Techniques of the Selling Writer (5 page)

The more specific you get, the more vivid you get.
Kim Novak
draws an even sharper picture than
starlet; tenderloin
or
chateaubriand
than
steak
.

—Assuming, that is, that your reader knows precisely what
chateaubriand
means. If he doesn’t, all your efforts have only confused the issue further . . .
which just might offer a lesson to those among us who would rather write
hirsute
than
hairy, collation
than
chow
.

How do you determine a given reader’s degree of understanding?

Despite endless gobbledygook about psychological testing, market analysis, and the
like, for most of us, ordinarily, the answer may very well be summed up in two principles:
(1) You guess; and (2) you hope.

Beyond that, who really knows? Sure, you try to familiarize yourself with the patterns
and attitudes and limitations of your readers, but that still doesn’t mean that you
can’t miss a mile. I’ve gotten away with Thorstein Veblen references in a pulp detective
story, and I’ve been shot down for using the word
clue
in an adult education film; so you’ll pardon me, I trust, if I remain just a wee
bit dubious of definitive answers where this point is concerned.

But as Mark Twain once observed, the difference between the right word and the almost
right word is as the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. So
do
strive for that right word!

Broadly speaking, the thing you need to avoid is the general as contrasted with the
particular (
reptile
creates a less vivid image than does
rattler
); the vague as contrasted with the definite (
them guys
is less meaningful than
those three hoods who hang out at Sammy’s poolroom
); and the abstract as contrasted with the concrete (to say that something is red
tells me less than to state that it’s exactly the color of the local fire truck).

Obviously, all this is a matter of degree and, in many instances, categories overlap.
If we want to generalize about such generalizations, however, we’re probably safe
in saying that abstraction, especially, offers hazards, for it expresses quality apart
from object.

Thus,
love
is a noun denoting a quality. But for most of us, said quality exists meaningfully
only when its object is considered.
Love means one thing when you speak of how a patriot feels about his country . . .
another, if the issue is a young mother’s reaction to her baby . . . another, if your
subject is a nun who kneels in prayer before the image of the Virgin Mary . . . another,
if you listen to a shy high-school boy try to tell his girl friend how he feels about
her . . . another, when discussed by the lantern-jawed prostitute sitting next to
you at a bar.

So, talk about the individual instance every time! Which is to say . . . work with
nouns that are specific and definite and concrete.

One further observation: The singular of a noun is almost always stronger than the
plural. Cattle (plural, please note) may create an image of sorts as they mill restlessly.
But for vivid impression, nail your picture down to some individual animal, at least
in part—the bellow of a mossy-horned old steer, the pawing of a bull, a wall-eyed
cow’s panicked lunge.

The reason for this, of course, lies in the fact that every group is made up of individuals,
and we really falsify the picture when we state that “the crowd roared,” or “the mob
surged forward,” or even “the two women chattered on and on.” And while such summary
may constitute a valid and useful verbal shorthand, it doesn’t give a truly accurate
portrait.

So much for nouns. Now, what about verbs?

The ones you want are the
active
ones—the verbs that
show
something happening. Walk wide around the others!

Specifically, the verb
to be
is weak, in all its shapes and forms and sizes.

Why?

Because it describes existence only—a static state.

Your story stands still in any sentence that hangs on such a verb. Nothing happens.
The situation just “is,” and for its duration your reader must in effect mark time,
shifting wearily from one foot to the other while he waits for the story to get back
under way. “She was unhappy” may be true enough; but where does it go? What’s “she”
doing? What specific behavior reveals the unhappiness and hints at remedial action
to come?
“Sam
was
in the chair” states its case in even drearier terms than “Sam
sat
in the chair.” Incorporate a bit of action into the picture, and impact sharpens:
“Sam
slumped
in the chair,” or “Sam
twisted
in the chair,” or “Sam
rose
from the chair,” or “Sam
shoved back
the chair.”

To repeat:
Active
verbs are what you need . . . verbs that
show something happening
, and thus draw your reader’s mental image more sharply into focus. For a vivid, vital,
forward-moving story, cut the
to be
forms out of your copy every time you possibly can. “The trooper
was pounding
” is never as strong as “The trooper
pounded
.” And when you get down to a really passive approach, such as “The table
was pounded upon
by the trooper”—well!

Worst of all
to be’s
forms is the past perfect tense. You can recognize it by the word
had
—a red flag of danger in your story every time.

For
had
describes not just a static state, but a static state
in the past:
“He
had traveled
far that day.” “I never
had realized
how much I loved her.”

Each
had
makes your story jerk, because it jars your reader out of present action and throws
him back into past history.

Perhaps the jerk is only momentary, as when a lazy writer sticks in a bit of exposition:
“John stared at her. He
had always wondered
why she took the attitude she did. Now, she left him no choice but to force the issue.”

Here the jerk, the shift backward, is hardly noticeable. But throw in enough such,
enough
hads
, and your story grinds to an aching, quaking halt. Forward movement stops. Your reader
finds himself bogged down in history.

This is the kiss of death. No one can change what’s already happened. To waste story
time on it is, at best, an irritation. What your reader wants is present action—events
that have consequences for the future; characters shaping their own destinies. If
he doesn’t get this sense of forward movement, he turns to another, more skillfully
written yarn.

But isn’t past history sometimes vital in developing your story?

