Cantankerous commentary on what we speak and why we speak it, from Bill Brohaugh
Those of you who deliberate on why words like conversate and orientate seem to permeate sloppy speech and writing, do you abominate deliberate? If we converse and orient, why don’t we deliber instead of deliberate? In fact, we once did; the first recorded use of the verb deliber, from Chaucer, preceded the verb deliberate by about 150 years. Deliber on that for a while.
Over at the Seekerville.com blog, I recently spotted a succinct set of lessons in writing tight. What made them particularly powerful was that they were real-world lessons. Author Cheryl Wyatt discusses how she went about chopping 4,000 words out of a book-length manuscript to get it to length. Here’s a couple of the examples she gave (presenting the original phrasing first, and Cheryl’s commentary in parentheses):
He stood to his feet. (Uh . . . as opposed to what? Standing to his elbows?)
BECAME: He stood.Nolan unfolded his arms and strode in looking very much like a warrior on a lethal mission.
BECAME: Arms unfolded, Nolan tanked in.
(Plus it gives us a stronger image. Warriors don’t stroll. They march. Sneak. Tank. Stronger, more defining word. Certainly didn’t waltz.)Nolan grinned impishly with the giddiness of victory.
BECAME: The imp grinned with giddy victory.
In the first example, Cheryl applies the “As Opposed To” flab-finding test. Test your phrasings with it, and be smart-alecky about it. Better you do it than the reader.
The second example demonstrates compressing imagery into an active, forceful verb.
The third spots the warning-signal word of and snaps two unneeded words out of the end phrase in eliminating of, drawing the powerful words together at the same time.
But a deeper shortening has emerged from the third example, as well. Note how she changed “Nolan” to “the imp.” Though this runs contrary to two good concision guidelines (”user fewer words,” “use specifics”), this change significantly shortens the sentence. Read the two versions aloud. Which flows most easily, both off the tongue and in the mind? The second, of course, in very large part because of the subtle assonance of the short-i sounds, assonance that’s bolstered by removing the “of” and the “the” at the end of the sentence and replacing long-o Nolan with short-i imp.
To improve their craft, writers must do more than simply read widely and voraciously. Writers must listen to what they read. Turning on one’s critical sonar is quite natural when reading text intended to be spoken aloud, such as playscripts, or to writing that adheres to meter—poetry, of course. With pure prose, tuning the sonar isn’t quite as easy, but it’s just as important. Writing that flows with rhythm and sound feels shorter to readers.
And in Cheryl’s demonstration of that principle, I stand to my elbows and applaud.
Bill Brohaugh is the author of Everything You Know About English Is Wrong
