Wordcraft

Source: Chapter 7 - The Art and Craft of Feature Writing [[202408212021]]

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The Main Theme/Lede

Artful and impeccable use of the language is less critical in storytelling than you might think. A well-shaped idea, convincing illustration and interpretation of it, and sound story structure count for more.

SPECIFICITY

Blobs are groups of words with broad meanings. Others paint pictures for the reader that are specific and pictorial, not abstract.

His passenger ship may become a 700-foot luxury liner; a little more specific, more pictorial. His reaction becomes fear, hatred, skepticism, enthusiasm, revulsion or whatever it actually is. If he’s tempted to write combat, he asks himself first if battle or skirmish would be better.

Weigh the words used to balance their meaning with the reality they depict.

MEANNESS

Be a tough self-editor. Cut the fat, flaccid, and flowery.

Be a savage critic who eradicates every weakness in the creation. Be cruel, mocking, and obsessively demanding. He hoots at the writer’s affectations and pretty turns of phrase, blisters him for cowardice when he uses soft, passive constructions or hedges on conclusions, challenges every point of logic, demands sound reasons for the presence of every character and fact, and above all flagellates his victim for wordiness.

Being concise is a positive value best taught by the self-critical editor.

DESCRIPTIVENESS

Don’t self-indulge in too much descriptiveness.

Many descriptive passages, no matter how pleasing or brief, are digressions, interruptions in the forward motion of the tale. But when what is described is central to the theme, description rolls the story along instead of slowing it up. In a personal profile, to cite one prominent case, every word describing the subject’s appearance, attitudes, and behavior helps us to know him better—the storyteller’s ultimate goal in such a piece. In a story about urban renewal, descriptions of the affected area and its people are necessary if we’re to appreciate what’s happening to them entirely.

Make the purpose of a description in a piece create a picture for the reader. Don’t describe emotions and character traits.

“When we say a homburg is black, the image is precise enough, and nothing more is needed. But when we say its wearer is generous, focus is lost. In what ways is he generous, and to what extent? We can see his hat clearly but not his generosity.”

Be as specific with adjectives and adverbs as with nouns and verbs.

The People Principle

Readers prefer people to places and things, so the storyteller injects humanity into his descriptions whenever he can do so legitimately.

Animation

People are attractive because of their movement and activity. Readers love action, activity, and character movement. Animating the characters makes them more interesting, and the writing becomes less passive and more vigorous.

Animating characters brightens descriptive quality.

Poetic license

Glaciers do make noises, and flowers certainly bloom. Still, when forests reach out to do murder, the writer is exercising poetic license—and, so long as the image accurately reflects the sense of what’s going on, the reader only benefits. The descriptive writer, who is too literal, shackles himself and gives the reader little credit for imagination.

CONVERSATIONAL QUALITY

Strive to write causally one-to-one with the reader. Work with one person in mind to avoid stuffiness, pedantry, dramatic overstatement, and a formality of address.

Keep this question in mind: Would this be the way I’d tell it over drinks with an interested, intelligent friend? I can imagine that I’m this conversation partner. With this, the bullshit newspaper jargon and stuffy formality disappear. Speak plainly.

Paraphrase more than quote. Make quotes conversational by paraphrasing them.

It is okay to ask a rhetorical question, but not too many. One adds color, two maybe, and more makes it seem like I don’t know what I’m talking about.

FLOW

1. Transitional passages”

Watch out for ‘blob’ words as transitions.

If he has written situation, can he say what the situation is? Resolve this with thoughtful editing

•   •   •
  "But the discovery of gold has created major housing difficulties in Cloaca. So many miners and construction workers are pouring into town that there is no place left for many of them to live.
•   •   •
    The first sentence centers on a blob—
    major housing difficulties.  
    The second sentence explains the blob. So, applying the test of specificity, the writer melds the two:    
•   •   •
But the gold strike is bringing so many miners and construction workers to Cloaca that there is no place left for many of them to live."

2. Attributions

Long-winded attributions are usually unnecessary. They can stall the reader and be an interruption.

“Professor of English at the University of the Alleghenies” is enough. Similar trains of titular baubles and lace trail behind many middle-level bureaucrats and technologists. Chop them off and tell us what these people do to make a buck

Certitude, not space, is the issue. Unnecessary attributions sap a story’s strength by turning what could be expressed as fact into something akin to opinion, which carries less weight with the reader than fact. And the story flow is impeded whenever a reader must mentally cross-reference a statement with a source; he’s not zipping along but feeling his way.

Don’t try to convince the reader with a long, drawn-out list of credentials. Make it short and relevant.

3. Explanation

Limit the explanation. When you have to stop to explain something, make it short and simple.

PURPOSEFUL STRUCTURES

1. Speed

The writer who wants it may put his reader on board a freight-train sentence, in which a central subject (or a subject plus verb) pulls behind it a series of objects or clauses. This kind of sentence conveys maximum information in minimum space.”

2. Force

Emphasis is different from speed. Slow down and be more descriptive with short, repetitive sentences. Or use comma-separated clauses.[^1]

3. Variety and Rhythm

This is brought out with a conversational tone. Mix units for speed with those for force.

Balance Parallelism

#definition

A piece of prose is correctly parallel when its different elements have a logical connection and when each element is written in the same grammatical form.

Example: Locusts denuded fields in Utah, torrents washed away rural Iowa, and blazing heat shriveled Arizona’s cotton.

Example: Freight-train sentences written in parallel: The great bulge of Arctic air brought fifty-below readings to the upper Midwest, power blackouts to New England, and a killing frost to Florida citrus growers.

The writer who masters balanced parallelism will find that he can express complex material in very long sentences with both rhythm and perfect clarity.

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References

• Blundell, William E. The art and craft of feature writing: based on the Wall Street Journal guide. 1988.