CHAPTER 1 feedback from the instructor and the other
participants. Learning to invite and make positive
WORKING LIKE A WRITER
ATTITUDES
The mere desire to be a writer is not sufficient.
You need to train yourself in certain habits of
mind and work, develop the attitudes, that can help
carry you from the desire to the reality. This
chapter focuses on one attitude in particular —
taking a professional stance toward your work,
your audience, and your editor.
While one can have many motives for writing,
usually the reader has only one motive for
reading and that is to experience writing that
pleases both in its shape and subject.
To satisfy the readers' desire for writing that
pleases, you have to be aware of their needs and
then take pains to satisfy them. In fact, 90 percent
of what is "creative" in creative writing grows
from a professional attitude toward taking pains
over what the amateur thinks of as mere details.
Good creative writing is good writing. In all
good writing, the conventions of English
mechanics and usage (grammar, punctuation,
spelling, word order) remain relevant. These
conventions ought not be looked at as a block to
creativity; in fact, they are the very things that
allow others to share in your creativity.
Of course, you may take license with these
conventions for special purposes.
Flawed prose does not become good poetry.
Carelessness, slovenliness, and ignorance do not
become virtues just because you are doing
"creative” writing.
A professional writer is not satisfied with mere
self-expression. If you write only for yourself, you
have severely restricted your audience. In any
case, your writing will become more effective
when you are aware that you must please, involve,
awaken, provoke, excite, move — other people.
The sense of a potential audience should create in
you both energy and a feeling of obligation.
Unless you make something happen to a reader,
you are not doing anything worthwhile as a writer.
How can you determine your success? One way is
by being in a course or workshop that will provide
use of this feedback — even of harshly negative
commentary — is essential to your growth as a
writer.
Being a writer means being a reader in a new
way — being more conscious of how the game is
played.
Don't expect miracles. Part of being professional is
having patience. Successful writing comes through
a mixture of talent, learned skills, and commitment
over a period of time. About commitment we have
little to say —except that it is indispensable.
A DIGRESSION FOR THE CLASSROOM
USER
 You always wanted to try writing
something, so you thought you would take
this course.
 You always had trouble with writing in
other courses, so you thought you would
take a course that focuses on writing.
If you write correctly but not effectively, a creative
writing course can help you. The attention to
writing strategies, diction, organization, figurative
language, and other issues can benefit any writer.
All writing becomes creative when it escapes
being bland, meandering, and impersonal.
 You needed to fulfill a distribution
requirement and this was the only
humanities course that fit your schedule.
ON BEING UNPROFESSIONAL
Here is a small sampling of unprofessional stances
toward criticism of one's writing:
1. "That's how I felt" or "that's what 1
believe," when somebody points to a
writing problem in a work. This "defense"
confuses the issue. If the criticism is about
fuzzy diction, for example, by defending
the legitimacy of our feelings or belief, we
are avoiding the issue of the effectiveness
of our writing.
2. "But it really happened like that." Related
to (1) above, this excuse focuses on events
rather than feelings. We mistake a certain
kind of accuracy in rendering events that
 are our source experiences with the needs
of the work at hand. The mere fact that
something really happened does not justify
placing it in a story, play, or narrative
poem.
Your job is to convince the reader that the
event happened in the story, not that you
saw it happen in the streets. Of course, if
something is important to the story and did
not happen, put it in.
3. "Doesn't 'creative' mean I can do what I
want?" This is almost a meaningless
question. It's similar to saying "doesn't
'freedom' mean I can do what I want?"
Both questions reveal frivolous attitudes.
The freedoms we have are a result of our
agreements to limit ourselves; we have
responsibilities to others. Similarly, there
are limitations conventions of language
and genre — that you must master as part
of your responsibility to readers. We know
we've said this before. We’ll no doubt say
it again.
4. "What are the formulae?" While we do
have to work with and through
conventions of the language system and of
the genre, creative writing is not the same
as mathematics. Trial and error are just as
often the means to success as is a clear,
logical plan.
5. "Isn't it just a matter of taste?" Certainly, it
is a matter of taste whether someone likes
avant-garde writing; it is a matter of taste
whether one likes mystery stories; it is a
matter of taste whether one likes long,
elaborate sentences.
WORKING HABITS
Discipline is part of the professional attitude.
Newspaper columnist Colman McCarthy offered
his students these ten guidelines:
1. Work in a location safe from noise and
interruptions.
2. Begin with a definite goal of how long your
writing period will last. If five minutes, fine. If
five hours, fine. Just know. Then regularize.
Gandhi, who wrote more than 10 million words in
his lifetime, put down 500 words every day for
fifty years.
3. Learn new words. Have a vocabulary program.
Add a new word a day, a week, a month, whatever.
Keep adding, that's all. Master the one- and two-
syllable Anglo-Saxon words. Five- and six-
syllable Latin-Greek derivations are for show-offs.
Study idioms.
4. Spray disinfectant on cliches, slogans, bromides.
Eliminate useless words such as "very,” "nice,"
"quite," "rather," "presently," "brilliant." Go over
each piece word by word and cut each that doesn't
work.
5. Never begin a piece of writing with "the."
Writers who do so are yawning in print, at you.
6. If you are not in the mood to write, write
anyway. Writing is more sweat than sweetness,
more fidelity than feelings. If you need to be in the
mood to write, the only topic you'll ever master is
"moods."