Of course. We’ll discuss how best to handle it when we deal with flashback techniques
in
Chapter 4
. For now—get out your blue pencil and eliminate those hads!

—At least, eliminate as many as possible, within the bounds of common sense. Sure,
you’ll need some for legitimate purposes:
as transitional words to help you move in and out of the aforementioned flashback
situations, for example.

In other cases, however, simple rephrasings will solve the problem.

Thus, a few paragraphs ago, we mentioned that one John “had always wondered,” and
so on. Yet the line would read better—and cut the offending
had
—if we said, “Why did she take the attitude she did? It was time to get to the root
of it.”

In general, the trick is to bring the past forward into the present, so that you describe
what happens in
past
tense instead of
past perfect
.

To that end, translate recollection into action, or link the two tightly together.
If your heroine once
had loved
your hero, make that fact an issue in the here-and-now: “He held her shoulders rigid.
‘Do you love me?’ ‘You’re being ridiculous!’ ’You used to. At least, you said you
did.’ ”

Or perhaps:

“Her eyes were still the same, Ed decided. Her eyes, and her mouth.

“Thoughtfully, he wondered how she might react if he tried to kiss her, the way he
did that long-gone night there by the river.”

A little practice on this kind of thing works wonders. Try it!

So much for verbs. What else is there?

Pronouns: words that substitute for nouns—
he, she, it, they, we
, and so on.

What is there to say about them?

Watch your antecedents!

That means, be sure that each pronoun refers back to the right noun.

“This time, the girl asked Jane to loan her a dollar for lunch. Sighing, she gave
it to her.”

Like
who
gave
what
to
whom?
Or, are you becoming as confused as I am?

So much for pronouns.

Adjectives are words that modify nouns . . . help you to nail down meaning more precisely.
When you describe someone’s face as a
“gaunt, hewn
caricature,” the adjectives differentiate
it markedly from a
chubby
face, a
sour
face, a
babyish
face, or what have you.

Same way,
blonde
is a rather general category. You narrow it when you make the gal a
brassy
blonde, or a
raucous
blonde, or a
hard-faced
blonde, or a
blowsy
blonde.

How about a brassy, raucous, hard-faced, blowsy blonde?

Yes, you can run anything into the ground if you really try!

So much for adjectives.

Adverbs? They modify verbs . . . describe the manner in which an act is performed:
angrily, wearily, animatedly, gloomily, delightedly, smilingly
.

It does get a little tiresome, doesn’t it?

Remedy: Wherever practical, substitute action for the adverb.

“
Angrily
, she turned on him”? Or, “Her face stiffened, and her hands clenched to small, white-knuckled
fists”?

“
Wearily
, he sat down”? Or, “With a heavy sigh, he slumped into the chair and let his head
loll back, eyes closed”?

Vividness outranks brevity.

At least, sometimes.

So much for adverbs.

To live through your story, experience it, your reader must capture it with his own
senses.

He may see it more clearly if it bears a perceptible relationship to something he
has experienced before.—That is, if it’s
similar
or
in contrast
to some phenomenon out of his own past.

Comparison, the books call it. Metaphor. Simile.

You use it when you refer to a hoodlum as a “shambling gorilla of a man,” or to a
dancer as a “sprite,” or to a tank as a “mechanized avalanche of steel.” The surf
on the beach may be white and thick as cotton candy; or cotton candy as airy and evanescent
as surf on a sunny beach.

Used skillfully, it’s another excellent device to help make your copy come alive.

A matter of meaning

What’s in a name?

A good deal more than Shakespeare gave it credit for in his famed remark on roses,
apparently. Else why would Hollywood
rechristen the Gertie Glutzes of this world, prior to launching them into stardom?

In the same way, there’s a good deal more in any word than meets the eye.

The issues involved are somewhat less than simple, as any semanticist will be happy
to explain to you in three or four brief volumes. But for our purposes here, we can
get by nicely with just one key fact: People’s feelings come out in the words they
use.

The way the experts describe this is to say that the words in question have both
denotation
and
connotation
.

Denotation means the word’s “actual” or “dictionary” meaning.

When,
in addition
to this “actual” meaning, a word implies or suggests something further, the things
it implies or suggests are its connotations.

These connotative or implied or associated meanings frequently hold overtones of approval
or disapproval; and too often, the overtones outweigh the word’s “actual” meaning.

Take a word like
propaganda
. In simplest terms, it
denotes
information, put forth in a systematic effort to spread opinions or beliefs.

Thus, whether it’s classed as good or bad
should
depend on whether you agree or disagree with the opinions or beliefs in question.
But in practical terms, and on a grass-roots level, the very word has acquired
connotations
of falsehood, distortion, dishonesty, and misrepresentation. Consequently, to label
any material as “propaganda” is to put a blighting negative stamp on data and cause
alike.

Strike, steed, politician, student, Okie, soldier, stenographer
—they’re just words, apparently, with reasonably clear-cut denotations. But such are
their connotations—and the connotations of thousands of other words, to boot—in large
segments of the population as to create a distinct hazard for the writer. For if he
fails to take account of their implications, their emotional overtones, he can alienate
a host of readers without even being aware of what he’s doing. Let him describe the
wrong character as
sullen
or
wanton
or
coarse
or
ineffectual
or
finicky
, and he may unwittingly damn the man far worse than if he had called him a thief.

So beware! Pay attention not just to words as words, but also to the feelings they
mirror when people use them.