to cover are the Big Four, herein referred to as a noun, a verb, an adjective and an adverb. These are, in my personal opinion, the four most essential basics in the Literature world. Let's examine each of these a bit more in depth.

A noun is a word that served to identify something exactly by calling it what it is. In the sentence immediately before this, I used the noun "word" to identify a noun. Funny how it works like that, isn't it? Other nouns include such familiar terms like "bird" "ship" "shoe" and "academy". Nouns are familiar to us all, and should not be too difficult for anyone to think up. Let's try a sentence with a noun.

[I'm due at work in two and a half hours.]

In the sentence above, the word "work" is the noun. Again, easy stuff but we need to make sure everyone is on the same page. Next, we're going to cover verbs.

Verbs are words of action, that imply movement or activity. Verbs are often used to describe the movements or actions of a noun. In a similar situation, a retake on the example sentence above.

[In two and a half hours, I will be working.]

In the sentence above, working is the verb. It is a modified verb, but a verb nonetheless. Other examples of verbs include such fun things like "running" "reading" "learning". Please note that while it seems common to say that many verbs end in "-ing", that is not the case and such a suffix serves to make the word fit better into the context of the paragraph. Unmodified verbs are the same without the ending. "Run" "read" and "learn" are all words that imply an activity, and the structure of the sentence around it is what gives it the weight of action. Next, we'll cover adjectives.

An adjective is a word that modifies a noun. Now we're getting into the fun stuff! Most adjectives are nouns that are used to give more information about other nouns, but sometimes you can find the clever application of a verb in the adjective slot. We'll examine both, keeping with the word "work".

[My job is hard work.][My job is trying work.]

In the examples above, the words "hard" and "trying" are both adjectives, despite the fact that one is a noun and one is a verb. To successfully craft an adjective, take any object that is in your immediate vicinity and just try to describe it.

Adjectives, in almost every example you will find, immediately precede the noun they modify. Adjectives come in an absurd number of varieties, but we will be covering them further down the line in much greater depths.

Last but certainly not least, we have the adverb. The most versatile of the lot, an adverb modifies verbs, adjectives or even other adverbs(!!). In many examples you find, an adverb will end in -ly. Let's examine adverbs a bit closer.

      Modifying a Verb     Modifying the adjective "work"
[the cat walked (softly).][This is an (expired) work visa.]
Very modifying carefully, which modified explained.
[He explained (very) (carefully) to the class.]

Adverbs are the first step into compound descriptors, which all the cool writers use to beef up their paragraphs! Fun with adverbs can take you far in the writing world.

There are some other big parts of speech to examine, but those are far and away the biggest. The next topics we'll be covering in my next lecture will include Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections and articles! See you next time!