7. When not writing, don't bore people by quoting
yourself. Don't boast, even covertly, about where
you've just been published. And don't quiz friends
on whether they have (a) read your latest literary
effort, (b) caught its "full meaning," (c) taped it on
the refrigerator door.
8. Comfort other writers. Read their latest efforts,
strive to catch its "full meaning," and make room
among the recipes and kids' drawing on the
refrigerator door.
9. Spend as much time reading as writing, but read
only writers who know Samuel Johnson's edict,
"What is-written without effort is in general read
without pleasure." Skip hacks.
10. Be a fanatical reviser. Remember Paul Engle's
line, writing is rewriting what you have rewritten.
Never trust a first draft. Never be satisfied with a
second. Never think a third is your best. Never
hope that a last draft is a final draft. Come back in
ten years for revision.
These suggestions (reported in the Washington
Post, January 2, 1987) make pretty good sense to
us. Here are some additional observations about
writing that McCarthy quotes:
"A work of art is first of all work." Paul Engle
"I spent all morning putting in a comma and all
afternoon taking it out." Oscar Wilde
"Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of
the two absolute necessities. The other,
unfortunately, is talent." Ernest Hemingway
"My family can always tell when I'm well into a
novel because the meals get very crummy."
Anne Tyler
"Without devotion, writing is secretarial
work." Colman McCarthy
Additional Suggestions:
1. Have enough/spacious working area
2. commit regular periods of time to writing
3. Take breaks, do not force yourself to finish what
you’re writing
4. Don't talk about your work too much to friends,
family, or teachers. (Your job is not to talk about
but to write about.)
5. Don't keep yourself from moving onward in a
piece of writing by looking for an ideal beginning,
ideal phrasing, or ideal structure.
6. You must set high standards and be ready for
disappointment.
CHAPTER 2
KEEPING A JOURNAL
Almost all writers keep a journal. Some keep
several different journals or notebooks:
• A working journal in which they practice writing
and work out parts or whole drafts of a poem or
story or play.
• A journal of ideas for future writing.
• A commonplace book in which they jot down
quotations from their reading, along with their
reactions, as models or for inspiration.
The point is to keep a journal. It makes writing a
regular part of your life.
YOUR JOURNAL
Go out now and buy yourself a journal. We
suggest that it be either a standard, ruled
composition book with a hard cover
(approximately 8 ½ by 11 inches) or, if you want
something more portable, a hard-cover “record
book” (5 by 8 inches) with ruled lines. The
essential idea is to keep your journal in a form that
ensures permanence.
If you carry your journal around with you, be sure
to write your name, address, and phone number at
the beginning along with the statement that, in
case of loss, you will reward the returner.
Journal-Keeping Habit – need to develop for a
writer, it requires conscious effort
You have to give the journal enough time so that
you can work up a sweat — twenty to thirty
minutes a session minimum, enough to get you
beyond simply saying "hello" and into the rhythm
of writing. Put it another way: you have to run
more than a block to get into running
WHAT TO WRITE IN YOUR JOURNAL?
You write what you want to write. But here are
some of suggested basic principles:
• what they did that day
• lists of books to read
• drafts of letters
• quotations
• columns of words
• bits of dialogue
• dreams
• ramblings about events and people
• memories
• anticipations
• story possibilities
• descriptions
• lists of intriguing words and phrases
… in short, anything.
Some principles of journal keeping should be
clear:
1. Date each entry precisely.
2. Make your journal entry as specific as you can.
3. Start trying to find the hard nouns and verbs that
capture the feel of the situation.
4. If you are being flabby, tell yourself to
straighten up. Talk to yourself in your journal. And
play with the material. Start thinking about it. Let
yourself go.
5. Look for associations in your past or in
literature, anything that will help you recapture the
emotion and feel of the event at some future time.
In later sessions start adding:
1. Your likes and dislikes.
2. Detailed sketches of people who are important
to you —parents, brothers and sisters, friends and
relatives, enemies, and so on.
3. Memory portraits of homes, rooms, toys.
4. The truth about your weaknesses (it's
permissible to write about what you think are your
strengths too), your fears and anxieties.
CHAPTER 3
POINT OF VIEW
In common speech “point of view" means either
(1) the position from which we look at something
or (2) the consequences of looking at something
from a particular position, that is, the opinions,
judgments, or attitudes that we form.
“Point of view" is such a powerful metaphor that
we use it to describe how people judge all kinds of
physical, social, and psychological events: “From
my point of view, it's all . . . “ or “That's your point
of view."
In writing, the phrase has its common meaning
plus a specialized meaning having to do with
grammatical person. For example, a story may be
told in the “first person," that is, from the “I"
perspective. Because of its fundamental nature,
this complex concern affects everything else the
writer does. It is the key to the structure of the
work and to the reader's response.
WHO WILL DO THE TELLING?
We began this book with a point of view. That
point of view involves both decisions we made
before we began writing and decisions we made,
consciously or unconsciously, as we were writing
and revising. Though the aims of this book are
different from the aims of a story, poem, or play,
the essential point-of-view question is the same:
who is going to do the telling? As you will see,
deciding who “who” will be is not merely a matter
of deciding if the speaker will be first, second, or
third person and if the “voice” will be omniscient,
limited, the voice of someone who has been
directly involved, or that of an onlooker (see “The
Range of Perspectives,” below). Who the narrator
will be concerns view¬ point to the world and the
audience. Point of view is, then, partly about how
to tell.
