Everything in its place

Never underestimate the power of place. It can do a lot for a story if you let it. Places have character. Think of the home you grew up in or the first home you ever purchased. Think of where you were when you were on the worst vacation you ever experienced. Where were you when you had car trouble or when you got lost one night? See what I mean? Let your readers experience the power of place.
Here's another aspect to it. Sometimes "place" can be the springboard for a wonderful story. Imagine looking into the window of a pawn shop and noticing the things on display. Focus on one particular item. How did it get there? Who pawned it and why? What is the history of that item and who are the people connected to it?
National Public Radio had a story the other day about a Purple Heart medal being in a pawn shop. Why would someone want to give that up? How about a ring with an inscription "love forever"?
All right now, create your own pawn shop window, pick out an object in it, and write a story about it.

Get beyond the tick-tock

Tick tock, tick tock. Sometimes that can describe everyday life. But we have to get beyond that in our writing.
Here's an example. A writer in Illinois once did a magazine article on a country doctor. He spent some time with him and went out with him on all his calls. One of them was a tragic situation in which a man was cutting down a tree and the tree fell on his leg, trapping him. As friends tried to get the tree off of him, someone called the doc because he was the closest medical help.
The doctor and writer rushed to the scene. As they got closer, the doc began honking his car horn repeatedly. When he arrived, he treated the man as best he could until an ambulance arrived. When the episode was over and the doctor and writer were headed home, the writer recalled how the doctor had honked his horn. "Were you doing that to make it sound like an ambulance siren so you could get there faster?," asked the writer.
"No," said the old doc. "I did it because people in that much pain often think they're going to die and it's important for them to hear the horn and know help is on the way. It gives them hope." Wow.
The writer's magazine subject was a country doctor. But his story was much more than that - it was about wisdom, insight and experience - things not found in medical bag. That's getting beyond the tick tock.

Keeping a reader

I've always liked the story about how Phil Donahue, the former TV personality stopped in the "Green Room" before a show and had some words of advice for his guests. "Make 'em glad, make 'em mad, make 'em sad," he said. Donahue wanted his guests to be able to hold the audience's attention. His advice for his guests is not bad advice for readers.
Charles Reade, an English novelist of the 19th century, had similar advice for writers only with a little bit of a twist. He said, "make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait."
In other words, create some interest but create a little suspense too.

What's my story?

Picture yourself with an idea for something you want to write. It could be a research paper, a short story, a dissertation or a novel.
Now picture yourself taking all the research you have accumulated - newspaper clippings, magazine articles, printouts from the internet as well as your own notes.
If you haven't reached that point yet, imagine that you have taken all the ideas that you have for what you want to write about - big ideas, small ones, serious ones, silly ones - and spread them out all over the table.
What you see covering that table in all its many forms is your subject matter. The next step is crucial: You have to look at the table and say, "That's my subject. Now, what's my story?"
What are you going to sift out of all of that material or all of those ideas that will be creative, fresh, and fulfilling for the reader?
Say to yourself "Health care is my subject; what's my story?" Or -- "Abraham Lincoln is my subject; what's my story?" Or -- "The first job I ever had is my subject; what's my story?"
It's a question every writer must answer.

The other shoe

Tom lives alone in an apartment. Joe lives in the apartment above him. Joe works the 3-11 shift at the factory. Every night he gets home at about 11:15. Tom routinely goes to bed at 11. Every night, as Tom lies in bed, he hears Joe tromping up the stairs to his apartment. It is the same every night. Joe comes home, sits down on his bed, directly above Tom's bedroom, and takes off his heavy work shoes. And every night, the shoes hit the floor, one at a time, with first one thud and then another. It is part of Tom's nightly routine to listen to Joe's ritual. Thud, thud. Tonight is no different. Joe gets home at 11:17 and Tom lies and listens. Thud. Tom listens some more. Nothing. Tom sits up in bed, listening, listening. Nothing. And Tom begins to wonder about this man he hardly knows. What happened to the second thud? The listening continues. Nothing. Tom is sure he heard one thud. One shoe off. He is also sure there was no second thud. Now Tom gets up, turns on a light and sits on the edge of his bed. And he waits. And he waits some more...for the other shoe to fall...
What you have just read is the simplest of plots. We can picture Tom in his apartment and Joe in his. There is an easy-to-understand narrative - and there is drama as we wait for the other shoe to fall.
If you want to keep your readers turning pages, no matter what you're writing, make them wonder when the other shoe will fall.

The engaging powers of writing

Samuel Johnson said, "The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new."
Let's look at that sentence for a moment. Johnson uses the word "engaging" - getting the reader connected or tuned in, and he refers to "powers of an author" for, indeed, a few well chosen words have the power to change the world.
"Making new things familar" means to allow the reader to understand what you're writing about. When you are reading something, the content should not remind you of your first day in algebra class. It has to be simpler than that.
"Making familiar things new" means to shed new light on old subjects or write with such a fresh approach that the old seems new.

Four questions

"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he may write, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:
"What am I trying to say?
"What words will express it?
"What image or idiom will make it clearer?
"Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?"
-- George Orwell

Put yourself on a schedule

There are three good ways to improve your writing.
1. Observe.
2. Read.
3. Write.
Be a curious observer of the world around you. Always have a notebook handy to write down some of your observations. I know a fellow who whistles constantly and he's good at it. He can whistle recognizable tunes. It occurred to me that people who whistle are happier than people who don't. Or, put another way, I've never seen or heard an unhappy whistler. I had all of these thoughts from one observation of a man whistling. I might write about a whistler some day.
Reading is essential if you want to improve your writing. It is a way of recognizing and appreciating good writing and learning what to do - and not to do - in your own writing.
Writers must write just like jugglers must juggle and dieters must diet. Put yourself on a reasonable schedule. You'll be amazed at your results. If you commit to writing for a half-hour each day, by the end of one year you will have written for more than 180 hours. Find a comfortable place to write and a time of day that works better for you. (I'm an early morning person).
And if you have to snack, get something other than Cheetos!

