Notes From A Writing Coach

A tiresome style of writing

A copy editor sent this note:

I've been running into this kind of thing in AP stories, and I find it irritating:

He opened the session by improvising on hymns at the piano and concluded it by accompanying a sing-along on the guitar. In between, he delivered a compelling account of his unlikely conversion from atheism to evangelical Christianity.

The lanky, amiable platform personality wasn’t some traveling revivalist but one of the world’s leading biologists.

I didn't think he was a traveling revivalist; was the writer trying to trick me into thinking he was, so he could surprise me?

Writers who try to mislead the reader in the lead must not realize that the headline, photos and cutlines will already have revealed the "surprise" before the reader even gets to the story.

This was in another AP religion story the other day:

The arena crowd was on its feet, arms in the air, dancing to the lively beat. Colored lights flashed on the performers, who belted out some of their most popular songs.

But these fans weren’t teenagers, and the attraction wasn’t a hot pop act. Two of the four performers, in high-wedge platform sandals and trendy but modest outfits, were obviously pregnant. And many fans were middle-aged men.

How surprising! People besides teenagers go to concerts!

The copy editor is right. This sort of writing is tiresome. It is tiresome not only because of the I-fooled-you gimmickry, but also because of the clichés and because of the empty phrases that the writers assume are descriptive.

Politically correct nonsense

The other day I heard a radio announcer refer to the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor as an “African-American.” I didn’t think the man was an American, so I looked him up.

He was born in England.

The announcer just couldn’t bring himself to say that Coleridge-Taylor was of mixed race, the son of a white woman and a black man.

Timid writers make the same sort of error.

They would do well to heed this thought from Bryan Garner: “In the end, euphemisms leave a linguistic garbage-heap in their wake: once they become standard, they lose their euphemistic quality and must be replaced by newer euphemisms.”

That quotation comes from Mr. Garner’s e-mail newsletter, Garner's Usage Tip of the Day, for Oxford University Press.

Welcome, Newcomers

A note for newcomers at this site: I’ve just started posting here, and as you can see, I haven’t put up much content yet. But the blog itself isn’t new.

It has existed at another site for more than two years. If you want to read previous notes on writing, you can find them there.

For now, I plan to post the same notes on both sites. This one provides some amenities, such as the ability to post pictures, that aren’t available at the other site or are less easy to use. This site also seems to be less vulnerable to spammers abusing the comments function.

Whichever site you read, welcome.

If you have a question about writing or a suggestion, you’re welcome to e-mail me. Just be sure to put something in the reference line such as “writing question” or “writing coach” so I will know you aren’t a spammer.

Cure for a hang-up

For a long time I’ve suggested that writers make a reminder sheet for grammar and usage points that give them trouble.

Most of us have some sort of language hang-up. It might be confusion between two soundalikes; it might be trouble with “who” and “whom” or “lay” and “lie.”

A simple reminder sheet—listing examples of right and wrong usage—can save you grief, and if you use it regularly you will probably whip the problem after a time.
Pam Nelson, who writes the Triangle Grammar Guide blog, improves on this idea. She made up a neat visual to show the difference between “peek” and “peak.” Take a look.

By all means, make a graphic if you have the knack, or get an artistic friend to do it.

In any case, do something. You don’t want to keep making the same error.

Be creative and make new errors.

Amateurish narrative

When it is done well, narrative writing is wonderful. A well-done narrative is one of the most compelling stories you can put in a newspaper.

Papers ought to publish more narratives, and they ought to make greater use of narrative techniques to enrich reports that aren’t narratives.

But when narrative techniques are done badly, the result is usually awful. Some writers seem to think that narrative ability is in their genes, and they don’t trouble to learn the skill. They use empty adjectives—purple prose—instead of sharp details. They write tedious leads filled with boring action. They overdo description or insert it so clumsily that the writing shouts “amateur at work.”

The other day, for example, I edited a story that had a sentence describing a woman sitting in her favorite restaurant stirring a multi-colored drink.

That is the kind of detail that interrupts a story unless it is blended in smoothly and contributes something. Even worse, the detail isn’t descriptive—it goes out of its way to avoid description. If the restaurant is pertinent, name it and characterize it in a way that puts the reader in the scene. If the drink is pertinent, name it and name its colors.

While we’re on the subject of using specific details, check out the column headed “Get the name of that bra” on Roy Peter Clark’s Writing Tools blog.

It's worse than I thought

Some time ago I mentioned the silliness of using “gate” as a suffix for a word referring to scandal or controversy. As in “Plame-gate” for the controversy over the exposure of Valerie Plame’s job as a CIA agent.

Well, the silliness—no, make that stupidity—is worse than I thought. Pam Robinson, over at the Words at Work blog, has a long and depressing list of examples. Among them: Koreagate, Thatchergate, Dianagate.

And the stupidity has spread around the world. It isn’t just Americans who have airheads in journalism. They are everywhere.

Pam suggests a “complete on pain-of-death ban.”

Ordinarily I’m opposed to capital punishment. But I’m prepared to make an exception.