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Authors: Gary Provost
100 Ways to Improve Your Writing (Mentor Series) (5 page)
BOOK: 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing (Mentor Series)
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The provocative information, the information that will hook the reader and compel him to keep reading, is at the end of the paragraph. It should be moved to the front, and the lead should be:
On June 1 the company will go on a four-day work week.
This next lead is from a story about a dangerous antitermite chemical. It was written by John Bierman and appeared in
The Boston Globe.
Instead of loading his lead with impersonal background material, Bierman brought his story immediately to life by giving the reader something to care about. Note the two important elements in Bierman’s lead: he made it
visible
—he showed us something; and he made it
human
—he showed us what the problem means to some real people.
The Boston Globe.
Instead of loading his lead with impersonal background material, Bierman brought his story immediately to life by giving the reader something to care about. Note the two important elements in Bierman’s lead: he made it
visible
—he showed us something; and he made it
human
—he showed us what the problem means to some real people.
NEW YORK—Jeffrey Lever had his split level ranch house in East Islip, Long Island bulldozed to the ground with all its contents last week after it was discovered the house’s interior had been sprayed with a potentially lethal chemical.
A lead like that will make your reader want to keep reading.
One common mistake you should be aware of is the writing of two or three leads in the same story. Often a writer creates a good lead and then repeats all the information in the second paragraph, and again in the third.
This also is from a story that appeared in
The Boston Globe:
The Boston Globe:
Terminally ill nuclear power plant projects never die quickly. They are killed slowly by public criticism, hostile regulators, persistent conservation, climbing construction costs and an appetite for cash that Wall Street refuses to meet.Despite regulatory attacks, conservation, skyrocketing construction costs and threatened problems in raising cash, the nuclear plants rising on the beach at Sea-brook, N.H. are far from dead.
The second paragraph of that article would have made the better lead. It contains all the information in the first paragraph plus a specific statement of interest to the reader. If the writer had inserted the phrase “problems which typically kill nuclear plants,” the first paragraph could have been tossed in the wastebasket.
Science has found a cure for cancer.
Is that a good lead? It is if science has found a cure for cancer. But it’s not a good lead if the writer goes on to write, “Of course, nothing is definite yet,” and “Dr. Inman’s theories have not been fully tested,” and “The serum has never been tried on human beings.” Then the lead becomes a trick, a dishonest way of getting the readers into the story, and they will feel cheated after reading the article.
A lead is not strong if it does not deliver on the promises it makes. Anybody can write a lead that will attract attention, but if the lead is not supported by what follows, it will do more harm than good.
Almost every arena of activity conveys some message about the tone or mood in which it is to be experienced. You are not expected to laugh out loud at a hanging, but it’s okay to laugh at a Woody Allen movie. You shouldn’t scream when you find a great bargain at Macy’s, but it’s okay to scream at the carnival when the Tilt-a-Whirl spins you around. (Throwing up is also acceptable.) In life, mixed messages about tone, such as gag napkins at a wake, are disturbing. The same is true in reading.
In your opening paragraph you set a tone. Your choice of words, your arrangement of those words, and your choice of information all convey to the reader some message about the tone of the story. In some way the writer, you, makes an announcement such as “This is urgent,” or “Let’s be practical,” or “Let’s laugh at this.”
The following passage becomes “wrong” when the writer creates a sudden and jarring shift in tone. He begins with a tone that is urgent, cruel, and efficient, but he switches to a tone that is poetic, leisurely, and analytical. Readers, believing they knew the writer’s attitude toward the material, are suddenly not so sure!