The sentence delight

There are few things in a writer's life more satisfying than composing a really good sentence.
The sentence is the starting point. And it is the clincher. And it connects everything in between.
We don't always remember entire passages, but we remember really good sentences:
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
"You had me at hello."
I have written millions of sentences in my career - and I remember the best one I ever wrote. It was 25 years ago. I was hired to write a script for a video promoting Charlie Brown Daycare Center. The video was to be shown to parents who might choose Charlie Brown as a place for their children. The video was only about 10minutes long - so I had little time to get the message across. I wrote, "If there's any time more important than the time you spend with your kids, it's the time you don't."
You may not remember the best sentence you ever wrote - but you can do this: Read through whatever project you're working on now and see if you can identify at least one really good sentence. And then sit back and enjoy the satisfaction you'll feel.

Reminder to writers: Babe Ruth's dead

A pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team was making his first appearance in a Major League game. About 50,000 people watched as he took the mound. He wanted to be careful and not make any mistakes - and he was a little too careful. He walked the first two batters. His manager came out to talk to him and gave him a sage piece of advice. He said, "Babe Ruth's dead, son; throw strikes."
In other words, don't get too cutesy with what you're doing. Throw the ball over the plate.
The manager's advice is good for writers, too. Are we saying what we want to say or are our words missing the target just like the pitches were missing the plate.
Read over your work and remember: Babe Ruth's dead. Throw strikes.

Up drafts and down drafts

One of the "unfunnest" parts of writing for most of us is rewriting. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could sit down in front of our word processors and produce one masterpiece after another without any touch-ups?
"Touch-up" is an applicable term. Have you ever painted the walls of a room and then stepped back, looked at your work, and applied a roller or a brush stroke here or there to smooth it out? We should do the same thing with our writing, lest a reader chide us by saying, "you missed a spot."
Ann Lamott is the author of "Bird by Bird," one of the best books I have come across on the craft of writing. In it, she says almost all good writing starts with terrible first efforts. Wow. That sounds discouraging.
But not to worry, says Ann. You have to start somewhere. She says the first draft is the "down draft" - you have to get it down. The second draft is the "up draft" - you have to fix it up.
Don't fret. Consider it part of the process.

Stick the landing

When my kids were little, I occasionally would go into their bedrooms at night and tell them a bed-time story to help settle them down to go to sleep. I hardly ever read them a story. I would just make something up and they seemed to love it.
Sometimes, though, if it was past their bedtime, I would cut the story short and tell them good-night. One of my daughters would never let me get away with it.
"That was no story at all," she would say. Heck, I had told the story for 10 minutes. It just didn't have a good ending, that's all. But to her, it was "no story at all."
There is a lesson for all of us in this little anecdote. Stories must have an ending. That's much different than stories that just end. The reader has to feel fulfilled when the story is done or it will be "no story at all." Plan your endings. In fact, craft them.
If you've ever watched a gymnastics routine, you know how important it is for the athlete to "stick the landing." The same is true in writing.

You can't go wrong with this rule

I was once reading a novel that took place in Chicago and the author referred to Mayor Charles Daley instead of Richard Daley. Even though it was a work of fiction, I didn't trust the author from that point on.
Dorothy Garlock, the great historical fiction writer who lives in Iowa, once wrote a book with a Louisiana setting. She called a state police post in Louisiana to find out what color uniforms the officers wore. Now that's attention to detail.
No matter what you're writing, don't guess. As one literary agent told his author, "You've got to know in which direction the sun rises and sets and you have to get it right."
Here's the rule of writing that works every time: When in doubt, leave it out.

Be a Whys writer

Never leave your readers with unanswered questions unless you absolutely, positively have a good reason for leaving them in doubt. By the end of what they're reading, they're going to want to know "why" or have the satisfaction of figuring it out for themselves on the basis of the hints ("gold coins") you've tossed them along the way. This is true for both factual and fictional writing.
It is possible to write a short story by simply answering the question "Why?" five or more times.
Here's how it works. Write the opening sentence of a story. Something simple. Don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. After you write the sentence, ask the question: Why? Answer the question in your second sentence. Then ask the question again: Why? Do this five times and you're well on your way to writing a story.
Here - I'll write the first sentence for you...
"Richard entered the bank."
You answer the question "Why?" with your second sentence and then keep asking and answering that question with each subsequent sentence.
Have at it.

Keep your writing fresh and original

When I start to read something, I expect the writer to keep a promise to me, a promise the work will be fulfilling. That should be the reader outcome every time -the sense of being fulfilled.
One way of keeping our writing fresh and original is to avoid the use of cliches. I could tell you "the bottom line is, at the end of the day, when all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed, we don't want to be caught with our pants down or with a stiff upper lip or with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing - because the clock would run out on us."
But it will be a cold day in hell before I'd write anything like that.

Writing with precision

Sol Stein, author and publisher, calls it "particularity." It is telling the reader the patron at McDonald's paid $5.67 for a meal, rather than "about six dollars." The reader can picture someone paying for a meal with exact change.
Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute advocates the same thing when he says, "Name the dog." Is the dog's name "Fluffie" - or is it "Bruiser"? Names tell the reader a lot. No names tell nothing.
Novelist John Updike described his craft this way: "I try to write with precision what my mind's eye conjures up."
It's one thing to look out a window and write what we see with precision. It's quite another to use our imagination and then "write with precision what our mind's eye conjures up."
But that's what every great novelist has done throughout the ages.

What is your universe?

