WRITING LESSON : Building the Sentence Base

Not only must paragraphs be arranged in an orderly manner (as we have learned in previous lessons), but sentences, too, must be constructed with great care. In order to do that, we first have to understand how sentences are built.

If you want to say anything in writing, you must start with two kinds of words -- NOUNS (OR PRONOUNS) and VERBS. These two kinds of words are at the heart of every piece of writing.

DEFINITION: NOUN AND PRONOUN
A NOUN is a word that names a person, place, thing, or idea. A PRONOUN is a word that takes the place of a noun (like "he", "she", "we", "they", and "it").


For instance, "Lily" is a noun, as is "father", "mayor", "forest", "St. Louis", "basketball", and "cd player". Notice, though, that ideas like "love", "hope", "friendship", and "democracy" are also nouns. All writing, even the simplest, must start with a NOUN (or pronoun) -- some person, place, thing, or idea that you want to write about.

However, the NOUN would be incomplete unless it did something, or had something done to it. This is where the VERB comes in. When a noun, or subject hooks up with a verb, we have what we call a complete thought, or a SENTENCE BASE. For instance, the noun "Julia" can hook up with the verb "writes", to make "Julia writes", which is a sentence base (the basis, or foundation, of a sentence).

EVERY SENTENCE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE HAS A NOUN (or pronoun) AND VERB AT ITS CORE. THIS IS THE BASE OF THE SENTENCE. IT'S THE FOUNDATION UPON WHICH A WRITER BUILDS A STRONG AND BEAUTIFUL STRUCTURE.

Now, here's a really interesting fact: ALL YOU HAVE TO DO TO BECOME AN EXPERT WRITER IS LEARN HOW TO EXPAND SENTENCE BASES. Let me repeat that: ALL YOU HAVE TO DO TO BECOME AN EXPERT WRITER IS LEARN HOW TO EXPAND SENTENCE BASES.

There are dozens, hundreds, and thousands of ways to expand sentence bases, and once you get the hang of it, you can experiment to your heart's content. The ability to expand sentence bases is what makes writers like Harper Lee and Charles Dickens so much better than ordinary writers, and it's what enables some 8th and 9th grade writers to receive very high grades on their essays. And it's not hard to learn how to do it.