Our decision about viewpoint must be derived
from what we believed our audience already knew
and what it needed to know, as well as our premise
that while ideally all matters are open to
discussion, some “rules” are helpful when you are
starting to play the game. In this sense, choosing a
point of view is closely related to searching for a
tone or style that would communicate just
where we stand about the writing process. Point
of view, considered this way, is a process that is
closely connected with what to tell.
In shaping what and how we tell, point of view
determines our audience's response.
Though some of our speculations are fictive,
explorations tell something about point of view.
Point of view involves a series of finely adjusted
decisions. Many of them you will have to make as
you discover the needs of your story; nevertheless,
you will save yourself a good deal of grief if you
start working them out before you write.
Point of view you choose affects many other
aspects of writing. Because point of view touches
upon attitude and personality, it can affect the
words you choose and even the sentence patterns
with which you string them together.
THE DECISION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Granted, some of the examples above may indeed
be close to the author's voice rather than a voice
created especially for the work; however, from our
point of view as readers, we can hear the story
only through the narrator's voice, which shapes our
response to that story. Consciously or
unconsciously the writer has the following
decisions to make. He or she must:
1. Choose a narrator, usually first or third person.
2. Decide what the narrator's attitude will be.
3. Decide how the reader should respond to the
narrator and how to make the narrator create that
response.
The decision about who tells the story (even if the
"story" is about someone's feelings as expressed in
a poem) makes the story take on certain contours.
No convincing narrator is totally objective, and the
subjective perceptions and needs of the storyteller
make the story come out the way it does.
One meaning of point of view has to do with the
physical perspective a viewer can have on the
subject.
THE RANGE OF PERSPECTIVES
THIRD PERSON
The third person narrator speaks from outside of
the story as an onlooker or reporter rather than as a
participant. The degree to which the narrator is
given access to external and internal information
and the degree to which the narrator is allowed to
express judgments about that information
determine more precisely the narrative stance.
Within the broad third person category, the
narrator has three options:
Full omniscience. The fully omniscient narrator
accesses the minds, feelings, and dreams of all the
characters in the work. Thus, the author, through
the narrator, can shift focus along the way, giving
the reader a variety of perspectives. This kind of
omniscient narrator also shifts back and forth
between subjective and objective approaches,
sometimes becoming engaged in explaining,
interpreting, assessing, and moralizing upon the
events and characters. The narrator may at times
comment extensively, a technique we call
editorializing. The absence of any limitation on
the narrator's information (and presence) can
create havoc for an inexperienced writer. The
tendency is to lose focus, to bully the reader, and
to subjugate the story and characters to thematic
concerns in unattractive ways.
Limited omniscience. The limited omniscient
narrator stands behind the shoulder of one
character, usually the major character, and conveys
to the reader only what that character experiences,
knows, and feels. Other characters are treated
objectively: what they say and do is recorded.
However, what the central character thinks about
them is an important ingredient. Sometimes, on
top of this limited omniscience, the narrator is
allowed a bit of knowledge or speculation beyond
what the central character knows. This is important
in order for the reader to gain perspective on that
character, to get outside of the main character's
head. Most successful stories and novels use some
variation of the limited omniscient point of view.
Objective limitation. The objective limitation
point of view is most like that of the dramatist.
Setting, action, and dialogue are the only tools the
author allows the narrator-self. The reader is given
no direct access to the minds of the characters and
is left to form judgments on his or her own. This
perspective is as difficult, in its own way, as
unlimited omniscience.
FIRST PERSON
In first person point of view the narrator is one of
the characters in the story or novel, either a
witness to the events or a participant. The
narrator's relationship to the events and to the other
characters determines what can be convincingly
revealed from the chosen perspective. The first
person narrator does not have access to the minds
of others (unless the narrator is a psychiatrist
revealing professionally gained knowledge — a
cute trick). At every moment of the story's
progress, the first person narrator is being
characterized by the way he or she thinks and
speaks.
Central character. When the narrator is the
central character, the fiction is borrowing the
appeal of autobiography. The author has to be
careful to restrain this kind of narrator. It is easy to
sacrifice the developmental lines of the story to the
narrator's ego. Often first person narration is an
exploration of how memory works and how a
person comes to understand, with the passage of
time, the meaning of events that happened years
earlier.
Minor character/witness. "I was there" can be
almost as compelling as "It happened to me." This
kind of narrator has to be a true personality, not
merely a convenient reporter of events. The reader
must be able to gauge the degree of emotional
interest — bias — of this narrator as well as of the
central character narrator. Why is it important to
the teller to relate these events?
As you can see, there are places where these
categories overlap. Certain kinds of third person
narration come very close to first person witness,
but more than pronoun choice should separate
these perspectives. The third person narrator, even
if given a personality as in Henry Fielding's Joseph
Andrews, is primarily there to tell the story. The
first person minor character is involved in some
way, even if not in terms of the main action. Of
course, in works like those by Arthur Conan
Doyle, Dr. Watson works with Sherlock Holmes,
he doesn't just know about him or see him from
afar.
