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Authors: Gary Provost
100 Ways to Improve Your Writing (Mentor Series) (4 page)
BOOK: 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing (Mentor Series)
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Do a little warm-up exercise before you write. If your toes are too far away to touch, then stretch your arms or dance or jump up and down. Whatever. James Michener actually goes into physical training like a boxer before he begins a book, so the least you can do is take a few deep breaths, put your pulse rate into second gear, and deliver a supply of oxygen to the brain. All of this will improve the clarity of your thinking and the quality of your energy.
Also, do not continue to write after you become fatigued. A tired writer at the typewriter is as dangerous as a tired driver behind the steering wheel. If your eyes begin to droop and your head wobbles, stand up and do some more exercise. That should rejuvenate you. If it doesn’t, take a nap.
Just as you need to get your body warmed up to run, you need a little writing exercise before starting a writing project.
A writing exercise can be almost anything that turns thoughts into words. Make a list of ten rhyming words. Describe the inside of a Ping-Pong ball. But whatever you do, do it in a noncritical way. Turn off the editor in your head. The exercise is not supposed to be polished prose any more than a warm-up run is supposed to set a world record.
Certainly there is such a thing as being overorganized. Some writers organize their material so thoroughly that everything they write comes out looking like a hardware catalog. Your outline, whatever its form, should contain enough slack for creativity and space for new thoughts on your subject.
But you should organize the material. Organizing will help lock in the logic of what you say, and it will speed the writing process. Organizing will help to create an overall unity in your story as well as several interior unities.
There is no one right way to organize material for a story. Organization depends on the nature of the work and, more importantly, on what works for you. So I cannot offer you the best way to organize material. But I will give you a few tips:
• Create a list of questions about your subject before you begin research, and keep related questions together.Go to many different sources for answers—even go to many sources for answers to a single question. Several answers to the same question are compelling when they are similar and fascinating when they are not.
• Gather much more material than you will use. Just as high water pressure makes more water flow faster, the greater weight of material you have gathered will make the words flow faster.
• As you create written material, whether you are photocopying at the library, transcribing taped interviews, or simply scribbling notes, write on one side of the paper only. That way you can slice up your material with a pair of scissors and rearrange it any way you want.
Some writers will not write a magazine article until they have constructed an outline that is longer than the article they intend to write. Other writers begin with no outline at all, though they probably have a vague outline in mind.
How long or detailed your outline is depends on the scope of what you have to write and how secure you are with the material. But an outline is just a list of elements you want to put into your writing, and for any story or article you should make some sort of list, even if it’s just three words scribbled on a scrap of paper. Write some key words for the issues you want to cover, the facts you want to point to, the questions you want to pose. Glance at the list as you work. This will help you decide what to write next.
If, for example, you want to write a letter to your lawyer describing the skullduggery your husband has been up to since the divorce agreement was signed, you might scribble a list that looks like this:
1.
Cheated me on the car payments.
2.
Sends support checks late.
3.
Tells the kids lies.
Even if you are writing something short, such as a press release, it’s a good idea to make a list of essential elements. Making a checklist: “Time. Date. Place. Price.” Newspaper offices are always getting press releases that don’t mention what time the pancake breakfast at the Boys’ Club begins.
Do you know who your reader is? Is your story going to be read by a professor who knows everything but has very little time? Or is the reader a layperson with no knowledge of your specialty? A little girl, perhaps? An immigrant?
Before you write, figure out whom you are trying to reach. Who is the reader and what does he or she know?
To write is not necessarily to communicate. Communication occurs in the mind of the reader, and if that reader is not familiar with your terms and your concepts, you might as well write them in Latvian. The computer terms that are impressive in a letter to your software engineer will be gobbledygook in a sales brochure aimed at people who have never used computers.
