Best of Week: Tim Hofmockel

This past week, I believe that Tim had a very good passage to share with the class.  He quoted page 200 of The Kite Runner.  "And now it was just another pile of rubble.  All the money Baba had spent, all those nights he'd sweated over the blueprints, all the visits to the construction site to make sure every brick, every beam, and every block was laid just right..."  In this passage, Amir was just informed by Rahim Khan that the Alliance had destroyed his father's orphanage. 

Tim points out several things.  First, he makes a connection from Baba's legacy to the orphanage.  He said that the Alliance tore down something more than a building.  They tore down a memento to Baba, they tore down all his hard work, they tore down all his time spent.  Second, Tim comments on the rhythm of the passage.  He points out a sentence fragment in, "And now it was just a pile of rubble." The abruptness of the fragment shows how sudden this all is to Amir.  This sentence is followed by one sentence that seems to last forever. "All the money Baba had spent, all those nights he'd sweated over the blueprints, all the visits to the construction site to make sure every brick, every beam, and every block was laid just right..."  There are three potential, complete sentences in this one sentence.  Tim has a good idea why Hosseni wrote this sentence as he did.  Tim thought that making this sentence longer allows the reader to see how much time and effort Baba spent building this orphanage.

Tim's observation makes me think about Beat by Beat.  Beat by Beat showed me how important sentence structure and flow is.  This passage provided me with a great example of top-notch writing.  The use of commas, and other punctuation marks makes this passage easy to read and easy to hear in your head.

This passage makes me feel more confident about my own writing.  In grade school, I was always told that I over-punctuate.  My philosophy was that when I read my work in my head, there should be a comma wherever I paused.  I realize now that that could result in over-punctuation in some situations, but that it could also be a good thing.  For example, "Confusion filled the streets, there were people everywhere, everybody had somewhere to go, someone to see, I couldn't see anything happening five feet ahead of me."  Here, punctuation helps me describe to the reader all the commotion and action that I experienced one day in Chicago.