I once had occasion to interview astronaut James Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 space mission that was later relived in a movie starring Tom Hanks. I asked Lovell what his lasting memory was of his travels in space. As he answered, he held out his hand and put his thumb up toward his eye. "I looked out the window of the space capsule, put my thumb up like this ... and blocked out my view of the entire planet earth," he said.
It has always struck me that universe is in the eye of the beholder.
When I was a child, I lived in the Chicago suburbs. Not far from my home was a pedestrian bridge that spanned all the way across what is now the Eisenhower Expressway leading into Chicago. Sometimes I would walk to the middle of that bridge at night and look down at all the vehicles heading in both directions, all with headlights on. And I would think to myself, "All of those people are going somewhere. All have a destination. Some are happy. Some are sad. Some are mad. Some will reach their destinations; some won't. But at this moment, the thing they have in common is that they are all within my eyesight. They are in my universe." That image has remained with me all of my life.
Writers create universes. Sometimes they remember being caught up in their own, like Jim Lovell and that kid on the bridge in Illinois. What is your universe?

Watch your language

Many so-called rules of writing should be used as guidelines or suggestions, particularly if adhering to the rule creates monstrous sentence structures.
For example, many of us know the "rule" that you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition. This is a situation up of which I will not put.
William Safire, the late columnist and language expert offered the following "rules" for writing:
1. Remember to never split an infinitive.
2. Take the ball by the hand and never mix metaphors.
3. Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
4. Avoid cliches like the plague.
5. Don't overuse exclamation points!
And my favorite:
6. Never use a large word when a diminutive word will do.

Write yourself a note

Most of us have heard the age-old advice to carry a notebook with you at all times so you can write down ideas as they occur to you. If you think you'll remember the idea forever, well, let's just say you haven't reached my age yet.
I want to share with you today a related tip I think you'll find helpful - and that's to write notes to yourself while you're in the process of writing. For instance, if you're in the middle of writing your novel or memoir or short story and you think of something you want to mention later on, make a note to yourself at the end of whatever you're writing.
The advantage of having a word processor instead of a typewriter is your note will stay at the end until you move it or delete it. You can write a word or two or a sentence or a short outline of what you want to do later in your text.
Here's another advantage of writing notes to yourself. I've had instances where I knew exactly what I wanted to write next but I was just too doggone tired to continue. So I left myself a note, right where I left off,, so I could carry on the next day without missing a beat.

Watch out for that

We know that in our writing, there are certain words that can easily sneak into sentences without us realizing that they don't belong, that they don't add anything but clutter.
One of those words is "that." Not only is it often unnecessary, but use of it creates the need for other needless phrases.
Consider our opening sentence. Here is the same sentence eliminating "that" and phrases surrounding "that."
"In our writing, certain words can easily sneak into sentences without us realizing they don't belong. They don't add anything but clutter."
Look how we've improved our writing by eliminating one word - but we eliminated it four times!
So today's lesson is to make every word purposeful. And that's that!

How to write the perfect paragraph

Each paragraph is part of a journey for the reader. The writer's job is to make sure the reader doesn't wander off. A good first step is to make sure the writer doesn't wander off. Each sentence in a paragraph should connect some way with the first sentence. Let's use the following as an example.
"There were many similarities in the lives of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Both were shot and killed. Lincoln was born in a log cabin of poor, uneducated parents. Kennedy was Catholic. Lincoln and Kennedy each had vice presidents named Johnson. Both men's political futures rose as the result of debates. Both were elected in years ending in '60. Lincoln's wife's name was Mary Todd while Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier. Lincoln's secretary's name was Kennedy while Kennedy's secretary's name was Lincoln. Kennedy had thick brown hair. Lincoln had a beard. Lincoln was shot in a theater while Kennedy's alleged assailant was captured in a theater."
Now let's eliminate every sentence that doesn't have some tie to the first sentence. Here is what we come up with:
"There were many similarities in the lives of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Both were shot and killed. Lincoln and Kennedy each had vice presidents name Johnson. Both men's political careers rose as the result of debates. Both were elected in years ending in '60. Lincoln's secretary's name was Kennedy while Kennedy's secretary's name was Lincoln. Lincoln was shot in a theater while Kennedy's alleged assailant was captured in a theater."
The second example is clear, concise and complete and it has a crispness to it, all because the writer stuck to the point.

The dangers of "overwriting"

One of the pitfalls of many novice writers is packing too much into sentences and paragraphs. We have referred to this in previous essays as a "suitcase sentence or paragraph," packed so full that you have to sit on it to close it.
I had a student one time who literally was writing about packing a suitcase. A character in the story was going on a trip and was packing. The writer told just about every garment that was thrown in the suitcase and the sentence bogged down to the point of almost being unreadable.
Sometimes writers describe something in such detail, with four or five adjectives in front of the noun, the reader gets lost in the maze of words.
Here's a simple rule to help avoid all of that. Write to express, not to impress.
Each year, San Jose State University holds a funny contest in which it invites writers to compose the worst sentences - and gives out prizes. Writing these sentences is a good exercise in what not to do. Here is one of the winners in which the writer ... well, you'll see.
"With her auburn hair cascading down to her neck, her face gracefully tanned and silky smooth, her lips thin and moist and her lithe contour having the hour-glass figure of a model, Mary's body was beyond description."
Sometimes, bad writing shows up in the form of atrocious puns and plays on words, such as...
"As James worked on his sculpture of Sister Mary, his favorite nun, he encountered difficulty chipping away at her clothing and he thought to himself, `some habits are hard to break'."
And my favorite from the San Jose State contest: "When Throckmorton passed gas in the echo chamber, he knew he'd never hear the end of it."

The Circle Method

For many writers, the most difficult task is coming up with a good beginning or a good ending. The reason is because most of the time, the idea for a good story comes somewhere in between.
What usually happens is that we have something we want to say, a story we want to tell, and we have to figure out how to get into the story and, once we've told it, how to make a fulfilling (to the reader) exit.
One of the ways of doing this is through The Circle Method, so named because the story comes full circle. It might begin with two men standing under a street light, talking. As the story unfolds, 20 years pass, a lot of things happen, and the story ends with the two men standing under the same street light.
Picture a story that begins with someone standing on a corner staring at a used car lot across the street and thinking about how that was once the site of his or her childhood home. The story then evolves about all the things that happened in that home and eventually returns to the person standing across the street from the used car lot. Perhaps a policeman comes up to the person and asks them if they are all right and the person answers, "Yes ... I was just thinking ...
The Circle Method. Try it. You'll like it.

