Writing Tools (15 page)

being consigned to the dust bin of baseball's history, (from the

Washington Post)

The abstract "inanimate refuse" soon becomes visible as "burst beer cups" and "mustard-smeared wrappers." And those cleanup crews with their very real brooms and hoses transmogrify into grim reapers in search of "baseball souls."

Metaphors and similes help us understand abstractions through comparison with concrete things. "Civilization is a stream with banks," wrote Will Durant in
LIFE
magazine, working both ends of the ladder. "The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river."

Two questions will help you make this tool work. "Can you give me an example?" will drive the speaker down the ladder. But "What does that mean?" will carry him aloft.

WORKSHOP

1. Read with the distinction between abstract and concrete in your head. Be alert to moments when you need an example, or when you want to reach for a higher meaning. Notice if the level of language moves from the concrete to the more abstract.

2. Find essays and reports about bureaucracy and public policy that seem stuck in the middle of the ladder of abstraction. What kind of reporting or research would be necessary to climb down or up, to help the reader see or understand?

3. Listen to song lyrics to hear how the language moves on the ladder of abstraction. "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." Or "War, what is it good for, absolutely nothin'." Or "Give me a sista, I can't resist her, red beans and rice didn't miss her." Notice how concrete words and images in music express abstractions such as love, hope, lust, and fear.

4. Read several of your stories and describe, in three words or less, what each story is
really
about. Is it about friendship, loss, legacy, betrayal? Are there ways to make such higher meanings clearer to the reader by being even more specific?

Of all effects created by writers, none is more important or elusive than that quality called
voice.
Good writers, it is said time and again, want to find their voice. And they want that voice to be
authentic,
a word that reminds me of
author
and
authority.

But what is voice, and how does the writer tune it?

The most useful definition comes from my friend and colleague Don Fry: "Voice is the sum of all the strategies used by the author to create the illusion that the writer is speaking directly to the reader from the page." The most important words in that definition are "create," "illusion," and "speaking": voice is an effect created by the writer that reaches the reader through his ears, even when he is receiving the message through his eyes.

Poet David McCord remembers that he once picked up an old copy of
St. Nicholas
magazine, which printed stories written by children. One story caught his attention, and he was "suddenly struck by a prose passage more earthy and natural in voice than what I had been glancing through. This sounds like E. B. White, I said to myself. Then I looked at the signature: Elwyn Brooks White, age 11." McCord recognized the elements of style — the voice — of the young author who would one day grow up to write
Charlotte's Web.

If Fry is correct, that voice is the "sum" of all writing strategies, which of those strategies are essential to creating the illusion of speech? To answer that question, think of a piece of sound equipment called a graphic equalizer. This is the device that creates the range of sounds in an amplifier by providing about thirty dials or levers, controlling such things as bass and treble. Push up the bass, pull down the treble, add a little reverb to configure the desired sound.

So, if we all had a handy-dandy writing-voice modulator, what ranges would the levers control? Here are a few, expressed as a set of questions:

• What is the level of language?
That is to say, does the writer use street slang or the logical argument of a professor of metaphysics? Is the level of language at the bottom of the ladder of abstraction or near the top? Does it move up and down?

• What "person" does the writer work in?
Does the writer use
I
or
we
or
you
or
they
or all of these?

• What are the range and the source of allusions?
Do these come from high or low culture, or both? Does the writer cite a medieval theologian or a professional wrestler? Or both?

• How often does the writer use metaphors and other figures of speech?
Does the writer want to sound more like the poet, whose work is rich with figurative images, or the journalist, who uses them for special effect?

• What is the length and structure of the typical sentence?
Are sentences short and simple? Long and complex? Or mixed?

• What is the distance from neutrality?
Is the writer trying to be objective, partisan, or passionate?

• How does the writer frame her material?
Is she on beat or offbeat? Does the writer work with standard subject matter, using conventional story forms? Or is she experimental and iconoclastic?

Consider this passage, a CBS radio broadcast by Edward R. Murrow, on the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945. Read it aloud to experience the voice of the writer:

We entered. It was floored with concrete. There were two rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood. They were thin and very white. Some of the bodies were terribly bruised, though there seemed to be little flesh to bruise. Some had been shot through the head, but they bled but little. All except two were naked. I tried to count them as best I could and arrived at the conclusion that all that was mortal of more than five hundred men and boys lay there in two neat piles.

The journalist grounds his report in the language of eyewitness testimony. I can hear the struggle between the professional reporter and the outraged human being. The level of language is concrete and vivid, describing terrible things to see. He uses a single chilling simile, "stacked up like cordwood," but the rest seems plain and straightforward. The sentences are mostly short and simple. His writing voice is not neutral — how could it be? — but it describes the world he sees and not the emotions of the reporter. Yet he places himself on the scene in the last sentence, using "I" to give no doubt that he has seen this with his own eyes. The phrase "all that was mortal" sounds literary, as if it had come from Shakespeare. This brief X-ray reading of Murrow's work shows the interaction of the various strategies that create the effect we know as voice.

How different is the effect when seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes describes the passions of mankind:

Grief for the calamity of another is PITY, and arises from the imagination that the like calamity may befall himself, and therefore is called also COMPASSION, and in the phrase of this present time a FELLOW-FEELING, (from
Leviathan)

The Murrow passage, with its particularity, evokes pity and compassion. The Hobbes passage, with its abstractions, defines them.

If you write like Murrow, you will sound like a journalist. If you write like Hobbes, you will sound like a philosopher.

The bible for parents of baby boomers was
Baby and Child Care
by Dr. Benjamin Spock, first published in 1945. In the foreword he writes:

The most important thing I have to say is that you should not take too literally what is said in this book. Every child is different, every parent is different, every illness or behavior problem is somewhat different from every other. All I can do is describe the most common developments and problems in the most general terms. Remember that you are more familiar with your child's temperament and patterns than I could ever be.

Dr. Spock's language is plain but authoritative, his voice wise but modest. He addresses the reader directly, as in a letter, using both "you" and "I," and honors the parent's experience and expertise. No wonder generations of families turned to this voice of the family doctor for advice and peace of mind.

To test your writing voice, the most powerful tool on your workbench is oral reading. Read your story aloud to hear if it sounds like you. When teachers offer this advice to writers, we often meet skeptical glances. "You can't be serious," say these looks. "You don't
literally
mean that I should read the story aloud? Perhaps you mean I should read the story 'in loud,' quietly, with my lips moving?"

No, I mean out loud, and loud enough so that others can hear.

The writer can read the story aloud to herself or to an editor. The editor can read the story aloud to the writer, or to another editor. It can be read this way to receive its voice, or to modulate it. It can be read in celebration, but should never be read in derision. It can be read to hear the problems that must be solved.

Writers complain about tone-deaf editors who read with their eyes and not with their ears. The editor may see an unnecessary phrase, but what does its deletion do to the rhythm of the sentence? That question is best answered by oral — and aural — reading.

WORKSHOP

1. Read your writing aloud to a friend. Ask, "Does this sound like me?" Discuss the response.

2. After rereading your work, make a list of adjectives that define your voice, such as
heavy
or
aggressive, ludicrous
or
tentative.
Now try to identify the evidence in your writing that led you to these conclusions.

3. Read a draft of a story aloud. Can you hear problems in the story that you could not see?

4. Save the work of writers whose voices appeal to you. Consider why you admire the voice of a particular writer. How is it like your voice? How is it different? In a piece of freewriting, imitate that voice.