As you continue experimenting with point of view,
you will become more and more aware of its
ramifications. Selecting the appropriate narrator or
speaker for a story or poem has a lot to do with the
shape of the work: what information, in what
order, with what coloring, reaches the reader. Once
you have made —or remade —this fundamental
decision, you must follow out its logical
consequences.
CHAPTER 4
LANGUAGE IS YOUR MEDIUM
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A
SYNONYM
Although everything is important in writing,
obviously words come first. They are the writer's
nuts and bolts, nails, screws, and bricks. Just as
cabinetmakers develop an acute sense of the limits
and purposes of materials the strengths, lengths,
thicknesses, and the infinite other properties of
bolts, glues, and woods —so do writers develop a
heightened awareness of the infinite properties of
words. A cabinetmaker knows that you don’t use a
tenpenny nail when you need a brad, or a hacksaw
when you need a coping saw.
The writer must learn to make analogous
judgments: when to use an adjective, when to use a
Latinate word, a complex sentence, a nickname, a
noun instead of a pronoun, a quiet word rather than
a noisy one. Your first job as a writer is to master
the medium of your trade — language itself. This
is not as simple a task as you may think.
It is not only when writers are writing that they are
sensitive to words. Just as painters are aware of
colors whenever they open their eyes, just as
composers are alert to sounds even when they
aren't writing music, so too are writers aware of
words whenever words are near. Writers are
always on a busman's holiday, listening to people
use words and, in their reading, testing the choices
of other writers.
Our purpose in this chapter is (1) to get you
thinking about ways to hone your word sense, (2)
to introduce the complex decision making that
goes into finding the right words to nail your
meaning to the reader's mind, (3) to change some
mistaken notions you may have about effective
word choice (diction).
We offer one basic principle:
For a writer, there is no such thing as a
synonym.
We assume that there is always a best choice. For
a best choice there is no substitute.
It is more important to know how approximate
words differ than how they overlap. For example,
"diaphanous," "transparent," and "see-through"
refer to the same quality of a material object.
Given that you can use only one of the words in a
particular circumstance, you must choose the one
that will have not only the correct denotation, but
also carry the connotation you desire. The criteria
for choosing are easy to enumerate, less easy to
apply. Your choice must be:
1. accurate
2. precise
3. concrete (unless an abstract term is clearly
necessary)
4. appropriate
5. idiomatic
Actually, what they must do is learn the only
language we have as well as they can. Creativity is
not measured by the difficulty or sophistication of
your words. Nor is it a sign of creativity to foil the
reader's expectation at every turn by choosing
words for their puzzle quotient. Finally, creativity
does not license the misuse of language. Only a
responsible, caring attitude toward language makes
for good writing of any kind.
The sense of what a word connotes, either alone or
in a particular context, may differ slightly from
person to person, depending upon one's
experiences with life and language. There are no
rules, since connotations are in the ear of the
listener; the point here is that you must be aware of
all the fine adjustments that may be necessary.
EXERCISES
1. A woman is preparing to meet a man. Write a
brief passage in
which “see-through” would be appropriate.
Rewrite so that
“transparent” would be the best choice.
2. Write a brief scene for each word in these
triplets:
a. eat/dine/consume
b. sole/single/individual
c. whiskey/liquor/booze
d. but/conversely/on the other hand
e. single/one-base hit/one-bagger
f. sexpot/seductress/temptress
g. teacher/mentor/professor
h. frugal/cheap/economical
i. morning/dawn/daybreak
j. fraud/hoax/deceit
k. caviar/roe/fish eggs
3. Explain the difference between having “know-
how” and “skill”?
A “fear” and a “dread”? A “job" and an
“occupation”? A “helper” and an “assistant”?
“Work” and “labor”?
One way of sharpening your language skills is to
practice and then
evaluate word substitutions while you are reading
already published works. In writing, however, we
recommend a very sparing and qualified use of the
thesaurus. A word chosen from a list simply
because it is on the list is not likely to be an
effective choice. The thesaurus can be a good
memory jogger; it can provide you with a range of
possibilities from which to make choices.
However, once you abandon the belief in
synonyms, the choosing becomes more complex,
more exciting, and more professional. Thesaurus
mentality assumes that any word on the list will
do. The genuine writer knows that only one of
them is best. Moreover, the person who
relies on the synonym list assumes that the best
choice is on the list to begin with.
CHOOSING WELL
Now let's take a closer look at the criteria listed
earlier.
Accuracy
When a word choice is accurate, it is free from
error. It is "correct" in the sense that its accepted
meaning is the meaning the author intends. Unless
a word choice is accurate, it has no chance of
being effective. Here are some examples of
inaccuracy in diction;
1. In his valedictory speech. Brad made illusions to
Hollywood stars.
[The writer has confused "illusion" and
"allusion."]
2. Brad had won far lesser awards than his father.
[The writer has confused "fewer" and "lesser."
Unintentionally, the writer has
addressed the significance of the awards rather
than the number of them.]
3. Another significant factor was her leapfrogging
suspicion that graduate school was not, nor would
it be, her dispensation. [Two words don't mean
what the writer hopes they mean.]
4. Once, after a particularly bitter loss—the Oilers
beat the Bears by a dropkick—Dad patted my
shoulder and said, "Son, I feel bad, too."
[Dropkicks went out of the game before the Oilers
came into it. The writer means "field goal."]
