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Authors: Gary Provost
100 Ways to Improve Your Writing (Mentor Series) (9 page)
BOOK: 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing (Mentor Series)
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When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bull-dog named Foreball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
What specific noun hooked me?
Bull-dog.
If Trahearne had been drinking with an alcoholic dog, I might not have bought the book. But the specificity of
bull-dog
brought into focus not only the dog, but also the bar, the beer, and the fine spring afternoon. Why? Because by telling me what kind of dog it was that drank with Trahearne, the author convinced me that he had actually seen the dog. I believed the author’s words.
Bull-dog.
If Trahearne had been drinking with an alcoholic dog, I might not have bought the book. But the specificity of
bull-dog
brought into focus not only the dog, but also the bar, the beer, and the fine spring afternoon. Why? Because by telling me what kind of dog it was that drank with Trahearne, the author convinced me that he had actually seen the dog. I believed the author’s words.
When you take out a general word and put in a specific one, you usually improve your writing. But when you use a specific word, readers assume you are trying to tell them something, so make sure you choose the specific word that delivers the message you want delivered. If your character is driving
a car
down the highway and you change it to
a
Jaguar, you increase interest, but you also characterize the driver. You build connotations of money and speed. So make sure you choose a car that is consistent with all the other messages you are trying to send the reader.
a car
down the highway and you change it to
a
Jaguar, you increase interest, but you also characterize the driver. You build connotations of money and speed. So make sure you choose a car that is consistent with all the other messages you are trying to send the reader.
When a verb is in the active voice, the subject of the sentence is also the doer of the action.
The sentence “John picked up the bag” is in the active voice because the subject, John, is also the thing or person doing the action of “picking up.”
The sentence “The bag was picked up by John” is in the passive voice because the subject of the sentence, bag, is the passive receiver of the action.
Generally the active voice makes for more interesting reading, and it is the active voice that you should cultivate as your normal writing habit. The active voice strikes more directly at the thought you want to express, it is generally shorter, and it holds the reader closer to what you write because it creates a stronger sense that “something is happening.”
Listen to how the following passive voice sentences are improved when they are turned into the active voice.
Try to use the active voice. But realize that there are times when you will need to use the passive. If the object of the action is the important thing, then you will want to emphasize it by mentioning it first. When that’s the case, you will use the passive voice.
Let’s say, for example, that you want to tell the reader about some strange things that happened to your car. In the active voice it would look like this:
Three strong women turned my car upside down on Tuesday. Vandals painted my car yellow and turquoise on Wednesday. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched my car into orbit around the moon on Thursday.
The example shown above is not wrong, but it sounds choppy. To give the story a flow, you would want to use the passive voice, keeping the emphasis on your car:
On Tuesday my car was turned upside down by three strong women. On Wednesday my car was painted yellow and turquoise by vandals. On Thursday my car was launched into orbit around the moon by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
In the passive voice, the car is given emphasis, and the story about what happened to it has a flow and rhythm lacking in the first example.
Usually what matters is what
did
happen, what
does
exist, and who
is
involved. So develop the habit of stating information in a positive manner.
did
happen, what
does
exist, and who
is
involved. So develop the habit of stating information in a positive manner.
If you want your reader to experience the silence of a church at night, write “The church was silent.” If you write “There was no noise in the church,” the first thing your reader will hear is the noise that isn’t there.
Look at the sentences below and see how much more effective each one is when written in a positive manner.
Of course, there are times when the negative statement should be used. If it’s ten o’clock on a stormy night and your wife was due home at six, you won’t call your brother and state the positive: “Jennifer is out.” You’ll emphasize the negative: “Jennifer is not home yet.”
In the sentences below, the negative sentence is stronger than the positive.
A specific word or phrase is usually better than a general one. The specific word etches a sharper picture and helps your reader to see what you are describing.
Picture a box.
Now picture a black box.
Now picture a black box with shiny silver hinges.
You can see the box more clearly as it becomes more specific.
Of course, there must be a limit to this. I could tell you about a small black box with shiny silver hinges on one end and an inlaid marble top which has a crimson heart painted on it with the most darling cupids dancing around the heart, and so forth. You would see the box, but you would be bored by it and by me.
Try to be specific without being wordy. Don’t make a sentence specific by hooking up a freight train of details to it. Make it specific by whittling all the possible word combinations down to those few that say what you want them to say.
A few well-placed statistics will establish your credibility. If they are accurate and comprehensible, they will show the reader that you have done your homework and know what you are talking about. Keep in mind, however, that too many statistics will numb your reader’s ability to draw meaning from them. Statistics should be sprinkled like pepper, not smeared like butter.
In the following paragraph from
Everything You Want to Know About Your Husband’s Money and Need to Know Before the Divorce
(Crowell, 1980) authors Shelly Aspaklaria and Gerson Geltner use statistics effectively. They establish credibility. But also, by providing the reader with the number of divorces, percentages of women receiving alimony, and some average amounts of alimony, they gave their reader the necessary context in which to view other information in their book.
Everything You Want to Know About Your Husband’s Money and Need to Know Before the Divorce
(Crowell, 1980) authors Shelly Aspaklaria and Gerson Geltner use statistics effectively. They establish credibility. But also, by providing the reader with the number of divorces, percentages of women receiving alimony, and some average amounts of alimony, they gave their reader the necessary context in which to view other information in their book.
Divorce among couples married more than twenty years has risen annually from 51,000 in 1965 to 72,000 in 1976. These “displaced homemakers” are becoming the nation’s “new poor” studies by Congress show. Nationally only one out of seven divorced women (14 percent) receives alimony. Of the millions of divorced women, only 250,000 reported alimony income to the IRS in 1975. The average alimony in the United States in that year was $2,895. The highest average awards were made in Connecticut, about $9,728; Washington, D.C., $5,558; and Massachusetts at $4,122 annually. The lowest average alimony awards were granted in North Carolina, $954; Utah, $964; and Maryland, $1,194.
BOOK: 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing (Mentor Series)
9.96Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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