Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

by Roy Peter Clark

  It’s hard to think of a writer with more interest in names than Vladimir Nabokov. Perhaps because he wrote in both Russian and English—and had a scientific interest in butterflies—Nabokov dissected words and images, looking for the deeper levels of meaning. His greatest antihero, Humbert Humbert, begins the narration of Lolita with this memorable passage:

  Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

  She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

  In this great and scandalous novel, Nabokov includes an alphabetical listing of Lolita’s classmates, beginning with Grace Angel and concluding with Louise Windmuller. The novel becomes a virtual gazetteer of American place names, from the way we name our motels: “all those Sunset Motels, U-Beam Cottages, Hillcrest Courts, Pine View Courts, Mountain View Courts, Skyline Courts, Park Plaza Courts, Green Acres, Mac’s Courts,” to the funny names attached to roadside toilets: “Guys-Gals, John-Jane, Jack-Jill and even Buck’s-Doe’s.”

  What’s in a name? For the attentive writer, and the eager reader, the answer can be fun, insight, charm, aura, character, identity, psychosis, fulfillment, inheritance, decorum, indiscretion, and possession. For in some cultures, if I know your name and can speak it, I own your soul.

  WORKSHOP

  1. In the Judeo-Christian story of creation, God grants mankind a special power over other creatures: “When the Lord God formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and the birds of the air, he brought them to the man to see what he would call them, for that which man called each of them, that would be its name.” Have a conversation about the larger religious and cultural implications of naming, including ceremonies of naming such as birth, baptism, conversion, and marriage. Don’t forget nicknames, street names, stage names, and pen names. What are the practical implications of naming for writers?

  2. J. K. Rowling, the popular author of the Harry Potter series, has a gift for naming. Think of her heroes: Albus Dumbledore, Sirius Black, and Hermione Granger. And her villains: Draco Malfoy and his henchmen Crabbe and Goyle. Read one of the Harry Potter novels, paying special attention to the book’s universe of names.

  3. In a daybook, keep a record of interesting character and place names you discover in your community.

  4. The next time you research a piece of writing, interview an expert who can reveal to you the names of things you do not know: flowers in a garden, parts of an engine, branches of a family tree, breeds of cats. Imagine ways to use such names in your story.

  TOOL 16

  Seek original images.

  Reject clichés and first-level creativity.

  The mayor wants to rebuild a dilapidated downtown but will not reveal the details of his plan. You write, “He’s playing his cards close to his vest.”You have written a cliché, a worn-out metaphor, this one from the world of poker, of course. The mayor’s adversaries crave a peek at his hand. Whoever used this metaphor first wrote something fresh, but with overuse it became familiar—and stale.

  “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print,” writes George Orwell in “Politics and the English Language.” Using clichés, he argues, is a substitute for thinking, a form of automatic writing: “Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.” That last phrase is a fresh image, a model of originality.

  The language of the people we write about threatens the good writer at every turn. Nowhere is this truer than in the world of sports. A postgame interview with almost any athlete in any sport produces a quilt of clichés:

  “We fought hard.”

  “We stepped up.”

  “We just tried to have some fun.”

  “We’ll play it one game at a time.”

  It’s a miracle that the best sports writers have always been so original. Consider this description by Red Smith of one of baseball’s most famous pitchers:

  This was Easter Sunday, 1937, in Vicksburg, Miss. A thick-muscled kid, rather jowly, with a deep dimple in his chin, slouched out to warm up for the Indians in an exhibition game with the Giants. He had heavy shoulders and big bones and a plowboy’s lumbering gait. His name was Bob Feller and everybody had heard about him.

  So what is the original writer to do? When tempted by a tired phrase, such as “white as snow,” stop writing. Take what the practitioners of natural childbirth call a cleansing breath. Then jot down the old phrase on a piece of paper. Start scribbling alternatives:

  white as snow

  white as Snow White

  snowy white

  gray as city snow

  gray as the London sky

  white as the Queen of England

  Saul Pett, a reporter known for his style, once told me that he created and rejected more than a dozen images before brainstorming led him to the right one. Such duty to craft should inspire us, but the strain of such effort can be discouraging. Under pressure, write it straight: “The mayor is keeping his plans secret.” If you fall back on the cliché, make sure there are no other clichés nearby.

  More deadly than clichés of language are what Donald Murray calls “clichés of vision,” the narrow frames through which writers learn to see the world. In Writing to Deadline, Murray lists common blind spots: victims are always innocent, bureaucrats are lazy, politicians are corrupt, it’s lonely at the top, the suburbs are boring.

  I have described one cliché of vision as first-level creativity. It’s impossible, for example, to survive a week of American news without running into the phrase “but the dream became a nightmare.” This frame is so pervasive it can be applied to almost any story: the golfer who shoots 33 on the front nine, but 44 on the back; the company CEO jailed for fraud; the woman who suffers from botched plastic surgery. Writers who reach the first level of creativity think they are clever. In fact, they settle for the ordinary, that dramatic or humorous place any writer can reach with minimal effort.