Our readers respond

One of our recent commentaries was on the uselessness of the word "very" because it doesn't add very much to any sentence, particularly if our intent is to describe something. For instance, what's the difference between "big" and "very big"?
A faithful reader pointed out how great authors apparently disagreed with me. As an example, the reader cited a passage from Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises": "Bayonne is a nice town. It is like a very clean Spanish town and it is on a big river. Already, so early in the morning, it was very hot on the bridge across the river." Then, a few sentences later, "In the Basque country, the land all looks very rich and green..." (emphasis added).
We're not about to take on Hemingway here or the success of his writing. But generally, sentences are more crisp without the word "very" and, as seekers of just the right word, we should avoid ones that clutter up sentences.
But sentences should have flow. If adding or taking out a word or phrase destroys the flow, don't do it.
One of the wonderful things about writing is that it isn't math. We are not constrained into 2+2=4. We are creative. If something doesn't work, change it.
But think about it. That's really the point. Remember the golden rule: Intend every word you write.
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Starting Monday, The Writing Life will be coming to you once a week. We welcome all responses from our readers.

Don't overlook motivation

Motivation is one of those intangibles that makes the world go around. Examine any great book that you've ever read and consider the motivation of each of the main characters. What motivated Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird? What motivated the old fisherman in The Old Man and the Sea? What motivated Elmer Gantry?
Now add another dimension to it. What motivated other characters in those same novels? When you have several people interacting, perhaps all seeking the same thing but with different motivations, you've got the makings of a pretty good story.
Charles Bowden wrote a profile of a man who lost both legs and one arm in Vietnam. His story starts out with Max getting out of bed in the morning. "His day starts with his arm," wrote Bowden, "the one he has left. Using it to brace himself, he rolls off the bed and into his wheelchair as sunlight peeks through the window."
That's a case where it took motivation for the man just to get up in the morning - and for what?
Abraham Lincoln was motivated one night to relax from the stress of a long war and go to the theater with his wife. John Wilkes Booth was motivated to find a time and place where he could sneak up on the president and kill him.
Sometimes, when two motivations come together, history is made.

Looking at things sideways

I have often told my students over the years to imagine me holding up a large mirror in front of them. As they look into the mirror from where ever they are sitting in the room, they are all looking at the same thing - but from a different angle.
Roach Smith, a woman who has written several novels, has a novel way of looking at the world from a different angle. She always has a small notebook with her, one that can easily fit in a purse or glove compartment. When she gets an idea for something she wants to write about, she's wise enough to know she won't remember it unless she writes it down. That's a fairly standard practice for most writers.
But here's what makes Smith's approach novel. She says when she wants to describe a landscape, or, to look at the broad picture of something, she turns the notebook sideways. She says the physical act of writing on a wider surface triggers her brain to look at the big picture.
We all know that life has lots of twists and turns. As writers, perhaps the same should be true of our notebooks.

The role of the paragraph

A paragraph is more than just a block of words. It has form and function, but does not get the attention or respect that words and sentences do. What is the role of the paragraph?
Ken Fuson, retired columnist for the Des Moines Register, says creative writers should write in scenes, not paragraphs. A good story doesn't move from one paragraph to another but from one scene to another, says Fuson.
The late author Kurt Vonnegut said a paragraph has two purposes. It should either reveal character or advance the plot.
Other writers probably have other theories about paragraphs, and none are absolutes. But it's fair to say we should pay as much attention to writing good paragraphs as we do to writing good sentences filled with appropriate words.
As writers, we want to take our readers on a journey. Think of it as a long, enjoyable, engaging walk - and think of paragraphs as the sidewalk, the individual concrete blocks, that are the path we take to get there.

Have you heard the one about...

Two men are traveling around the country doing seminars for their company. They arrive in the city of Natchitoches, Louisiana, where they are to give a presentation that night. As they stop to get a bite to eat, they realize they don't know how to pronounce the name of the town they're in - and that could prove to be embarrassing.
So one of the men approaches an employee and says, "Pardon me, but we're new here. Could you tell us where we are - and say it slowly so we'll remember how to pronounce it."
"Sure," says the employee. "BURGER KING!"
One of the reasons I love that story is because it's true. It actually happened. But in this context it is also a joke, and writers can learn a lot by looking at the framework of a joke. There's an introduction, a set-up and a punchline. It is clear, concise, complete, easy to understand and has a satisfying, fulfilling conclusion.
Those are the qualities I always hope my work has - and that's no joke.

The Golden Rule of writing

I read an article recently about a man who drives an old car that is rusty, dented, dirty and is even missing a door. The owner didn't care how it looked. It got him around town.
In the first sentence, the author referred to "the eccentric-looking car" - and I thought, wait a minute. Can a car be eccentric-looking? I went to my old friend on the bookshelf, Noah Webster, and confirmed that eccentric means "peculiar" or "deviating from the norm" and refers to a person or conduct.
Cars are a lot of things - but they're not eccentric. So the writer, whose job is to entice me, stopped me in my tracks in his first sentence.
This brings us to what writer Eric Cummings calls "the golden rule of writing: Intend every word you write. He recalls an incident in his college Creative Writing class in which he was asked to read his short story. He began, "Light barely flooded into the room." His professor stopped him and asked him what he meant. Was it possible for anything to "barely flood?" Cummings changed it to "light trickled into the room."
So the golden rule is "intend every word you write." A century ago, William Strunk put it another way in his masterpiece, "The Elements of Style," saying "make every word tell."

