The Lily and The Beetle

Twyla Tharp, the master choreographer, has a wonderful book on creativity called The Creative Habit. One of my favorite pieces of advice in it is her discussion of how to start anything – a dance, a book, or a piece of music. To begin, she says, you don’t have to start at the actual opening of the piece. Dive into a part that interests you, begin brainstorming there, and you can build the piece outward, in any direction. This is good advice for writers in the earliest part of the process, long before it’s time to structure a piece of writing, when you’re only just developing the idea of what to write about. If a topic interests you, begin brainstorming about what caught your attention. The initial idea should blossom from there – leading to other ideas, into greater detail on the initial subject or out into the broader context of your topic. Either direction works.

Say you’re interested in symbiosis in the rainforest. You read about a certain water lily – bright white – that attracts a very specific beetle. At night, it closes, trapping the beetle and covering it in pollen. In the morning, it frees the beetle to go pollinate other lilies, and changes color – to pink – to avoid attracting the same beetle over again. Interesting topic, right? How could you work from there? You could either choose to move more deeply into the topic – examining the beetle, the flower, and their mutual life cycles, or you could move outward – out into other symbiotic relationships in the rainforest, to the algae that grows on the sloth’s fur to get closer to the sunlight, for example. You could even move out to the rainforest itself and other topics relevant to it. Either way, the initial idea – the lily and the beetle – doesn’t have to be the beginning of the piece you eventually write. If it turns out to be a wonderful hook into the piece – great. But in the end, it may become merely a footnote. It doesn’t matter. The lily and the beetle worked, because they were the spark that started the brainstorming engine. 

Tampering with the unseen

It’s not always terrible to be invisible; sometimes it’s exactly what the job requires. This applies most to verbs and verb phrases that are so commonly used they do their job while disappearing from view. The best invisible verb phrase I know of is when a writer, quoting someone, finishes with “he said” or “she said.” Writers – especially in business and school writing – often try to tamper with this wonderful, quiet little phrase, by spiffing it up with substitutes like “he stated” or “she noted.” Here’s what I say to that: Ugh! Words make pictures in a reader’s mind. Be careful what you make a reader see. “She said” is so commonly used it disappears from a reader’s visual field and lets him or her focus on what the person being quoted is saying:

“Looks like a hurricane’s coming,” he said. “We’d better get inside.”

or

“Uncle Reginald has definitely had enough to drink. He’s marching across Grandma’s flower bed and singing I Love New York,” she said.

In fiction, it works to substitute “he said” with words that you want the reader to see, like “he shouted,” “she murmured,” even “they sniffed” to indicate supreme disdain. But in professional writing, we don’t really want to see the speaker. We want to hear the information. So if you think you’re mixing it up by throwing in a “she stated” or “he noted” here and there, what you’re really doing is forcing your reader to see something irrelevant. You’re distracting him. It’s my feeling that people generally only make statements at press conferences and in police stations. A statement is a formal, public announcement. And “noted” is an afterthought. It can be used within the flow of a sentence: “The doctor noted, too, that brushing your teeth on a regular basis can protect your arteries.” But when used in place of the final “she said,” it sounds like the speaker threw something in as a casual aside or, alternatively, as a school assignment: “That’s one hairy gorilla,” she noted. Who’s she noting it for? I imagine the speaker standing at the zoo there with a notepad, writing it all down.

Be aware that writing has a visual element to it, and watch what pictures you paint with your words.

The story behind words

Last year I took a trip to St. Mary’s City, the original capital city of Maryland. It’s a great place where re-enactors dress up as 17^th century Marylanders, living as they did when St. Mary’s was the hub of activity in colonial Maryland. One of the main attractions, besides the Indian village and the Maryland Dove, the merchant ship at St. Mary’s dock, was the printer’s house, where the town’s newspaper was printed. The volunteer there showed us how the printer’s letter blocks were set in two cases – capital letters in the upper case, and non-capital letters in the lower case. This is the origin of the English words uppercase and lowercase. We no longer see the “case” in our mind’s eye, but it was there once. Countless words grew out of physical realities we have long forgotten. We don’t think of newspaper correspondents as writing letters, but in the nineteenth century, that’s exactly what they did. The famous “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” came from a letter written to the New York Herald by its correspondent in Africa, Mr. Henry Stanley. His newspaper reports from Central Africa were introduced with the following telegram from the London correspondent in July of 1872: “It is with the deepest emotions of pride and pleasure that I announce the arrival this day of letters from Mr. Stanley, Chief of the Herald Exploring Expedition to Central Africa. I have forwarded the letters by mail.” Sometimes it’s nice to realize how much language tells stories, down into the words themselves.