5. I tried to light the half-smoked Camel, but my
fingers were shaking and I lit it twice. Finally, the
stogie ignited. [A "stogie" refers to a cigar, not a
cigarette.]
Precision
The meanings of words have greater and lesser
ranges. It is just as accurate to call Mr. Rockwell
the spouse of Mrs. Rockwell as it is to call him her
husband. However, while "husband" is the more
sharply defined term and thus the more precise,
some occasions will dictate spouse as the better
choice. Also, we might say that “spouse” is precise
in a legal context but not in other contexts. Here
are some examples of damaging imprecision:
1. The small town loomed in the distance. [In the
broad sense, “loomed” is accurate; however, its
normal and expected usage has to do with figures,
states, or images of impending doom or
magnitude. A “small town" would be far less
likely to loom than would a mountain.]
2. The microwave time buzzed and the smoky
aroma of cooking meat penetrated her
consciousness causing her stomach to lurch.
[Many problems here. Did the time buzz, or the
microwave? “Aroma" is accurate but not precise
because we associate “aroma” with a pleasant
smell, not one that turns your stomach. Is the
ready-made phrase “penetrated her consciousness”
accurate? Precise? Concrete? Appropriate?
Idiomatic? (See below.) Do we need to be told that
the meat is “cooking"?]
3. The airline crash dominated the headlines:
“Thirty dead, sixty-eight wounded." [We would
expect “injured" in such a situation, even if the
people have suffered wounds. As worded, the
passage suggests a battlefield statistic rather than
an accidental catastrophe.]
Concreteness
Concrete diction is usually preferred over abstract
or general diction. Concrete diction evokes
images, bits of sensory experience.
Compare the impact of these three statements:
John exhibited emotional hostility.
John was angry.
John fumed.
The first is formal and abstract, though perhaps
appropriate for a case study. The second is
abstract, but at least it is clear and direct. The third
is concrete: it gives us, by way of metaphor, a
vivid picture that conveys the meaning more
forcefully, more economically, and more
memorably than the other two.
It would be foolish to argue that abstract language
must be eliminated from all writing. We need
words that point to concepts and feelings as well
as those that refer directly to sensory experience.
However, it is always dangerous to depend too
much on words that tell rather than show.
Writers need to choose language that creates a
sensory world for the reader's imagination to enter.
As they struggle with their craft, writers learn the
fine balance between abstract and concrete
formulations. However, as a rule of thumb we
argue: when in doubt, make it concrete.
Concreteness — specificity of sensation — is a
relative matter. Even terms that are not abstract
can be made more concrete by being made more
specific. In the sentences that follow, the italicized
general terms are followed by more specific
alternatives in parentheses:
1. The girl (child, toddler, daughter, princess,
Alice) cried (wailed, sobbed, whimpered).
2. He (the student, Edgar) got (asked for, ordered,
bought, demanded) food (Italian food, pizza,
pepperoni pizza).
The general principle of concreteness is that you
call things by the most specific name you can and
you describe actions with the most specific verbs
you can, leaving minimal work to be done by
modifiers. Of course, to be concrete you have to
either be observant or know enough to appear so.
Most of us know that a forest is made of trees, but
few of us are in the habit of thinking about what
types of trees. The accomplished writer knows
how to find and when to use the concrete word.
Appropriateness
In creative writing you have to please two masters
when you choose your words. First, you need to
consider how appropriate your diction may be for
the audience you have chosen to address. Second,
you have to consider how appropriate your diction
may be for your genre, your speaker, and the set of
circumstances, including the overall language
context within which your decisions take place.
Since you are part of an audience yourself, and
since you will probably write for people like
yourself, you already have a sense of what diction
is inappropriate because it will offend. You don't
use street language in a poem for a religious
periodical. Similarly, common sense will lead you
to consider the age, experience, and knowledge of
the audience you wish to address. If you have any
doubts regarding audience appropriateness, simply
study the kinds of things your intended audience
already reads.
Appropriate diction, as we have seen, means many
things. In a given context, any word or word
combination can be appropriate. The writer's job
requires an understanding of all the ways in which
word choices can be appropriate or inappropriate.
Idiomatic Usage
An idiomatic usage is one that has a unique
grammatical construction or a meaning that cannot
be logically derived from its combined parts.
When we say “the kettle is boiling" we are
speaking idiomatically (and probably putting
words together in an untranslatable way). After all,
the kettle is not boiling, the water inside it is.
Many of us, because we confuse idiomatic
expressions with trite expressions, have been
frightened away from using standard English
idioms. While it is true that triteness is to be
avoided, the rich idiomatic resources of our
language should be employed whenever they are
appropriate — and they almost always are
appropriate.
The following sentences contain trite expressions:
1. He was as handsome as a prince.
2. She had a devilish twinkle in her eyes which, at
times, would flash with anger.
3. Their marriage started out all lovey-dovey.
4. Whenever they went out for pizza, they would
travel down memory lane, recalling the long lost
images of their youths.
The following contain serviceable idioms:
1. Despite Elliot's good looks, Buffy could not
work up any interest in him.
2. Elliot ducked out the back door rather than face
up to Buffy's anger.