The most useless word

I once had a student who said she had to buy a sympathy card and chose one over another based on something I had said in class. She purchased the card that said "Thinking of you in this difficult time" instead of "Thinking of you in this very difficult time."
When she told me about this, I was impressed. I was not very impressed.
I have told my students over the years that the word "very" is most often used as a form of description, yet it doesn't describe anything. And it often gets in the way of powerful statements.
What's the difference between "big" and "very big?" In my mind's eye, I cannot picture the difference any more than I can picture "very hot" or "very smart" or "very ugly." Descripton should provide the reader with a word picture. "Very" just gets in the way.
Consider the father who rushes into his home and tells his family, "The floodwaters are coming. We have to leave very soon." It almost sounds like next week would be soon enough. But how about if he says, "We have to leave soon." There is a sense of urgency to it.
Author Florence King puts it another way. She says to compare what she calls the "mincing shallowness" of "I love you very much" to the "heart-slamming intensity" of "I love you."
Go through your work and see how many times you've used the word "very." Then delete them.

Finding just the right words

Writing is a lot like sculpting. You start out with a large block of clay (your subject matter.)
Then you mold it and shape it and give it the form you want, often eliminating much of the substance you began with (editing.)
It can be laborious. Mount Rushmore took more than a decade to complete. It may not take us years to complete what we are writing, but at times it will seem like we are trying to build Mount Rushmore!
How long do you suppose it took the sculptor to make sure Thomas Jefferson's nose on Mount Rushmore was the just the way he wanted it?
We should pay such attention to our words and sentences. I read a passage recently describing the way a defendant was dressed in court, quite differently from the way he was dressed when he was arrested. The author said the defendant was wearing a neatly-pressed suit with a white handkerchief peeking out of his suitcoat pocket. I tip my hat to the author. Peeking was not only a great word in that context; it was the right one.
I often tell people I can recite the best sentence I ever wrote - and I wrote it 25 years ago. I had been hired by a daycare center to write a script for a video it was producing. The video was 5-minutes long and was to be used to entice parents to choose this daycare center over others they might visit. My challenge was to convey to parents the significance of their decision.
I wrote, "If there's anything more important than the time you spend with your children, it's the time you don't...."
After all these years, I still love that sentence.

Whittle it down

I want to take some time today to discuss the importance for you to make sure you are not including a bunch of unnecessary words in your sentences, paragraphs and your entire writings.

As an example, let's edit and rewrite that first sentence.

Make sure you are not including unnecessary words in your writings.

We knocked out 22 words.

Now for a little more editing. Instead of "Make sure you are not including," let's make it "Don't use..."

Now our sentence reads: Don't use unnecessary words in your writings. Compare this to the first sentence and notice how crisp the latest version is.

Discipline: What it's all about

Robert Frost, the man who advised, "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader," has this to say about the discipline of writing:
"Discipline. Tightness. Firmness. Crispness. Sternness. And sternness in our lives. Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary, then your grammar, then your punctuation. Then, in exuberance and bounding energy, you say you're going to add to that...and you delight in that power."

Everybody has a "what might have been"

When I am interviewing people for a newspaper story, I almost always ask them to think back to their high school years - what did they think they would be doing today?
Everyone has twists and turns in their lives. Sometimes those can be the most interesting aspects of their lives, so we shouldn't overlook them. It's true of fictional characters too. Think about it. What did Edith Bunker hope to do with her life before she met and married Archie?
Robert Frost wrote:
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both...
"I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
Which road did you take in your life? What road made all the difference in the life of the person you are writing about?
It is a question worth pursuing.

Moments of harvest

We are writers.
We are of many roots, deeply embedded, spreading many seeds, imaginatively sown.
We share the moments of harvests enjoyed and harvests envisioned.
The love of writing, apart from anything else, makes us family.
Sometimes we just like to share some "pictures" from the photo albums of our imaginations: the thoughts, dreams and images that make us who we are.
We are writers, some of us for a lifetime, some of us for a moment or two.
We express ourselves through the characters we have known, both real and unreal, and situations we have experienced in our lives and through the lives of our characters.
We are writers.
We are in the big chase, not only as participants but as observers. And we pray we never lose our childlike fascination at what we observe - and our yearning to share it with others.
We are writers.

A great exercise in being concise

The key to good writing is to be clear, concise and complete. What is it that we want to say in our writing? What's the point? In what way do we want the reader to be fulfilled - for that is the ultimate goal. We should be able to write our main thought on the back of a business card. If we can't, we probably need to narrow our scope. Here is an exercise that forces us to organize our thoughts and yet be creative and have some fun. We're going to pick a subject and write a Haiku poem about it. Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry that is three lines long. The first line has five syllables, the second has seven syllables and the third has five. Don't worry about rhyming. Reach out and grab an idea. Then condense, condense, condense. Here is one I wrote on a simple topic: How I feel today.

My mind is alive.
It tells me to get moving.
My body just laughs.

Now you try it. Pick a subject, any subject - the weather, your favorite color, Uncle Charlie...and write a Haiku.

A shopping cart full of thoughts

When I go to the grocery store with a list, it always takes me longer than it would take my wife with the same list. Unlike me, she knows where everything is in the store. So she goes aisle by aisle and proceeds efficiently. Me? I look at the first thing on the list and zig-zag all over the store until I find it and then look at the second thing and zig-zag all over again. It is like walking through a maze.
In our writing, if we have not set a clear path for the reader, he or she will also feel like they are walking through a maze. The difference is, a reader can easily get out simply by refusing to read any more.
The second reason it takes me longer is that in my zigging and zagging, I find other things besides what are on my list and toss them in the cart. In writing, imagine the poor reader if every time we came up with a new thought, we tossed it in the cart with what we had carefully planned.
Here's a simple way to organize our thoughts. After you have determined your subject, write your "shopping list" - a numerical list of everything you want to include. For instance, if you were writing about Abraham Lincoln, you might write:
1. boyhood; 2. slavery; 3. Civil War; 4. wife and family; 5. Lincoln-Douglas debates; 6. presidency; 7. assassination...
When you've completed your list, probably 20-30 thoughts, go back through and put them in groups. In the Lincoln example, Nos. 2, 3 and 6 and 7 might go together in one group and Nos. 1 and 4 in another group.
Once you have them grouped, prioritize them. Which group do you want to write about first? Then what's next? And what's next after that?
That's how to fill your shopping cart. Try it. It works.

