The specifics of the matter
How to be specific
1. Use an action beginning.
Grasp your reader’s interest at the very beginning; hit him over the head with something. It’s done in straight news stories in a different way, but in your columns, you often have to begin in the middle of the story. This is a technique. Sinclair Lewis started his great novel, Elmer Gantry, by this sentence: “Elmer Gantry was drunk.” It’s a line that takes you right into the story, interests you, and gives you a quick appreciation of the title character.
Hook the reader right off, give him an idea of what the story or feature is like, and then come in and fill in the gaps.
2. Transitions
The paper has to flow, the paragraphs have to blend. You can’t continually throw up roadblocks in front of the reader. Tie things together with transitions. Even if you have to force it with things like “however” or “therefore,” go ahead and do it. When you get through with your second draft or so, check each paragraph. Make sure there’s a transition. You need to avoid disjointed and disconnected trains of thought; put your thoughts together because the result is going to be a work that flows.
3. Significant detail
This is also extremely important. These are the details. Observations. Impressions. Say you are going to interview me. The questions you ask and the answers I give will provide the bones of the story. But the living flesh comes from significant details. Do I slouch at my desk? Do I have a Southern drawl? What books are lying in the room? What pictures are around? Let people identify. That’s writing. Here’s an example:
“The father is near retirement, a thin man with no excess left to him, his face washed empty by grievances and caved in above the protruding slippage of bad false teeth. The son is five inches taller and fatter. His prime is soft, somehow, pale and sour. The small nose and slightly lifted upper lip that once made the nickname “Rabbit” fit now seems along with the thick waist and cautious stoop bred into him by a decade of the linotyper’s trade clues to weakness, a weakness verging on anonymity. Though his height, his bulk, and a remnant alertness in the way he moves his head continues to distinguish him on the street, years have passed since anyone called him “Rabbit.”
4. Show, don’t tell.
Nobody cares what you think at the beginning. You can’t tell anyone anything. You have to show it. Don’t say, “My dad was always a creep.” Say: “Dad wouldn’t let me have a single date until I was 36.” Don’t say, “Mrs. Roberts is a bad teacher.” Say: “Mrs. Roberts always handed back papers three years after she assigned them.” Don’t tell, show – with quotes, with incidents, with description, with significant details. Tell about the little girl hit by the car. The darling daughter. The roses scattered all over the street. Don’t say Ruston is a dead town. Tell how it looks and how it sounds and how it smells.
5. Keep the reader located.
Give him a compass. Tell him where he’s at. Put in little things like, “As we walked out the library door, Tom kicked a can and Jack lit a cigarette. He was still moving to the door.”
6. Foreshadowing.
In whatever you write, you need to hint at a conclusion. If your favorite character is described as a happy-go-lucky guy and you end the feature or story with him committing suicide, that’s a cop-out and will make the reader angry. Hint early at what you’re getting at. This doesn’t mean you can’t have a surprise ending. But the reader must be prepared, at some extent, for the shock ending.
7. Paragraph-closers.
This is like a graf or sentence that sort of sums up or closes a train of thought. It doesn’t necessarily come at the end. Such as: “And he slammed the door behind him.” A family argument story. That “closer” tells the reader what has happened or what will happen. The implication is clear. When he slams the door, he won’t come back.
8. If you use dialogue, it should sound natural.
This goes back to writing as you talk. Conversation should sound natural, not stiff or formal. People don’t usually use perfect grammar as they talk.
Do not use dialect unless your ear is good. If you use dialect, be consistent. The reader will become impatient or confused if he finds two or more versions of the same word or expression. Ex. “Once.” If, using dialect, you write “oncet,” write it that way the entire time. The best dialect writers use it sparingly, though.
9. Repeating.
Don’t ever preach. Nobody cares what you think about capital punishment or drugs or the president. You are not writing to teach. You cannot push the reader along with moral judgments; he won’t buy that. You have to be SHOWN. If you want to get your point across, use significant details, incidents, conversations.
10. Omit needless words.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph should contain no unnecessary sentences. This does not require that you use short sentences. This requires that every word tells details.
11. Keep yourself out of the narrative.
Write in a way that draws the reader’s attention to the sense and substance of the writing rather to the mood and attitude of the author. If the writing is solid and good, the mood and attitude of the writer will eventually be revealed but not at the expense of the work.
To achieve style, place yourself in the background. A careful and honest writer does not need to worry about style. As he or she becomes proficient in the use of language, style will emerge because the writer will emerge.
12. Do not have a breezy manner.
Don’t be a windbag. Don’t write as if you’re on ecstasy. Don’t confuse spontaneity with genius. The windy writer often has a big ego.
Present the facts simply. Don’t blow the trumpets. Keep a tight rein on yourself and keep yourself out of it.
13. Use conventional spelling. Don’t use “nite” or “thru” or anything like that. The objection here is practical, not theoretical. Don’t take it on yourself to simplify the English language. You will only confuse and annoy people and defeat your purpose.
14. Don’t overexplain.
Be very careful in using adverbs after “he” or “she said.” He said compassionately. She replied lovingly. He whispered endearingly. The conversation itself, simply reported, must itself indicate the speaker’s manner or condition. “Go to hell,” he said. Not, “Go to hell,” he said angrily. Don’t clutter your writing with a lot of adverbs.
Inexperienced writers also put a lot of unneeded explanatory verbs in their prose. “He said” is usually fine. Not, “he argued,” “he congratulated,” or “he consoled.” Don’t overexplain.
Think about that friend you have that overexplains everything, even in conversation. He starts talking about his trip to Aunt Bessie’s, and says, “We went because the baby was sick; she had an upset stomach and Dr. Tubbs, who lives on Maypole Street, could see her…” You never get to Aunt Bessie’s. A lot of student writers are not going to get to Aunt Bessie’s.
15. In dialogue, make sure the writer knows who is speaking.
You must continually indicate who is speaking. Otherwise, the reader gets lost and has to go back to untangle matters. Obviously, the reader isn’t going to like it and will probably just stop reading.
16. Avoid fancy words.
Don’t be coy. Don’t be cute. Don’t be pretentious. Again, use plain, simple English. Don’t say “tummy” when you mean stomach.
17. Do not editorialize.
Yeah, you thought this class would be about expressing your opinions, didn’t you? Do not inject your opinions. We all have opinions. If you have an opinion about something, SHOW IT. Let the reader come to his own conclusion; don’t drag him kicking and screaming to your point.
27. Use similes and metaphors carefully and sparingly.
A simile is a figure of speech where you use “like” or “as.” Similes can be effective, but in rapid-fire, piled on top of each other, they’re more distressing than illuminating. It’s all right to say that your grandfather had hands like steel traps, but to continue that he had eyes like granite, teeth like pearls and legs like kegs is absurd. Metaphors are implied. Instead of making the comparison, as with a simile, the likeness is expressed in the form of a statement. Whatever you do, don’t mix metaphors: “He is aflame with a thirst for knowledge.”
28. Prefer the standard to the offbeat.
You are going to hear the beat of your own generation; the rhythm of your special vocabulary – every generation has one. Now, all of you want to write for your generation to express its pride and fears, to feel your own writing pulse. But be careful. A new word may survive, or it may not. Most slang is more appropriate to conversation than to composition. You don’t want to date your writing with the stale vocabulary of another period. People won’t understand you.
If you do go offbeat, make sure you have an ear for it – make it work.