3. Buffy was Elliot's dream.
Idioms tend to be metaphoric and therefore
colorful. Most of all, they are natural, and the
natural is rarely misleading or ineffective. Trite
expressions, on the other hand, signal their
tiredness to an alert reader who will sense that the
writer has plugged in the first available off-the-
rack phrase. These are constructions whose impact
has been worn away through overuse. Of course,
what might be trite in one circumstance can
actually accomplish the writer's purpose:
Priscilla had always thought Jeffrey as handsome
as a prince—in fact, a character in the romances
she read by the hour.
In this example, the author used the trite
expression to characterize Pricilla's way of
thinking as “trite."
Generally speaking, then, you want to avoid the
trite, but not at the expense of the natural. Examine
these alternative passages:
1. In spite of the statistical probability that the
situation would eventuate negatively, and half-
wondering if she wanted it to, she perpetrated a
fraudulent optimism upon herself and aimed her
countenance in the direction of the inevitable harsh
resolution.
2. Hoping against hope, she faced the music.
Neither of these renderings is effective. However,
the first is so clotted, tortured, and unnatural that,
if we had to choose, we'd select the trite yet
smooth and spontaneous movement of the second.
In brief, you will usually want to work at a natural,
idiomatic diction that captures the quality of
friendly rather than academic or professional talk.
There are exceptions, of course. Writers of
historical fiction might appropriately use a more
formal or archaic diction in order to suggest the
past.
Like any other language tool, idioms can be
misused or inappropriately used. Still, we
encourage you to use idioms rather than to go out
of your way to avoid them and end up with stuffy
or overwritten prose. Here are some guidelines:
1. Prefer a common idiom to eccentric diction:
Buffy felt that he had no call to jump down her
throat simply because she forgot the mustard.
2. Prefer nothing to trite diction: He was handsome
(not “as handsome as a prince"). Buffy felt a mess
(not "as if she had been through a meat grinder").
3. Prefer something you may think is trite to a
forced expression: When they walked by without
saying hello, Buffy felt that she had been given the
cold shoulder (not "as chilled as a lobster in a
freezer").
SOME DICTION PROBLEMS
Many novice writers have the mistaken notion that
they should "write writing." That is, they believe
that effective writing consists of verbal
prestidigitation and pyrotechnics. They believe not
that the words need to be chosen for specific tasks
but rather that the words chosen need to sound
important and weighty. Some beginners were
actually taught to worship words for words' sake;
some simply pile word upon words as a substitute
for thinking. The end result of believing in this
false god is twofold: (1) The writing becomes
padded and/or inflated; (2) problems in effective
word choice are actually disguised. But even
before that happens, the false god leads the writer
to put enormous efforts into the wrong type of
work: the work of impressing rather than
convincing the reader.
We might have discussed the various guises in
which padded and inflated diction choices appear
under one or another of our major headings:
accuracy, precision, concreteness, appropriateness,
and idiomatic naturalness. However, the following
strivings after quick effects appear often enough to
merit a separate section. They are not positive
criteria for emulation, but negative habits to be
avoided.
Overwriting
Many of the subclasses discussed elsewhere in this
section could be placed into this category. You
overwrite when you pad your language without
adding meaning or impact, as in the following
example from the beginning of a story:
It's funny how certain things, the biggest moments
and the smallest passing thoughts alike, how they
can both become your sweetest memories later on.
And, years later, when the places and the people
who gave you these tender times are gone, their
memories become starbright highlight colors for
the tapestry of your life.
The problems in this passage cannot be solved
only by removing the obvious overwriting (in
italics). Taking out such overblown adjectives as
starbright” is only the first step. One still needs to
deal with the padding sewn tightly to the rather
obvious, even silly, thought that both the big and
little occurrences can become sweet memories.
This type of overwriting can disguise paucity of
thought even from the writer. (Of course, the
passage might work if it revealed a rather foolish
character's habitual style.)
One type of overwriting grows from a virtue, the
virtue of presenting precise detail for the reader.
This virtue becomes a problem when the writer
becomes too ambitious and gives us too many
details to absorb. In the following passage, which
describes someone the major character sees once
and never again, the writer's purpose is to describe
a representative character in a subway crowd.
He was dressed in the standard Washington
attorney uniformconservative suit, solid color
shirt. Ivy League tie, tan raincoat, Irish walking
hat. Yet behind his Yuppiestyle glasses, his face
had a devilish twinkle accented by a dimple you
could dangle barefoot in and brown hair that
strayed past the regulation length, curling at least
an inch down his collar.
Since there is no reason in the story to give us all
this detail, the elaboration becomes a distraction.
In fact, when we look carefully at exactly what the
narrator has told us, we wonder — as we did in the
former case — if the words are attached to any
authentic observations. Do faces "twinkle”?
Overmodification
This kind of overwriting comes from the
admirable attempt to be concrete. However, the
piling up of adjectives, adverbs, and especially
prepositional phrases is a signal that something is
wrong. Often the muscle of sentence structure and
meaning gets covered over by the modifying fat.
Sometimes choosing a more specific noun or verb
is the solution. In the following cases, the
modification is unnecessary because its meaning
so overlaps the meaning of the modified word.
A faded woven tapestry hung from the lintel of the
door. [Most tapestries are woven; "lintel” is the
part of the door from which one would assume
something as large as a tapestry would be hung.]
Her lungs felt as if someone had stabbed her with a
knife. [Here a trite simile is automatically
continued to its predictable end. Without the
unnecessary final phrase, the expression is
sharper.]