Know where you are going

From Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland:
"One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take," she asked.
His response was a question: "Where do you want to go?"
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat," it doesn't matter."
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When we leave our homes to go on vacation, we have some idea of where we are going - where we want to end up when we complete our travel.
Sometimes we have roadmaps or directions we've written down or perhaps one of those GPS devices on our dashboard.
We need to have the same approach in our writing. We need to have a destination. How we get there can take all sorts of interesting twists and turns but there has to be an end point in mind.
I have recently written a book in which I wrote the last chapter first because I knew exactly where I wanted the story to end. I could then write the rest of the book to head in that direction.
Try that some time with your own work. Write the ending first - so you won't be like Alice.

Always consider the time element

The time element is an important and yet often overlooked aspect of any story we're writing. A history book may cover centuries from beginning to end. The reader must be able to put it into context and perspective. How much time has elapsed from one chapter to another? From one paragraph to another?
Effective use of the time element can create great suspense without using many words. "Her plane was due in at 4:40 p.m. It was now 6:15." Or "The execution was to take place at midnight. A clock on the wall was silent, and yet it wasn't. It seemed to be shouting, "Tick...Tick...Tick. It was 11:55."
I have recently completed a book about the 1964 Democratic Convention involving several powerful forces all clashing in a space of four days in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The suspense builds from one day to the next.
The author Jim Bishop wrote a series of books on famous days in history such as "The Day Kennedy was Shot" and "The Day Christ Died." The interesting thing about books like these is that the reader already knows the ending. The power of the story is in the telling - and the time element is a powerful tool for the writer.

Go up in the balcony

Oscar Wilde said authors should always go up in the balcony to take another look at their work. You can see so much more than you can at ground level.
Think of your work, even if it's just a paragraph, as something that is being presented on stage. Figuratively walk up in the balcony and take a look down on it. What details do you see that you missed at ground level?
Perhaps you're writing about a man checking into a motel at midnight after a long drive. You write about the sweet young woman behind the counter who assisted him and gave him his room key. Perhaps the man checking in even felt an instant attraction to the desk clerk. Now stroll to the balcony and look down. What you see is the other side of the front desk and the little shelf just below the cash register that contains a plate of now-cold lasagna ... and a gun.
What do those two elements tell you? The desk clerk had the kind of night where she didn't have time to eat - and she felt the need to have a gun at her fingertips. That's a whole new perspective that would have gone unnoticed except for your stroll into the balcony.

Anecdotal description

An easy way of getting beyond "police blotter descriptions" of people (height, weight, color of eyes, color of hair) is to think of an incident or episode in their life that shows the reader what your character is really like.
Years ago, I traveled by bus to Illinois to visit my aging father, a widower, whose days were numbered because of ill health. In order to make my travel connections to go home, I would have to leave my father's home at 4 a.m. on departure day. So I told my Dad, "Let's say our good-byes the night before. That way, you won't have to get up that early in the morning." And that's what we did. The next morning, as I arose and moved silently from a bedroom to the living room to the front door, being careful not to wake him, I noticed a light on in the kitchen. When I went to investigate, there was my father, with an English muffin on a plate which he handed to me. "I couldn't let you go on an empty stomach," he said. That was my father! (That's also the last conversation I had with him.)
Each of you may picture him in a different way, but you know him a little better by what you just read.
Anecdotes don't need to be sentimental. Sometimes they can be blunt and unnerving, just like the people they describe. President Lyndon Johnson was so overpowering with people he dealt with that he sometimes enjoyed making them feel uncomfortable. One time when he was Senate Majority Leader, he stood in the Senate parking lot, discussing a bill with other senators. As they talked, he unzipped his pants and urinated, never missing a beat in the conversation. He wanted to be the center of attention, and he was.

Tom Swifties

Beware of the adverb that is obvious, repetitious and needless.
"Fire," he shouted excitedly. (How else would you shout it?)
"We're going to have a baby," she said anticipatingly. (No surprise there.)
In situations like these examples, the sentences have much more punch without the adverbs. Adverbs are most effective when they contain a surprise rather than the obvious.
Consider these two sentences. "He quickly ran to the finish line" and "He slowly ran to the finish line." The second one certainly has more intrigue. How about these? "She smiled happily" and "She smiled sadly." Again, the second one is far more interesting.
Overuse of adverbs has led to a word game commonly known as "Tom Swifties," so named because the Tom Swift books of yesteryear are so full of adverbs. The idea of a Tom Swiftie is to turn an adverb into a pun or play on words. Here are some examples:
"I'm an artist," she said easily.
"I had a bypass operation," he said heartily.
"I'll never stick my hand in a lion's cage again," he said offhandedly.
I'll leave you with this one:
"I dropped the toothpaste," he said crestfallen.

Particularity

Writer and publisher Sol Stein calls it "particularity." Writing professor Roy Peter Clark calls it "name the dog." By either definition, the message is the same - there are times when it is essential to be specific.
Clark says you can tell a lot about a dog and its owner just by naming the dog. Picture a dog named "Fluffy." Now picture one named "Bruiser." See what Clark means? Many years ago, when I was a reporter in Louisiana, I interviewed a man at his kitchen table. While we were talking, his dog started barking in the next room. The man turned and shouted, "Nigger, shut up!" I learned a lot about the man just by what he named his dog.
Now, on to particularity. Imagine writing about someone purchasing lunch at a fast-food restaurant for about $6. It's hard to picture that. How about if we say his lunch cost $5.87 - and he paid for it with exact change, plucking quarters and dimes and pennies out of his little plastic oval thing that he extracted from his pants pocket while 12 people behind him in line patiently waited.
Ah, what we can do with particularity.

