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.