Saying It Twice
Redundancy is a common problem and has many
causes, some of which we have already addressed.
In the example that follows, the writer refused to
pay attention to what her words were saying, or
were supposed to say.
Directly in front of me, a modern glass and steel
tower, illumination provided by lights in its
occupied rooms, sparkled like a monolithic crystal.
[There is some nonsense in the closing simile; can
you detect it?]
Excessive Variation
This problem used to go by the name of "elegant
variation," but the issue has less to do with
elegance than with a learned fear of repeating key
words and phrases. With or without the "help" of
the thesaurus, many writers act as if repetition
were a deadly sin. While repetition can become
deadly, often the means taken to avoid it create
even worse problems for the reader. In the passage
below, the student writer seems to be driven by a
misguided but honest desire to avoid repeating his
key noun.
As Jim entered the turn, the motorcycle seemed to
sink into the ground. He could feel the shocks
being compressed as the force of the turn pushed
him and his machine to a lower center of gravity.
As he leaned into the turn, he stuck out his knee
for balance. It was hard to remain in control, but
Jim calmly, smoothly, lifted his head, twisted the
vehicle upright, and pulled back with his right
wrist. Instantly, the bike shot forward, its front
wheel once again coming off the ground. Already
entering the next turn, Jim shifted his weight
forward and braked hard. Slowing to 100 miles per
hour, he leaned the Kawasaki once more over to
the left. Passing by the pits, he could see David
and Georgetti keeping track of his time while
Rhonda displayed it on the leader board for him to
see. At the end of the first session, Jim pulled his
trusty mount back into the pit.
The result is a scattered effect, and some
uncertainty about whether or not the writer is
always referring to the same thing.
Latinate Diction
Linking up a series of polysyllabic words from
Latin roots makes your writing self-consciously
learned and unpleasantly pretentious. It also slows
the reader down, as the following sentence
illustrates:
Jane held to her assertion despite Bill's
remonstrance to the contrary. [Can you put this
into plain English?]
Archaic Diction
This habit usually springs from a misguided notion
about how to sound "literary" or "poetic." We no
longer believe that such words or expressions as
"yore," "thee," "o'er," or "finny prey" (for "fish")
confer a poetic or dignified quality to writing. In
fact, the convention of our day is that effective
writing demands the words and rhythms of
everyday speech. "Alas" and "ill tidings" sound
like attempts to impose emotions rather than create
them.
Sonic Boom
Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, a writer
allows the sounds to drown out meaning by calling
too much attention to themselves, as the following
case demonstrates:
The blustery day threatened to batter the delicate
blossoms that had drawn gaggles of gawking
tourists to the nation's capital. [One might argue
that the alliteration on "b" has a positive effect, but
certainly the italicized words make too much
noise.]
If, as we have suggested, all successful writing
comes from editing and rewriting, then every good
writer must become a word detective, hunting
down the criminal elements in early drafts and
taking them out of circulation. Breaking bad habits
is only part of the job, however. A writer must
develop a positive working sense of what makes
for effective diction-accuracy, precision,
concreteness, appropriateness, and idiomatic
usage. A writer must understand what it means to
live without the comfort of synonyms.
FUN WITH WORDS
Word play is an important activity. It can help you
build an active vocabulary, sharpen your diction,
and freshen your word combinations. In his poem
"Because I Never Learned the Names of Flowers,”
Rod Jellema shows us the sheer fun of word play
and the power of expectation. Even though the
tone and technique are playful, any reader can
recognize the genuine emotion in this love poem.
Because I Never Learned the Names of Flowers
it is moonlight and white where
I slink away from my cat-quiet blue rubber truck
and motion myself to back it up to your ear.
I peel back the doors of the van and begin
to hushload into your sleep
the whole damn botanical cargo of Spring.
Sleeper, I whisk you „
Trivia and Illium, Sweet Peristalsis, Flowering
Delirium.
Sprigs of Purple Persiflage and Lovers' Leap,
slips
of Hysteria stick in my hair. I gather clumps of
Timex,
handfuls of Buttertongues, Belly buttons, and
Bluelets.
I come with Trading Nebula, I come with Late-
Blooming
Paradox, with Creeping Pyromania, Pink
Apoplex,
and Climbing Solar Plexis,
whispering: Needlenose,
Juice Cup, Godstem, Nexus, Sex-us,
Condominium
from The Eighth Day: New & Selected Poems
Part of the fun of Jellema's poem is to discover the
strange tension between what we expect (names of
flowers) and the actual words and phrases the poet
has put in their places. To most novices, and
perhaps even to some experts, there is something
almost convincing about these new "names.” Some
of this has to do with the Latinate formulations
that sound like those used in botany. This love
poem, of course, is filled with physical passion and
a grand madness. Stil, one could almost draw a
picture of each imaginary flower.
Word play helps you go beyond your concern for
diction that is literally accurate, precise, concrete,
appropriate, and idiomatic. It allows you to enter
the world of figurative language, a world you must
explore in order to make your writing lively.
