Sunday Snippets with Ginger Simpson

Because my life is a mess at the moment, I'm veering from sharing tidbits from a work I've done, and instead sharing an interesting post with you I did on my other blog, Cowboy Kisses.  Hope you enjoy:

Hoopla about Immigrants by Ginger Simpson #immigrants

The New World existed with a total 'native' population.  Other than the Indians, the rest of us are either immigrants or the descendants of the Europeans, Africans, Asians, and others who came to the Americas after Columbus landed at San Salvador in 1492.  Even those waiting on shore to greet the crew were of foreign lineage.  Ever wonder where those red skinned folks we use in our books came from?

www.lib.utexas.com

The First Immigrants:

A land bridge between Siberia and what is now Alaska provided passage during the last Ice Age (about 12,000 years ago) for the first immigrants into the New World.  They consisted of hungry men and women, bringing their families on a hunt for game they needed to survive.

As families multiplied, or as the Bible states, "one begat another", the descendants spread out over the two continents...from Alaska to the tip of South America.  They encountered many animals and sites they'd never seen before, but not once did they run across another human being who preceded them.

Imagine surviving in sub-zero temperatures on the frozen tundra but then ending up along rugged coastlines, fertile river valleys, grassy plains or arid deserts.  The Indians and Eskimos were thought to be the last group to cross the land bridge and had to invent new weapons for survival, and develop new techniques for hunting, farming, and gathering natural medicines provided by the earth.  Just stop a minute and think of all the things you'd need to survive in a place unfamiliar to you and yours.  Could you tote water from a distance....in what?  Could you make clothes and tools...from?

We tend to think of the tribes as one people, but for example the Tlingits are as different from the Sioux as Greeks are from the Danes (provided from research book to be named).  As the immigrants spread over the North American continent, more than 200 languages and dialects developed.  Imagine a Spaniard trying to converse with someone from Russia.

Different cultures, social and political structures...equally diverse.  Sound familiar?????  We all come from descendants of other races and cultures.  Be kind to the person standing next to you...they could be a distant relative.

Note from Ginger:  This too, was researched and paraphrased fromAmerica's Fascinating Indian Heritage by Readers Digest.

Now....please hop on over to the other gals who post on Sundays, and check out their offerings:

http://authorjamiehill.blogspot.com/  (Jamie Hill)

http://triciamg.blogspot.com (Tricia McGill)

http://romancingscifi.blogspot.com (Vijaya Schartz)

http://connievines.blogspot.com (Connie Vines)

http://yesterrdayrevisitedhere.blogspot.com/ (Juliet Waldron)

If you get a page that has an old post...just realize that life sometimes happens, and then check back next week.  I've missed a few myself...summer time is camping time and we don't always have Internet access.  Like today, I didn't get anything scheduled nd know that Sunday, I'll be away from home.  Thanks for checking in and we hope you keep coming back.

I Blog-jacked Lisabet Sarai's Post...

“Independent Body Parts”: A Defense

A few days ago I reviewed the second round of edits – what my publisher calls final line edits – for my upcoming release Challenge to Him. In general, I had no problem accepting the suggested changes to wording and punctuation. I didn't necessarily agree that the one POV problem the editor highlighted really was a problem, but if she thought it would be clearer if modified, I was ready to go along. For the most part I don't view my words as sacred, so I rarely object to reasonable changes.

I've noticed, though, that each editor has pet issues she tends to focus on. I had one editor who insisted on striking every instance of the word “that” introducing a dependent clause after a verb of sensation or thought. For example, if I wrote:

Henrietta thought that she'd never recover from Harold's treachery. 

This editor would revise the sentence as: 

Henrietta thought she'd never recover from Harold's treachery. 

I agree the two sentence are equivalent in meaning, and the second is more concise than the first. However, sometimes the rhythm of a sentence requires the additional beat of that extra word. Furthermore, I like some variety in my sentence structures. So I accepted most of her edits, but retained a few “thats” where they seemed to fit.

Anyway, my most recent line editor really had a bee in her bonnet concerning “independent body parts”, often abbreviated as IBP. 

In case you've never met the dreaded IBP, this term refers to sentences where some part of a character's body becomes the subject of an action verb. For example:

Her eyes followed him as he strode across the room.

His fingers crept up her thigh and under her skirt.

His tongue poked rudely into her mouth. 

Some novice authors overuse this kind of sentence, often to the point of silliness. Because of this tendency, editors have become hypersensitive to these constructions, brandishing their red pen whenever one appears.

However, there is nothing a priori wrong with using a body part as a sentence subject in this way. This is an accepted category of  figurative language. It even has a name:synecdoche.  Synecdoche is the practice of referring to a part when you mean the whole, or vice versa. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche

Sentences that are labeled as IBP are not intended to be construed literally. Of course her eyes stayed in her head as he walked across the room – no reasonable reader would think otherwise. Yes, most likely he was in control of those fingers – they weren't acting on their own -  but the synecdoche focuses the readers' attention on the stealthy progress of those digits, perhaps even as their owner continues to converse in a normal way.

An occasional “IBP” sentence is not a flaw, in my opinion. When I construct my paragraphs, I do so deliberately, with an eye to diversity and flow. The alternative to using IBP is often to have every sentence beginning with a name or pronoun. This gets boring after a while. 

The so-called rule about avoiding IBPs may be helpful to novice authors. The trouble is, it's really not a rule, anymore than the guidelines about avoiding passive voice are rules. English is a gloriously rich language with an enormous repertoire of sentence structures and rhetorical devices. An accomplished author should not shy away from using the ones that she believes her story needs.

Note from Ginger:  I shared this on my FB already, and my comment was go ahead and throw your hands in the air if you want.  If readers can't surmise they remain attached to your character's arms, then Houston isn't the only place where problems linger.  *smile*  I, like Lisabet, believe too many editors are focused on what they perceive as problems and forget that  sometimes an extra "that" here and there does improve the flow and make the reading more melodic than flat.  This is a great post, in my humble opinion.