when writing a novel/story, is it important to understand all the word functions and how they work?

Question

Word functions meaning, adjective prepositions, noun phrases, the subject and all that stuff...is it extremely important to know all of it when writing a simple adventure novel?

Answer 1

I am with Cajunsun. Yes, you should. Writing is communicating and you should be able to communicate with your readers. An editor will cost you between 3 and 5 dollars a page based on 250 words per page, and if they find that they really have a lot of work to bring a novel up to speed, they will charge you even more. You should read one or two writers style books, perhaps Stephen King's masterwork On Writing and The First Five Pages to give you a sense of what a novel is expected to look like when finished. Otherwise you could end up spending 2K or more on editing before you can even send out queries to agents and publishers. And if you don't, you will get rejected faster than you can imagine.
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They're, Their, There - Three Different Words.

Careful or you may wind up in my next novel.

Pax - C

Answer 2

Another ally with Cajunsan.

As a writer, words and punctuation are the only tools you have. You need to master their use before making the conscious decision to misuse them for effect.

Consider art. The great non-realistic painters everyone knows--Picasso, Pollock, Modigliani, Gauguin--ALL mastered realism before embarking on the artistic styles which were later acknowledged as brilliance.

That simple adventure novel's quality, and saleability, depends on the author getting everything right. Yes, dialogue can be as ignorant and incorrect as the character who says it--but as the author, you'd better be able to punctuate it perfectly and represent how it's said with good readability.

Whether you can identify the parts of speech and of sentences is immaterial, but people who use words flawlessly usually can. The ones who can't don't realize they're making mistakes.

If you're serious about writing, step one is buying a basic grammar book and learning everything in it.

Answer 3

It's extremely important to have a sense of grammar. That being said, it doesn't mean you have to be able to label each and every one of your sentences.

For me, this part comes naturally. I understand grammar, better than many of my contemporaries. But if you have me diagraming sentences, I am not nearly as good. In fact, I suck. But my papers are among the cleanest first drafts people see according to the writing center.

As long as you can tell when grammar works and doesn't work, you're fine.

Answer 4

Should a carpenter understand the function of the woodworking tools he uses? Should a painter understand the function of composition and color? Do you want a mechanic who doesn't understand what a torque wrench is for?

Words, phrases, and sentences are the tools of writing. If your mastery of language is poor, so will be your writing. Worse still, you won't even know it, because you won't know what else was possible.

Answer 5

Yes and no.

The yes part is that word function supplies meaning to language. Your readers will expect certain words in certain places to modify other words in close proximity. If your sentences aren't coherent English (especially in the narrative), it will mark it harder for the reader to follow the plot.

The no part applies mostly to dialog. You can have character who are semi-literate and do not speak decent English. Obviously, it takes the reader longer to understand such characters than characters who speak properly, but it is a normal literary device.

Answer 6

Yes. If you don't know proper sentence structure, relationships, and definitions, the writing won't make sense. Sounds dire, huh? It's very likely that you already know it although you can't put a label on the words. You just know they "sound right" together, fit, or relate properly. That's the main part. ;) Happy writing!

Answer 7

only when your trying to self correct it, other than that not really. I'm pretty bad at that stuff but it doesn't hinder me from writing.

Answer 8

not really

but you must understand how they line up

Answer 9

Yes, you should.