need help understanding Participial Phrases

This sounds like another of those "rules" that aren't. I use leading participial phrases whenever I want. No one has arrested me yet.

Let's see...

Sliding into home base, the little boy was thrilled. Watching from the sidelines, the boy's mother cheered. Chilled to perfection, the father's 5th beer kicked in.

^^^That would be bad

They aren't bad as a given, at all.

Wrong? No.

But a sameness of sentence structure, each sentence correct in its own right, leads to predictability, wherein lies monotony. It sounds as if your reader thinks you follow this structure too often.

There are two kinds of participles, present and past, either of which can form the basis of a participial phrase.

A present participle uses the -ing form of a verb. Here are some sentences which lead with this kind of participial phrase:

Rumbling like a freight train, my belly announced its emptiness.
Stumbling home from the bars most nights, I didn't think I had a problem.
Ripping open the envelope, I dreaded the overdue notice from Visa.

A past participle uses--you're ahead of me here, aren't you?--the -ed form of the verb, or its other past tense form. Here are some sentences which lead with this kind of participial phrase:

Enraged by the judge's decision, Larry shouted an obscenity.
Broken in two, the plate could not be repaired.
Banned in seven states, the book sold out at Border's.

There's also a risk, when starting a sentence with a participial phrase, of having it refer to the wrong thing. It must refer to the subject of the sentence. When it doesn't, the results can be pretty funny.

Rumbling like a freight train, I heard my belly announce its emptiness.
Ripping open the envelope, Visa said I was overdue.
Banned in seven states, Border's sold out the book.

There, now. Not so hard at all, right?

Maryn, decent explainer

Yeah, what Kisatchie and backslashbaby said. Overuse is a problem; use is not. (Having said that, I find I'm fond of the sentence structure and probably overuse it a bit. LOL!)

DWSTXS said:

But, my question is, how to make those sentences 'good'

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Quote:
Originally Posted by backslashbaby
Let's see...

Sliding into home base, the little boy was thrilled. Watching from the sidelines, the boy's mother cheered. Chilled to perfection, the father's 5th beer kicked in.

^^^That would be bad

They aren't bad as a given, at all.



My sentences are kind of really bad regardless But here:

The little boy was thrilled as he slid into home base. Watching from the sidelines, his mother cheered. Meanwhile, his father enjoyed his 5th beer.

^^^ Just to keep one of them. The thing is to mix up the sentence structure.

They aren't "wrong" in the sense of being ungrammatical.

Overuse of almost anything can be boring. You do want a variety of sentences.

Starting with a participle phrase, because of the way English works, often means that the sentence slips into passive voice--which is not necessarily wrong, but might not be desirable.

Starting with a participle phrase often ends up with a description of the person doing the action of the participle, and that's often an indication of "telling" rather than showing; you'll notice a lot of them include was / is + adjective.

And I'm maybe a little more grouchy even than usual today, but I do get a little tired of people asserting that something a writer is doing is "wrong," when there's no grammatical reason for it.

There really aren't hundreds and hundreds of grammar errors that native speakers tend to make; there are roughly about twenty five common errors, and I've never ever seen a native speaker who habitually made all twenty five.

Medievalist said:

They aren't "wrong" in the sense of being ungrammatical.

Overuse of almost anything can be boring. You do want a variety of sentences.

Starting with a participle phrase, because of the way English works, often means that the sentence slips into passive voice--which is not necessarily wrong, but might not be desirable.

Starting with a participle phrase often ends up with a description of the person doing the action of the participle, and that's often an indication of "telling" rather than showing; you'll notice a lot of them include was / is + adjective.

And I'm maybe a little more grouchy even than usual today, but I do get a little tired of people asserting that something a writer is doing is "wrong," when there's no grammatical reason for it.

There really aren't hundreds and hundreds of grammar errors that native speakers tend to make; there are roughly about twenty five common errors, and I've never ever seen a native speaker who habitually made all twenty five.

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QFT.

One of the things I get on to my writers about is rhythm. I'm a big advocate of reading your story aloud, to catch the different rhythms of a piece. If you're always starting off with a participial phrase, then you're falling into a repetitive rhythm that makes your story 'sound' sing-song. are participles wrong? Hell, no. It's actually advanced grammar, used to define a moment more precisely. There's nothing wrong with that. The trouble you're running into is repetition. That's like reading a story where every sentence ends with an exclamation point, or a snippet of dialogue where every sentence is tagged at the end with he said or she said. It's just simple awareness of how you use the language.