For those interested in the origin of words, you can find more on this topic on some great sites: The Word Detective at http://www.word-detective.com/backidx.html , Etymologically Speaking at http://www.westegg.com/etymology/ , and Dave Wilton's blog at http://www.wordorigins.org/

Hooray for the article!

A tribute to the humblest of words, hooray for the article.

They’re short, they don’t seem important, but look what they do. Consider the following two sentences:

He moved the cart.

He moved a cart.

I’ve noticed lately that people don’t mind dropping an article now and then. Maybe they’re writing quickly, and a short little “a,” “an,” or “the” gets lost in the rush. But articles are important. They give a sense of how specific, how personal, something is.

What’s the difference between “he moved the cart” and “he moved a cart?”

Lots.

A cart is an inconsequential piece of furniture that happened to be there. It belongs to no one, or at least to no one we care about at the moment.

The cart has consequence. It’s there for a reason. It belongs to someone, and that person cares about it. It’s not any cart – it’s a specific one.

All that, accomplished with three small letters.

So pay attention to articles. Don’t drop them; don’t misuse them. They have meaning.

Grammar "Easy Reading"

Think you can’t have fun reading about grammar? I’m a structure-lover myself, and grammar’s always been a given – part of the furniture, you might say. But I just finished reading Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, and I’ve got to say that for the first time, I actually read a grammar book straight through and enjoyed it!

First, Mignon Fogarty, “Grammar Girl,” has a great style that makes her easy to read. Second, she answers a lot of those murky questions we all have about grammar (or at least I often do!), and demystifies the rules. Some of my favorite parts of her book are the little notes she gives about the difference between American and British usage, a topic that so often confuses people. And I love how she smashes grammar myths, like the old English-teacher fiction that you can’t begin a sentence with the word “and.” So if you’re looking for a great reference guide, I recommend Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips.

On the other hand . . .

Last post was for people who don’t know how to stop themselves from saying too much. Today’s post is for those who can’t find what to say.

Having enough to write is not a matter of finding the words. It’s a question of finding the ideas. And the way to ferret out ideas – if they don’t come on their own – is to ask questions.

For example, a common problem for school research or term paper writers is that they think a basic statement covers a topic. Consider this one:

American history is driven by idealists.

Great opening statement. But how do you develop it?

With questions – specific questions that will jumpstart your search for answers.

For example:

Who are America’s most famous idealists?

How, specifically, have they driven U.S. history?

Have they had a positive or negative effect?

When and Why?

Who has opposed them?

Why?

When have they been most powerful?

When least?

See how many questions can pop up with one simple statement? Answer them – even begin to answer them – and having enough to write should not be a problem.

Enough Said

Sometimes people just don’t know when to stop.

I’m not a big advocate of word limits, but there are those who need them. They take fifty words to tell you nothing, or less.

Take this for an example:

There is no doubt but that at that point in time, the factors contributing to their troubles were rising to the surface. This caused Marge, in particular, to feel surrounded on all sides. She felt she was in a very unique situation, and there were two different kinds of responses she could offer. She might perhaps possibly decide to leave George, or she might simply decide to try and reconcile, if and when he could be brought to recognize the error in his ways of thinking.

Poor Marge and George – they’re drowning in meaninglessness! What it boils down to, though, is really just this:

Marge and George were arguing. Marge, in particular, felt boxed in by the relationship and its problems. She decided she had two choices: leave, or try to make George see the error of his ways, so they could reconcile.

If additional words and sentences add nothing – not even in terms of rhythm or emphasis – cut them out! Remember my favorite saying: less is more.