Put a lid on it

Some of us are old enough to remember the method for making popcorn in the days before microwave ovens. We put the kernals of corn and some Wesson oil into a "popcorn popper" - a large bowl with an electrical cord attached to it. Then we'd plug it in, wait for a few minutes while the corn was popping, and, before long, we had a tasty treat. Except we've forgotten one important step.
We have to put the lid on the popcorn popper or the popcorn will fly all over the place. There's no control without the lid.
The same principle applies to writing. Without some central theme, our thoughts will fly all over the place, just like the popcorn does without a lid.
Every sentence in a paragraph should have a direct relationship to the first sentence. Every paragraph should have a direct relationship to the theme of whatever we're writing about. Otherwise, we have literary chaos.
The lesson is simple. Keep a lid on it.

It all depends on your perspective

A nine-year-old boy approached his grandfather and said, "Grandpa, what's your perspective?" The grandfather patted the boy on his head and said, "What do you mean?" The boy replied, "Well, grandpa, it's kind of how you look at things."
I love that story because of its perspective on perspective. The boy asks a serious question. The grandfather's perspective is that the boy is using a big word and probably doesn't know what it means. The child's perspective is that he has used a big word and grandpa doesn't know what it means.
In writing, perspective is an important concept for the writer to understand because it is crucial that the reader understand it. Every situation provides opportunities for different perspectives from different people - and that's what life is all about.
My favorite story illustrating perspective is about a rich farmer who takes his grandchildren to the circus. He notices a young man who follows behind the animals with a bucket and a shovel, ready to clean up whenever an animal relieves itself. The man performs this undesirable work with diligence. The farmer is impressed. When the circus is over, he approaches the man with the bucket and says, "I've been watching you today. You are a dedicated worker. I need a dedicated worker on my farm. Come work for me. I will pay twice as much as whatever you're making here - and you'll be away from this filthy job you have. Will you come to work for me?"
And the young man replies, "What -- and give up show business?"

Your obligation to a reader

Bob Greene, columnist and author, tells about the time he was a guest on the old Phil Donahue show - a program based entirely on interviews with interesting guests. Greene said he was sitting in a room offstage with other guests before the show began when Donahue popped into the room, greeted them and departed, saying, "Just remember - make 'em glad, make 'em sad, make 'em mad."
Not bad advice for writers, either, if we want to keep readers' attention.
Author Charles Reade, writing many years before the Donahue show even existed, said if you want to keep readers engaged, "make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait..."

Writing: Holding up a mirror to the world

The things we write about, fiction and non-fiction, can take interesting twists and turns, depending on our perspective. Some people approach a window and marvel at what they see on the other side. Other people see a pane of glass.
Imagine being in a crowd of people sitting in a room and having someone in the front of the room hold up a large mirror, large enough that everyone can see the images in the mirror, no matter where they are sitting. In other words, they are all looking at the same world but from a different angle.
That is what writing is all about.

Conflict should be part of every story

Conflict should be part of every story because conflict is a part of every life.
How we react to conflict is a measure of our character so introducing conflict into a story gives us a chance to develop the characters. Think of Archie and Edith Bunker, for example.
Conflict doesn't have to be violent or obvious like a war being fought. It can be a disagreement between two people or it can be rain falling on a family picnic. (How does each family member react to the picnic being canceled?)
If you don't know any other way of introducing conflict into a story, just have one of your characters say "no."

The 2 most important things to consider

Audience and message. No matter what we write, we must always keep in mind these two elements. They are the straw that stirs the drink.
Audience - Who will be reading what we write? Have we written it in such a way that they will understand it? If we are writing about a new medical technique, and our audience is health care professionals. we don't need to explain every medical term we use. If our audience is more general, we probably do need to explain.
Message - What are we trying to get across? We should know that before we begin writing. It doesn't have to be prophetic, but we don't want it to be pathetic - and that's what the result can be if our writing has no message or purpose.
Sometimes "message" is hard to define, but here's a clue. If we read something a week ago and are telling a friend about it, whatever we are telling our friend is most likely the message we got out of it. Messages can be as subtle as the feeling we are left with after reading something. They don't have to be hammered home. In fact, sometimes they are hugs rather than hammers.

A few important words about words

"This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It's like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a little harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am sure the reader is rested, I will engage him or her with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals - sounds that say: Listen to this: It's important."

From "Improve Your Writing" - Gary Provost

Uncommon characteristics count

As writers, we sometimes get hung up on height and weight and color of eyes and hair when describing our characters, real or fictional. Those are characteristics common to all of us. If you want to make a character interesting, focus on the uncommon things about the person. Even the most trivial deviation can bring a human quality to the character.
Sinclair Lewis once described one of his characters as a middle-aged, bald real estate broker who was Presbyterian, Rotarian and whose digestive system didn't handle corn very well.
Jack McKeon is a real-life baseball personality. At age 80, he was recently brought out of retirement to manage the Florida Marlins. A sportswriter who has known McKeon for years described his unique way of fascinating people with his old baseball stories. The writer said, "The key to really appreciating a good McKeon anecdote is to sit or stand as close as possible. When he's in full storytelling mode, he'll tap whoever is adjacent to him right before delivering the punch line. Although it can be somewhat unnerving if he's tapping you with the hand that's holding the cigar..."

Writing, after all, is a spiritual experience

Writing is a spiritual experience, not because of any particular theology expressed, but because it comes from within us. Whatever thoughts we express, through a central theme of a story or through fictional or real-life characters, start with an idea within us that we feel led to commit to the written word.
Anne Lamott says, "I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here? Let's think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world."
In addition, the writer emotes. The poet Robert Frost said, "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader." You could substitute any number of words for "tears." For instance, "No joy in the writer, no joy in the reader."
There is a scene in the movie The Summer House in which one of the characters proclaims, "Every human has something to cry about."
The late actor Jack Lemmon said, "It's hard to write drama. It's hard to write comedy. It's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy, which is what life is."