Remember that when you write, the language you have to work with is not your entire vocabulary, but only that portion of it that you share with the reader. Just because you speak Portuguese doesn’t mean you should pepper your story with Portuguese phrases. This reminder goes not just for words but for historical allusions and the like. When you write, don’t think about how smart you are; think about how smart your reader is. To do that you must visualize him or her. Imagine your reader in the room with you. What is his education? What are his attitudes? How important is this particular story to him? Write as if you were in conversation with your readers. Listen to the dialogue that would occur. Are your readers going to stop you and say, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, what’s a
grumdocle?”
If they are, then don’t use
grumdocle,
or explain it when you do.
grumdocle?”
If they are, then don’t use
grumdocle,
or explain it when you do.
Do not write until you know why you are writing. What are your goals? Are you trying to make readers laugh? Are you trying to persuade them to buy a product? Are you trying to advise them? Are you trying to inform them so that they can make a decision?
If you cannot answer the question “Why am I writing this?” then you cannot wisely choose words, provide facts, include or exclude humor. You must know what job you want done before you can pick the tools to do it. And if you cannot state clearly at least one reason for writing your story, article, or paper ... don’t write it.
CHAPTER THREE
Five Ways to Write a Strong Beginning
1. Find a Slant
2. Write a Strong Lead
3. Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep
4. Set a Tone and Maintain It
5. Begin at the Beginning
Do not try to write everything about your subject. All subjects are inexhaustible. If you try to write on every aspect of your subject, you will ramble. You will get lost in the writing, your wastebasket will overflow, and you will become a crazy person. Tie yourself to a specific idea about your subject, some aspect that is manageable. That aspect is called the slant. Here are some examples.
There is no precise definition of the lead. It can be the first sentence, the first paragraph, even the first several paragraphs of your article or story. The lead is whatever it takes to lead your readers so deeply into your story or article that they will not turn back unless you stray from the path you have put them on.
Here are two leads that I have used recently.
On a clear day in Salem you can stand in front of the Peabody Museum and stare down Essex Sreet all the way to the Hawthorne Boulevard. And, if you’re in luck, you might see something black coming around the corner, something black and bewildering, floating, like a hole in the sky growing larger as it comes toward you. For an instant it is as disturbing as a rustle in the night. Don’t be concerned. It is only Laurie Cabot.John E. Rock kills people for their own good.“It’s all hypothetical, of course,” he says, waving a hand at his Basic Four Computer in the Framingham office of Rock Insurance.
Though the term “lead” is usually associated with non-fiction, the lead in fiction is just as important. Here is how Gail Levine-Freidus began her novel for children Popcorn (Bradbury Press).
You know how sometimes you suddenly get the feeling that someone is watching every move you make? The feeling sort of sneaks up on you and gives you the creeps, whatever they are. Well that’s exactly how I felt in Mr. Pettigrew’s English class just as I was starting to work on the last section of our test.
A lead should be provocative. It should have energy, excitement, an implicit promise that something is going to happen or that some interesting information will be revealed. It should create curiosity, get the reader asking questions.
The character of a good lead depends largely on the nature and length of what you have written. A 500-word lead in an 800-word story is not a good lead, but it could be a great lead in a 3,000-word story.
Your lead should give readers something to care about before it gives them dry background information. “Something to care about” usually means one of two things. Either you give the readers information which affects them directly, or you give them a human being with whom they can identify.
Don’t begin a story in the company newsletter like this:
On March 27 the Board of Directors met at the Holiday Inn in Podunk. All but two members were present. John Burdick of the Tymecomp Agency presented the results of his time and productivity study. Mr. Burdick has spent six months in the four plants surveying daily production, employee attendance records, and overhead costs. He has spoken to employees and personnel managers. He described the effectiveness of a variety of work schedules, and on his recommendation the board voted unanimously to put the company on a four-day workweek, effective June 1.
Employees would have to read the whole first paragraph before they found what the story had to do with them. Most employees would not have bothered.
BOOK: 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing (Mentor Series)
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