  I remember the true story of a Florida man who, walking home for lunch, fell into a ditch occupied by an alligator. The gator bit into the man, who was rescued by firefighters. In a writing workshop, I gave writers a fact sheet from which they wrote five leads for this story in five minutes. Some leads were straight and newsy, others nifty and distinctive, but almost everyone in the room, including me, had this version of a lead sentence: “When Robert Hudson headed home for lunch Thursday, little did he know that he’d become the meal.” We agreed that if thirty of us had landed on the same bit of humor, it must be obvious: first-level creativity. We discovered the next level in a lead that read, “Perhaps to a ten-foot alligator, Robert Hudson tastes like chicken.” We also agreed that we preferred straight writing to the first pun that came to mind. What value is there in the story of a renegade rooster that falls back on “foul play,” or, even worse, “fowl play”?

  Fresh language blows a cool breeze through the reader. Think, for example, of all the religious clichés you’ve encountered about the nature of prayer and compare them to this paragraph by Anne Lamott, from her book Traveling Mercies:

  Here are the two best prayers I know: “Help me, help me, help me,” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” A woman I know says, for her morning prayer, “Whatever,” and then for the evening, “Oh, well,” but has conceded that these prayers are more palatable for people without children.

  This passage teaches us that originality need not be a burden. A simple shift of context turns the most common and overused expression (“Whatever” or “Oh, well”) into a pointed incantation.

  WORKSHOP

  1. Read today’s newspaper with pencil in hand, and circle any phrase you are used to seeing in print. />
  2. Do the same with your own work. Circle the clichés and tired phrases. Revise them with straight writing or original images.

  3. Brainstorm alternatives to these common similes: red as a rose, white as snow, blue as the sky, cold as ice, hot as hell, hungry as a wolf.

  4. Reread some passages from your favorite writer. Can you find any clichés? Circle the most original and vivid images.

  TOOL 17

  Riff on the creative language of others.

  Make word lists, free-associate, be surprised by language.

  The day after the vice presidential debate of 2004, I read a clever phrase that contrasted the appearance and styles of the two candidates. Attributed to radio host Don Imus, it described the differences between “Dr. Doom and the Breck Girl.” Of course, the dour Dick Cheney was Dr. Doom, and, because of his handsome hair, John Edwards was likened to a pretty girl in a shampoo ad.

  By the end of the day, a number of commentators had riffed on this phrase. (Riff is a term from jazz used to describe a form of improvisation in which one musician borrows and builds on the musical phrase of another.) The original Imus phrase morphed into “Shrek versus Breck,” that is, the ogre versus the hair model.

  What followed was a conversation with my witty colleague Scott Libin, who was writing an analysis of the language of political debates. The two of us riffed on the popular distinctions between the two candidates. “Cheney is often described as ‘avuncular,’” said Scott. The word means “like an uncle.” “Last night he looked more carbuncular than avuncular,” I responded, like an angry boil ready to pop.

  Like two musicians, Scott and I began to offer variations on our improvisations. Before long, Cheney versus Edwards became:

  Dr. No versus Mister Glow

  Cold Stare versus Good Hair

  Pissed Off versus Well Coiffed

  I first suggested Gravitas versus Levitas, gravity versus levity, but Edwards is more toothsome than humorous, so I ventured: Gravitas versus Dental Floss.

  Writers collect sharp phrases and colorful metaphors, sometimes for use in their conversation, and sometimes for adaptation into their prose. The danger, of course, is plagiarism, kidnapping the creative work of other writers. No one wants to be known as the Milton Berle of wordsmiths, the stealer of others’ best material.

  The harmonic way is through the riff. Almost all inventions come out of the associative imagination, the ability to take what is already known and apply it as metaphor to the new. Thomas Edison solved a problem in the flow of electricity by thinking of the flow of water in a Roman aqueduct. Think of how many words have been adapted from old technologies to describe tools of new media: we file, we browse, we surf, we link, we scroll, just to name a few.

  The notion that new knowledge derives from old wisdom should liberate the writer from a scrupulous fear of snatching the words of others. The apt phrase then becomes not a temptation to steal—the apple in the Garden of Eden—but a tool to compose your way to the next level of invention.

  David Brown riffs on familiar political slogans and ad lingo to offer this devastating critique of America’s sheepish inefficiency, especially in times of crisis:

  The sad truth is that despite its success as a sportswear slogan, “Just do it” isn’t a terribly popular idea in real American life. We’ve become a society of rule-followers and permission-seekers. Despite our can-do self image, what we really want is to be told what to do. When the going gets tough, the tough get consent forms.

  The writer transforms familiar language into a provocative and contrarian idea: that America is a “can’t-do” society.