Myron slammed the gate behind him and walked straight up to the cop on duty. “Now,” he said, “I want that scum now.” The cop moved quickly to block the door. But Myron was quicker. He rammed a fist into the cop’s gut, and when the cop keeled forward, Myron sliced a karate chop into the back of his neck. The cop dropped with a thud. Myron yanked open the door to the cellblock. He ran down the corridor to cell 9. He pulled open his jacket and grabbed the pistol from his holster. “Arrivederci, scum!” he cried at Demetrius. There was a pitiful shriek, the blast of gunfire, then the panicky screaming of other prisoners who feared a massacre.It was cool there in the cellblock, as cool as those distant mornings back in Trenton when Myron was a boy. The air here was light and refreshing, like a sparkling tonic brought in to douse the heat of the day. Even the cement walls around the cellblock had been painted a cool and soothing aqua, and on one end a mural of colorful birds enhanced the sense of calm. Myron was pleased with what he had done. For a moment he pretended that he was still sitting on the highest branch of that old cottonwood tree in Trenton, and he sipped slowly the heady air of success.
Many writers work their way into a paper, letter, or story as if they were feeling their way into a dark house. They use the first few pages, and sometimes considerably more, as a kind of writing warm-up. There’s nothing wrong with writing three pages of junk before you get to information that matters, as long as those three pages are extinct before the final draft. In other words, don’t include your warm-up exercises with the manuscript.
Study the beginning of your story carefully. You might discover that with the first 200 words you are “getting around to telling the story.” Look at the first sentence. Is it substantive? Is it doing some work? Or is it merely background information
about
what you haven’t quite begun yet?
about
what you haven’t quite begun yet?
Obviously, no one is going to stop reading a memo because of five unnecessary words, but many writers use three pages to say “I’m writing this because ...”
Cross out every sentence until you come to one you cannot do without. That is your beginning.
CHAPTER FOUR
Nine Ways to Save Time and Energy
1. Use Pyramid Construction
2. Use Topic Sentences
3. Write Short Paragraphs
4. Use Transitional Phrases
5. Don’t Explain When You Don’t Have To
6. Use Bridge Words
7. Avoid Wordiness
8. Steal
9. Stop Writing When you Get to the End
Writing in the pyramid style means getting to the point at the top, putting the “who, what, when, where, and why” in the first paragraph, and developing the supporting information under it.
Newspapers use pyramid style because they are in the business of getting facts to readers as quickly as possible and because of the way news stories must be edited. When a newspaper editor has a seven-inch story that he or she has to put into a six-inch hole in the newspaper, that editor doesn’t run through the story with a pencil looking for useless adverbs or sentences that can be rewritten. He or she simply cuts an inch off the bottom. That is why each inch of a pyramid-style story should be less important than the inch that came before it.
You should use pyramid style for any short report and for any story that might be cut. And when you do, don’t put anything in paragraph 12 that the reader must know in order to understand paragraph 7.
GARY PROVOST
A topic sentence in a paragraph is a sentence containing the thought that is developed throughout the rest of the paragraph. The topic sentence is commonly the first sentence in a paragraph.
Deciding what to put in a paragraph and what to leave out will be easier if you first write a topic sentence. For each paragraph ask, “What do I want to say here? What point do I want to make? What question do I want to present?” Answer with a single general sentence. That is your topic sentence. Chances are that the topic sentence will fall neatly into the paragraph it inspires. But even if you don’t include the topic sentence in your paragraph, it will serve as a guide. When you rewrite your early drafts, ask how each sentence in a paragraph supports the topic sentence of the paragraph. If the answer is “It doesn’t,” then ask what other work the sentence is doing in the paragraph. If the answer is “None,” get rid of the sentence.
Here are two paragraphs from magazine articles. The first paragraph begins with a topic sentence. The second paragraph ends with a topic sentence. But note that in each one all the sentences support or “prove” the statement made in the topic sentence.
Your writing will be faster, livelier, and clearer if you write short paragraphs. The reader will welcome the break and the white space. You will be less likely to get tied up in verbal knots. Your thoughts will be better organized and more succinctly expressed. You and the reader will find it easier to locate specific statements.
BOOK: 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing (Mentor Series)
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