What Timmy Did Next

You don’t need to study grammar to write quality prose. I’m not an expert in grammar, in the same way that I neither smoke a pipe nor wear corduroy slippers. But it’s good to know the basics. And, hey—grammar can be fun!

Many writers overuse the following sentence structure:

Doing this, she did this.

This sentence structure involves inserting an additional clause before the main clause. The additional clause is called a ‘dependent’ clause, as it depends on the main clause for part of its meaning. The main clause is called an ‘independent’ clause, as it can make sense by itself.

The potential problems become apparent when we study a specific example:

Visiting the trapeze artist and her newly born son, Timmy the Clown breathed a sigh of relief.

The problem is that the reader has to read the second clause, or at least part of it, before they can understand the first clause.

Not only does the second clause tell us what happened after the clown arrived at the trapeze artist’s chintzy home, it also supplies an essential item of information: it tells us who performs the first clause’s action. Without a noun (a proper noun in this case: ‘Timmy the Clown’), the verb (‘visiting’) is meaningless.

In order to make sense of the sentence, the reader may have to read the sentence twice. At the very least, they will have to stop and think. And the last thing you want your reader to do is think. Make them think too much and they will think: ‘I think I’ll do the washing up.’

This problem does not occur when the first clause, the dependent clause, is short:

Frowning, the lion tamer twanged the strap of his leotard and inserted his head into the lion’s mouth.

Here, the reader only needs to read one word before he or she is told who is frowning.

What should you do when the dependent clause is long? Sometimes the problem can be solved by shifting the dependent clause along a bit, allowing it to (politely) interrupt the main clause.

Timmy the Clown, visiting the trapeze artist and her newly born son, breathed a sigh of relief.

This does not always make for an elegant sentence, but it does remove the confusion.

Alternatively, you can swap the two clauses around, joining them with an appropriate word or phrase, such as the conjunction ‘when’.

Timmy the Clown breathed a sigh of relief when he visited the trapeze artist and her newly born son.

The problem here is that the events are not presented in chronological order. In reality (and trust me when I tell you that Timmy’s is a true story) Timmy does not breathe a sigh of relief until he confirms that the baby lacks a bulbous red nose, which does not happen until after he has arrived at the trapeze artist’s deluxe trailer. Yet, we are told about the sigh first. Our floppy-shoed friend seems to breathe the sigh of relief as he hangs around outside on the damp grass.

One fool-proof solution is to divide the sentence into two separate sentences, presenting the events in chronological order.

Timmy the Clown visited the trapeze artist and her newly born son. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Either or both of the resulting sentences may feel clipped and formal—a problem easily solved by the insertion of additional information.

Timmy the Clown put on his neatest baggy trousers and paid a visit to the trapeze artist and her newly born son. He peered into the cot, then breathed a sigh of relief.

This is no bad thing, certainly when writing fiction. As I discuss elsewhere, detail can bring a piece of writing to life.