The all-important crucible

Author and publisher Sol Stein says one of the keys to a good story is to put your characters in a crucible and see how they react. As I recall from my high school chemistry days, a crucible is a thing in which you put various ingredients, apply a flame beneath the vessel and make a record of what happens.
We all experience crucibles in our everyday lives. As writers, we must understand that there is always more than one person in the same crucible. How they react to the same circumstance is what makes the story.
The Titanic was a crucible.
Each of the lifeboats were crucibles.
In Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," the boat and perhaps the sea are both crucibles.
In the "All in the Family" television show the Bunker household was the crucible. Think of how differently Archie, Edith, Gloria and "Meathead" all reacted to living under the same roof. Archie was the dominant figure. Edith was the doting wife. Did she resent her servitude or had she simply accepted it? "Meathead" and Archie frustrated one another but "Meathead" showed no signs of wanting to move out.
Life is full of crucibles. For some people, their marriage is their crucible. For others, it might be their job or a disabling illness or something on their conscience that dictates how they think and act.
Identify the crucible and treat it with respect.

Never take it lightly

"You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness or even despair - the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again; you must not come lightly to the blank page."
-- Stephen King

The art of telling a story

Here are some points to ponder from novelist Robert Penn Warren. "A writer doesn't so much choose a story as a story chooses him (her). I know lots of stories but for some reason only a few grab hold of me. They catch me and worry me and stick with me and raise questions for which I can't quite find answers. I start a novel from a real event or real people and make up characters along the way."

The essence of good writing

"The Elements of Style," written by William Strunk a century ago,remains the finest textbook for writers on how to write with clarity and meaning. As if to emphasize the importance of brevity, the book is just 90 pages and small enough to fit in a pocket or purse. Here is what Strunk says about omitting needless words:
"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."

Writer's Block

There are all sorts of theories about writer's block. Some people say there is no such thing as writer's block just as there is no such thing as truck driver's block or insurance agent's block or ... well, you get the idea.
Author Martin Yoseloff said when writer's block attacks, accept it. Go to the kitchen and make a casserole. He told of the time he was writing a book and encountered a day when writer's block hit him. He got away from it for a while and when he returned to his work, he wrote one sentence. That was his output for the day. "But it was an excellent sentence," he said.
Anne Lamott, author of "Bird by Bird," a great book on the essence of writing, says writer's block is often caused because the writer is approaching the subject from the wrong angle. "When your spouse locks you out of the house," she says, "the problem is not the door."
Angle is the answer.

Experience the world through all of the senses

As we go through our everyday lives, we experience the world through all of our senses - so why shouldn't that be true about the people we write about? Imagine going into your favorite restaurant and having to write an essay about it. What are the sounds you hear inside the place? What are the smells/aromas/odors? Does anything in the place leave a particular taste in your mouth (other than the food?) What about touch - if you put your elbow on the table, do you feel anything sticking to it?
You could write an entire essay about a place, using elaborate description, without ever describing what you see. And yet, often when we're asked to describe something, we only tell what it looks like - It's big. It's red. It's round...
Life is far more interesting than that, and our descriptions of life around us can be, too.
Be a "senses taker."

Cage that sparrow before it flies away

Maybe you're like me and from time to time you've come across a newspaper or magazine article that has given you an idea for something you'd like to write about someday. But when is "someday"? Who knows? But when that day comes, you might have forgotten what that great idea was.
Here's a solution. Start an idea file. Clip out that article and put it in a file folder. And do it again and again and again as you see things that interest you. You may be on a drive somewhere or simply walking down the street when you see something that strikes your fancy. Jot down the thought on that notepad you should always have with you. Do the same thing if you see something on television or hear something on the radio or see something on a billboard that triggers an idea.
Every once in a while, browse through your idea file. You'll be amazed at all the material you've collected. It might even get you started on that great American novel you've been meaning to write.
Roy Peter Clark, a journalism scholar and one of my long-distance mentors, puts it this way: "Ideas are like sparrows. You have to cage them or they'll fly away."

The challenge of writing non-fiction

William Allen White was a newspaper editor in Emporia, Kansas, in the first half of the 20th century. One day, a friend who worked in Washington D.C., approached him about an idea he had. He wanted to start a service in which he would record the votes of every senator and congressman on every issue and send his results to any newspaper willing to subacribe to his service. (This was long before the days of Internet or computers). He told White his only misgiving was that he wondered if editors would be interested in what amounted to dull data.
White's response to him is worth remembering. "Just give me the facts," he said. "I'll give them vitality."

"The power of its offering..."

Novelist John Steinbeck was asked to write a preface for a book on writing written by Ronald Mirrielees, his story writing teacher at Stanford University. Here is what he wrote:
"The basic rule you gave us was simple and heartbreaking. A story to be effective had to convey something from writer to reader, and the power of its offering was the measure of its excellence. Outside of that, you said, there were no rules. A story could be about anything and could use any means and any technique at all - so long as it was effective. As a subhead to this rule, you maintained that it seemed to be necessary for the writer to know what he wanted to say, in short, what he was talking about. As an exercise, we were to try reducing the meat of a story to one sentence for only then could we know it well enough to enlarge it to three or six or ten thousand words."

Avoid "suitcase sentences"

The late Martin Yoseloff, an author, friend and early mentor of mine, used to compare reading a lengthy sentence with trying to navigate through a living room so full of furniture that you were more concerned about tripping over something than enjoying what the room had to offer. I can picture him now, with pencil in hand, editing someone's work. He would circle a lengthy sentence and write a three-word note in the margin: "Too much furniture!"
I have another friend who compares the challenge of reading cumbersome sentences with packing a suitcase so full that you have to sit on it to close it.
The message is simple: Avoid those "suitcase sentences."

The goal - Make a little magic

Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo gave what many observers considered a spellbinding keynote address at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. Afterward, he was asked how he did it - what's the secret to putting the right words in the right order.
Cuomo said sometimes all the necessary elements come together. He said it's like being on a first date. If the lighting is right, the drink is right, the music is right, the mood is right - and you reach over and touch her hand, it's magic.
Otherwise, he said, it's your clammy hand on her sweaty palm.