Somewhere--and quite recently--I read the same thing about getting rid of participial phrases starting sentences. It was in a book, written by a respected writer who said to edit writing to get rid of them all. Thanks for giving some reasons why this structure might be weak, Medievalist. The author of the book I read did not bother to do that. If I can remember the book or find something about it in my notes, I'll let you know who it was.

Is it too tricky to ask when they'd be quite good?

"used to define a moment more precisely"

Maybe, "Seeing the other car skidding toward her, ..."

Something where you really do have to know two things almost at once?

The main thing about using a participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence (according to my trusty Strunk and White) is that it must refer to the subject of the sentence.

When I say it defines the situation more accurately, I mean specifically that the phrase must clarify or otherwise distinguish the subject of the sentence--Walking down the road, he saw a woman accompanied by two children. The subject is 'he' and the participial phrase 'walking down the road' clarifies the subject--so we now know that he was walking down the road. It's key information, integral to the subject's next action, and that's how you determine if the phrase is necessary. Sure, you can just leave it at "He saw a woman accompanied by two children." but in doing so, you're eliminating the information that he was walking down the road first.

If you want to eliminate the participial phrase, then break it up into two sentences. "He walked down the road. He saw a woman accompanied by two children." Or, as another option, make the sentence into a simple compound sentence. "He was walking down the road and saw a woman accompanied by two children."

Leading participial phrases . . .

Er, one problem is that too many aspiring writers try to mix up the way their sentences start by altering many of them into using a leading participial phrase (LPP). Yeah, the slush pile is full of that kind of stuff, and abusing LPPs like that is so common that many agents and editors have it on their lists of common mistakes done by aspiring writers.

Also, many of the sentences that aspiring writers (and commercially published writers) construct that use LPPs often describe improbable actions--actions that don't make sense. E.g., Opening the kitchen door, he climbed the stairs, dashed into his room, and fell on his bed. Yeah, that boy has got one real long arm.

Browne and King's book, Self-editing for Fiction Writers, 2004, discusses some of this LPP abuse. Check out Chapter 11, starting on page 192.

And there are other issues, too, that a writer ought to be aware about when using participial phrases in their sentences. ("Professional" writers often mess up a lot with their usage of participial phrases. *shrugs*)

imo.

In the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Rennie Browne and Dave King assert that use of leading participial phrases is the mark of "hack writers." I disagree profoundly with their opinion.

There are two major problems with leading participial phrases:

1. They are overused (every sentence in the paragraph and/or every paragraph on the page begins with one); and

2. They are used improperly (the dreaded dangling participle).

But used in moderation, and used correctly, leading participial phrases are just dandy.

Just out of curiosity mind you, not really expecting to find any participial phrase issues in my own writing, I checked a short story I wrote recently. I found too many. I also found some that indicated actions that could not possibly be happening at the same time. No danglers (I don't ever dangle), but still...

After editing, the sentences were stronger, no question. I am not sure if I agree with "hack" either, but I have developed a dislike for PPs at the beginning of a sentence in a very short time. And if lots of editors hate them, I'm playing it safe! (It was not hard at all to find editor sites online, each one excoriating the practice more strongly than the last.)

Terie said:

Yeah, what Kisatchie and backslashbaby said. Overuse is a problem; use is not.

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Actually, there's one other big problem with such a sentence structure. It's easy for it to become literally absurd. The -ing participle, in particular, implies continuing action. When you say something like "Going through the door, he answered the telephone," the literal meaning is ridiculous. But it's a fault I see with persistent regularity in manuscripts and writing assignments (I teach freshman-level English comp at the local university).

The cure is to pay close attention to the literal meaning of your words.

caw

blacbird said:

Actually, there's one other big problem with such a sentence structure. It's easy for it to become literally absurd. The -ing participle, in particular, implies continuing action. When you say something like "Going through the door, he answered the telephone," the literal meaning is ridiculous. But it's a fault I see with persistent regularity in manuscripts and writing assignments (I teach freshman-level English comp at the local university).

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Fair enough, so I shall modify: 'Overuse is a problem; misuse is a problem; use is not.'

Hey, did you see what I did there, using the popularly 'prohibited' semicolon...twice?