Language or style that is less engaging, less stimulating than the competition is, frankly, dead on arrival. Whether you strive as a journalist, novelist, [fact-sheet writer]…something distinctive, some umami-like deliciousness has to emanate from your words or they go off to oblivion. Most writers feel themselves on the scent of such expressiveness, but just a few bounds short of seizing it. — Arthur Plotnik
The title of Arthur Plotnik's book, Spunk & Bite: A writer’s guide to punchier, more engaging language & style, pokes fun at the Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, the thin classic style manual that has served up the rules for good writing since 1918.
But Plotnik doesn’t really quibble with the classic rules of the trade. Instead, he says his book targets “those whose basic composition skills are as adequate as the next writer’s, but who itch for creative ideas, smart locutions, and realistic takes on language for today’s media.” But, he adds, lively writing, “Is not…about out-shouting the next writer or trashing the language authorities.”
Plotnik articulates a painful awareness many editors develop: “I feel the anguish of dead writing. I can see dead writing. I see language that follows all the rules, but lacks the vigor and inventiveness ever to rise off the page.”
I loved reading Spunk & Bite and recommend it to any writer. Its lively writing makes it hard to put down, but Plotnik has organized the content into brief, digestible subchapters, with lots of sidebars and examples drawn from newspapers, magazines, journals and literary works, making Spunk & Bite a book you can pick up sporadically, open anywhere, and learn something in four or five minutes.
“Writers aiming for clarity, accuracy, timeliness—and for readers who eagerly interact with their words and read all the way through—must do more than merely recite empirical facts, interpret data, and display personal expertise,” writes Plotnik, “especially in an age where another take on the subject remains a click or two away.
If you aim for this kind of writing, spend some time with this book.
Write freely and rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down…. It…interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place…it doesn't exist. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person, a real person you know, or an imagined person—and write to that one.
From a letter to Pascal Covici Jr.
April 13, 1956, referenced in Paris Review,
The Art of Fiction No. 45,
John SteinbeckFifty years old and still first-rate advice.
The process of reading creates an illusion that we are simply absorbing information from a text, rather than conversing with, and being persuaded by, another human being. Karen Schriver, Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers
The second comes from horror writer Stephen King:
What writing isI enthusiastically recommend both these books, Shriver’s as a valuable reference work for writers and publication designers, King’s as a powerful and entertaining memoir of the writer’s life.
Telepathy, of course. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We’re not even in the same year together, let alone the same room…except we are together. We’re close.
I sent you a table with a red cloth on it, a cage, a rabbit….You got them all. We’ve engaged in an act of telepathy…real telepathy.You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair….Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page. Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
I’ve just discovered the Jargon Files, a jewel of an online resource for writers published by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. The foundation developed the Web site to “call attention to the troubling use of jargon throughout the foundation world.” [Substitute Cooperative Extension for philanthropies or foundations when you peruse this page.]
Why? The use of jargon, and the confusion it creates, can damage or undercut even the most-well-intentioned of foundation efforts - making it difficult for everyone to clearly understand and effectively discuss the ideas and issues that drive foundation grantmaking and related activities.
To “help improve the quality and clarity of speaking and writing [and] to catalogue and comment on examples of misused words and phrases,” the Clark Foundation enlisted Tony Proscio, a former associate editor of the Miami Herald.“
Proscio writes compellingly, often with bite and humor, about why we should consider abandoning many of their cherished words, because we’ve misappropriated, twisted or diluted their original meanings, or they’ve become clichéd, tired, shopworn.Proscio on empowerment:
Provide / ReceiveHere is an example of that most pernicious of all forms of jargon: the ideological shibboleth. To establish one's bona fides as a person concerned about the poor, the disenfranchised, or even ordinary people in general, it is essential in every setting to use EMPOWERMENT - as early (and, in some circles, as often) as possible.
The coiners of EMPOWERMENT invested it with only the broadest meaning, perhaps to make it usable in nearly every context…. Foundations now must be careful to empower grantees, communities, individual residents of those communities, voluntary and civic associations, the poor, those who help the poor, and even those who do not help the poor, but would if they were empowered. Scarcely a grant is made anymore without someone or something being solemnly empowered, normally with a timely infusion of money.
No one wants to “get” or “give” anything. It seems too ordinary, not to say materialistic. But they would be pleased to RECEIVE, and feel duty-bound to PROVIDE. It's another example of how a well-meaning writer inadvertently takes a plain idea and turns it into something pompous, without the least intention of doing so.
Stakeholders
For moreIn most civic and charitable projects, the people with a “stake” in the results are legion. When people try to improve schools or health care or Social Security, who has a "stake" in the results? Answer: All of us—every last woman, man, and child. Half the time, STAKEHOLDERS is a passable substitute for “all the living, and even a few of the dead.” As such, in any practical context it is useless noise.
The only explanation for the spectacular success of STAKEHOLDERS in the philanthropic demimonde is that the word sounds tantalizingly like its cousin “stockholders.” For those with a painful, gnawing envy of Wall Street and all its blandishments, the desire for stockholders must have the merciless pull of an addiction. (Funny, that: Most actual denizens of Wall Street would be delighted to give their stockholders the heave-ho, as long as they could hold on to the capital.) Among Wall Street wannabes, a word that gives the thrilling feeling of stock without the nuisance of actually paying dividends would naturally be a big hit. For those with a chemical dependence on the gibberish of high finance, STAKEHOLDERS is something like methadone: It eases some of the craving, without inflicting the harmful side-effects of the real thing.
I recently came across two outstanding online columns that speak to the importance of establishing a narrative voice (i.e., telling a story that connects emotionally and viscerally, as well as cognitively, with readers), no matter what medium you write for.
The first column, A Case for Web Storytelling, by Curt Cloninger for the blog A List Apart, speaks directly to Web “content” producers. The other, What is Narrative, Anyway?, by journalist Chip Scanlon of the Poynter Institute, addresses journalists.
As I’ve written repeatedly, humans come hard-wired for the sounds, tone and rhythms of the human voice. Neither the rigid visual imperialism of the printed line nor the whiz-bang techno-wizardry of interactive electronic media can override that primary feature of our genetic heritage.
The best writing always tells a story. The best writers write for the ear.