  Let me offer an example from my own work. When I moved from New York to Alabama in 1974, I was struck by the generalized American speech patterns of local broadcast journalists. They did not sound like southerners. In fact, they had been trained to level their regional accents in the interest of comprehensibility. This strategy struck me as more than odd; it seemed like a prejudice against southern speech, an illness, a form of self-loathing.

  As I wrote on the topic, I reached a point where I needed to name this language syndrome. I remember sitting on a metal chair at a desk I had constructed out of an old wooden door. What name? What name? It was almost like praying. I thought of the word disease, and then remembered the nickname of a college teacher. We called him “The Disease” because his real name was Dr. Jurgalitis. I began to riff: Jurgalitis. Appendicitis. Bronchitis. I almost fell off my chair: Cronkitis!

  The essay, now titled “Infectious Cronkitis,” was published on the op-ed page of the New York Times. I received letters from Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and other well-known broadcast journalists who had lived in the South. I was interviewed by Douglas Kiker for The Today Show. A couple of years later, I met the editor who had accepted the original column for the Times. He told me he liked the essay, but what sold him was the word “Cronkitis”:

  “A pun in two languages, no less.”

  “Two languages?” I wondered.

  “Yeah, the word krankheit in German means ‘disease.’ Back in vaudeville, the slapstick doctors were called ‘Dr. Krankheit.’”

  Riffing on language will create wonderful effects you never intended. Which leads me to this additional strategy: always take credit for good writing you did not intend because you’ll be getting plenty of criticism for bad writing you did not mean either.

  WORKSHOP

  1. In your reading, look for apt phrases, such as the description of plagiarism as “the unoriginal sin.” With a friend, riff off these phrases and compare the results. Decide which one you like the best.

  2. When you find what seems like a striking, original phrase, conduct a Google search on it. See if you can track its origin or influence.

  3. Browse favorite books to find a passage you consider truly original. After reading it a number of times, freewrite in your notebook. Write a parody of what you have read, exaggerating the distinctive elements of style.

  TOOL 18

  Set the pace with sentence length.

  Vary sentences to influence the reader’s speed.

  I had always found words like rhythm and pace too subjective, too tonal, to be useful to the writer until I learned how to vary, with a purpose, the lengths of my sentences. Long sentences—I sometimes call them journey sentences—create a flow that carries the reader down a stream of understanding, an effect that Don Fry calls “steady advance.” A short sentence slams on the brakes.

  The writer need not make long sentences elastic, or short ones stubby, to set a tempo for the reader. Consider this passage from Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand’s book about a famous race-horse:

  As the train lurched into motion, Seabiscuit was suddenly agitated. He began circling around and around the car in distress. Unable to stop him, Smith dug up a copy of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang magazine and began reading aloud. Seabiscuit listened. The circling stopped. As Smith read on, the horse sank down into the bedding and slept. Smith drew up a stool and sat by him.

  Let me try some word math. The seven sentences in this paragraph average 9.4 words, with this breakdown: 10, 10, 19, 2, 3, 13, 9. The logo-rhythm becomes more interesting when we match sentence length to content. In general, the longer the motion described, the longer the sentence, which is why “Seabiscuit listened” and “The circling stopped” require the fewest words.

  The writer controls the pace for the reader, slow or fast or in between, and uses sentences of different lengths to create the music, the rhythm of the story. While these metaphors of sound and speed may seem vague to the aspiring writer, they are grounded in practical questions. How long is the sentence? Where are the period and the comma? How many periods appear in the paragraph?

  Writers name three strategic reasons to slow the pace of a story:

  1. To simplify the complex

  2. To create suspense

  3. To focus on the emotional truth

  One St. Petersburg Times writer strives for comprehensibility in
this unusual story about the city government budget:

  Do you live in St. Petersburg? Want to help spend $548 million?

  It’s money you paid in taxes and fees to the government. You elected the City Council to office, and as your representatives, they’re ready to listen to your ideas on how to spend it.

  Mayor Rick Baker and his staff have figured out how they’d like to spend the money. At 7 p.m. Thursday, Baker will ask the City Council to agree with him. And council members will talk about their ideas.

  You have the right to speak at the meeting, too. Each resident gets three minutes to tell the mayor and council members what he or she thinks

  But why would you stand up?

  Because how the city spends its money affects lots of things you care about.

  Not every journalist admires this approach to government writing, but its author, Bryan Gilmer, gets credit for achieving what I call radical clarity. Gilmer eases the reader into this story with a sequence of short sentences and paragraphs. All the stopping points give the reader time and space to comprehend, yet there is enough variation to imitate the patterns of normal conversation.

  Clarity is not the only reason to write short sentences. Let’s look at suspense and emotional power, what some call the “Jesus wept” effect. To express Jesus’s profound sadness at learning of the death of his friend Lazarus, the Gospel writer uses the shortest possible sentence. Two words. Subject and verb. “Jesus wept.”