FIGURES OF SPEECH
Writers achieve economy and vividness of
expression through figures of speech, those
complex ways of perceiving and phrasing
comparisons and contrasts. At bottom, metaphors,
similes, and other figures of speech are not literary
devices; they are the ways in which our minds try
to make sense of experience. Everyday language is
filled with these constructions. When we speak of
"the head of a pin," "the teeth of a gear, the
shoulder of a road," or "a dead-end street," we are
speaking figuratively. To call someone "spineless"
is not to make a literal statement, but a figurative
one. Colloquial expressions like "get off my back"
attest to the figurative habits of mind that generate
new ways of communicating our ideas and
feelings.
Some of the most successful figures eventually
turn into cliches — dead metaphors that have lost
their imaginative punch. Let's explore a few of
these.
What genius first came up with the expression
“he's (or she's) a brick" to make a point about a
friend's solid dependability? A brick is a building
block of reliable dimension and durability. A brick
is kind of square. How do these physical traits
relate to character traits? Does the image of the
brick come to mind when the expression is used?
Do we any longer enjoy the particular areas of
overlap between two relatively unlike things — a
human personality and a construction material?
Once we stop seeing the brick, the metaphor is
dead and may have become a cliche, an expression
to be avoided unless selected for special, limited
purposes (to make fun of it, for instance).
We don't have to avoid every expression that we
recognize as a dead metaphor. In fact, we can't. As
we insisted earlier, many of these formulations are
simply available idiomatic expressions that work
far better than outlandish alternatives some writers
invent to avoid sounding trite.
Figurative expressions are literal lies. In the
equation of metaphor, two unlike things (events,
traits, or objects) are asserted to be identical: A =
B.
To give a footstep breath with which to puff likens
that action to animal or even human behavior. This
special kind of metaphorical expression is called
personification.
simile — a figurative linking in which A is
explicitly likened to B.
In examples, a literal lie made something not only
vivid, not only fresh in expression, but clear as
well. Though it seems paradoxical, effective
figures of speech do just that — lie to make things
clear. Without this heightened clarity, figurative
language is no better than muddy language of any
kind. The writer of the passage below probably felt
proud of the way in which he made an abstraction
concrete — one of the goals of much figurative
expression. We wonder, however, if the mean¬ ing
is clear: "Time is like a trail cut through the woods
that we crawl down with our noses in the dirt."
One more point about similes. They are not simply
comparisons using like or as. The phrase "Jane
looks like her sister" is a literal comparison (it is
actually true) rather than a figurative one.
Remember, it is the discovery of an area of
likeness or overlap between two essentially
different terms that is the basis for a figurative
expression.
Two special kinds of metaphor are synecdoche and
metonymy. In synecdoche, a part stands for the
whole, as when we call a detective a “private eye."
Metonymy works differently; an item is used in
place of something associated with it, as in “the
Pentagon announced." Obviously, the building
didn't announce anything. In practice, the two
devices are often indistinguishable.
Though we have been giving examples from
poetry, figurative language is part of all kinds of
writing. So, too, are the problems that emerge
when figures of speech go berserk. Metaphors and
similes can be so farfetched, so forced, that readers
will either tune out or be so dazzled by the writer's
ingenuity that they will miss the point. More often,
the problem is that elements in the metaphor are in
conflict with one another. We call such a
construction a mixed metaphor. The writer who
puts down "My spirit, like my blood, slowly drips
from my body, white feathers now turned
crimson" has lost hold of effective figurative logic.
It would seem that the spirit is being likened to
white feathers, but it is also likened to blood. Once
it is blood, it can't drip on itself, turning itself
crimson; it must have been crimson to begin with.
Mixed metaphors often come from overwriting,
allowing needless complexity and elaboration to
ruin a work¬ able insight.
When we use images suggestively, they turn out to
be more than descriptive. They may involve the
sort of figurative comparisons discussed above in
which one term is equated or related to another in
a special way. Sometimes images generate
associations in which the second term is not
named, but still understood. When an image
represents something other than or beyond itself, it
is being used as a symbol.
Many symbols are conventional: their meanings
are shared by a community or culture. Our flag is
one such symbol; the cross is another.
Traditionally, the color white is a symbol of purity,
red of passion, purple of royalty. No one can refer
to a snake or serpent without suggesting the
meanings developed in the story of Adam and Eve.
We use symbols of this sort all the time, often
without even thinking about them.
In our own writing, we can also generate meanings
in a particular work through local symbols. For
example, in the following poem by A. E.
Housman, "London" is used to suggest all that is
opposed to gentleness, innocence, and
inexperience. It becomes a symbol for a worldly
toughness and a worldly style.
From the wash the laundress sends
My collars home with ravelled ends;
I must fit, now these are frayed.
My neck with new ones, London-made.
Homespun collars, homespun hearts.
Wear to rags in foreign parts.
 Mine at least's as good as done.
And I must get a London one.

Often there is little distance between symbolism

and synecdoche or metonymy. You could say here
that "collars" symbolizes all of the per¬ son's
clothing, style, and way of life. If you think the
reference is only on the concrete level, you might
say that "collars" is the part that stands for all of
the speaker's garments (synecdoche). Housman's
reference to "hearts" is the conventional one in
which the vital organ represents the center of
emotion.

Language is your medium. Coming to a mastery of

the medium is a lifelong pursuit. Through
alertness, careful analytical reading, conscientious
vocabulary building, imagination, dedicated work
in your journal, and the responsible attitude that
every decision is important, you can develop into
an effective creative writer. Once you believe, as
we do, that there is no such thing as a synonym,
you are on your way.