Much Ado About Structure! ❤️
The Architect & the Gardener
Reflections from a Lovely ‘Inland Letter’
23rd June 2002 ❤️
#memoriesfromletters
[In continuation of our ‘letter’ series…]
Well, you can call me a ‘Curator of Letters’ if you want! 😊
But that’s one quirky hobby of mine - cherishing, cultivating, and curating good ol’ memories contained in letters, in my own sweet ways!
Yes! memories are treasure-houses with such sentimental value that tags along with them, ain’t they?
Each of us cherish our memories using our own cute storage strategies to cherish these quirky ephemeras for posterity’s sake, ain’t we?
One such letter – I guess the first letter ever from a student – that came to me on an Inland Letter – I still do cherish it for the values it contains.
Well, the letter is so neatly datelined, along with the place from which it was written!
This is followed by the ‘Opening Salutation’ part.
Then comes the content or the body of the letter, with neat spaces in between lines.
And then, comes the conclusion part, that usually ends with a memorable quote.
The student here has given the inspirational quote from Swami Vivekananda – ‘Awake, Arise! Stop Not till the Goal is Reached’.
This is followed by the closing salutation.
This is the structure of a personal letter.
The same applies to a personal essay, to a short story, to a novel, or to a poem as well.
Now the question is –
Is structure that important to writing an essay?
At least for academic essays, or formal writing, yes, it is!
That’s because a structure helps you organise your thoughts coherently!
It provides the skeletal framework for your writing. It helps to lead and to guide the reader in a beautifully graded way to your ideas, one by one!
In other words, a structure provides a sure foundation – a solid foundation for your writing.
So before you start writing, make sure you plan the structure of your article well in advance.
Imagine you are an architect planning to ‘build’ a beautiful, palatial house.
Before you build, as an architect, you will do a lot of planning, ain’t you?
You will do a ‘structural’ master plan of the proposed palatial house – the outcome - and only then go ahead and build it!
As a writer, you are an architect!
So yes! have a blueprint, and a clear idea about the outcome of your writing.
And well, don’t forget to stick to the specifications in the blueprint, to get the intended outcome! 😊
On the other hand,
When you ‘indulge’ yourself in creative writing, you need not necessarily stick to any rigid structural paradigms or blueprints!
That’s the creator’s license or poetic license – where you dispense with the rules to create the effect you desire, through your craft – the craft of writing!
Would love to end this post with a beautiful quote from ‘Game of Thrones’ George R. R. Martin on the difference between an architect and a gardener. 😊
Here goes –
I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners.
The architects plan everything ahead of time.
They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be.
They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up.
The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it.
They kind of know what seed it is, they know if they’ve planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever.
But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows.
And I'm much more a gardener than an architect,
says George Martin!
Happy writing to all ye architects and gardeners out there! 😊
PS: Our tryst with inland letters continues… 😊
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