Wordsmiths and storysmiths

I read two great articles this morning (Steven Pressfield's "Wordsmiths and Storysmiths" and John McPhee's "Omission (What to Leave Out)"—go read them, I'll wait).

I realized that the best editors of fiction and creative nonfiction (the ones who helped McPhee see what to leave out) are those who are not only talented wordsmiths, but talented storysmiths. 

I need to pay more attention to my own "lunatic elf" and develop this skill. It might not seem relevant to academic writing, but we also must trust our readers enough to give them elbow room, to give them the pleasure of discovery. It's a fine line.

Transitional thinking about transitional sentences.

I was working on a (fascinating!) book last week, and it started me thinking about transitional sentences--how we use them, what they're for, and why we might misplace them.

The general rule is to place transitional sentences at the beginning of the paragraph they're transitioning toward. This gives your reader a bridge into new material by greasing the slide with the old, familiar material. It also offers a bit of a recap of prior material, which helps your reader orient themselves within the larger structure of the piece: a kind of implicit signpost. And it helps the reader see the connection between the two paragraphs; while there is an implicit connection made simply by virtue of their proximity and juxtaposition, laying out how the two sets of ideas connect in that first sentence helps strengthen the connection in the reader's mind.

But you could do all these things with transitional sentences placed at the end of the paragraph you're transitioning away from. Why don't we do this?

Well, sometimes we do--in writing, form follows function, and sometimes this is a perfectly fine idea. But more often, sticking a transitional sentence at the end of a paragraph damages your pace and your reader's sense of satisfaction. As George Gopen and Joseph Williams have pointed out, the last sentence of a paragraph is a position of strong structural emphasis. To fill that position with a sentence that leans forward makes your reader rush into the next paragraph; it snatches away from your reader the moment of pause, the exhale that should naturally occur with a sense of closure achieved.

More problematically, putting the transitional sentence in this position also upstages the material that deserves that emphatic close: the capper sentence. Whatever form your capper takes (a summary of what went before, a clever play on words, or a mind-expanding gesture to another, larger idea), it deserves its own spotlight. Don't let the transitional sentence--an ensemble player by nature--step into that spot.  

Beach reading...

I'm taking The Copyeditor's Handbook with me to the beach for a little light reading this week. (Don't worry, I'm also taking my Kindle, loaded to the gills with goofy mysteries.) 

If there's one thing a Ph.D. in English ruins for you (besides your waistline and your finances), it's your concept of light reading.

Happy August!

Writing outsourced?

Today I'm reading John McWhorter's article about Kim Kardashian and the decline of oral culture, "Why Kim Kardashian can't write good."  

I'm not sure what to think about this. I think McWhorter is right that the definition of communication is expanding far beyond the confines of the written word; internet access, phones in every pocket, constantly-available video technology that's easily shareable (vines and snapchats) all contribute to the rise in forms of non-text-based communication. 

But as a long-time teacher of writing, I cling to the idea that everyone can and should learn to write at least competently. Writing is still the best form of communication for many situations; while oral culture may trump writing in leisure time, writing certainly is going nowhere when it comes to work. As Edward Tufte has shown us, technologies like PowerPoint and the types of thinking they engender are not sufficient for communicating complicated scientific ideas and key facts to decision-makers. (Now I'm imagining the NASA scientists trying to communicate the Challenger's problems using 6-second Vines.) Well-written, clear, information-dense reports are still the best way to convey a lot of complex information and nuance. And the Internet is made of written content; if things like text-based blogs are in decline (and I'm not sure that they are), the net is still at its heart a textual beast (including all the code that runs it). Gifs and Vines and Youtube videos aren't the engine that keeps things going; written text is.

Perhaps this means that people like me--professional writers and editors who have spent (in my case) decades studying language--will profit. Perhaps writing will be outsourced to a class of professional scribes. Part of me wants to say "yay! Somebody values the intense labor and effort that went into my skills and wants to pay me for it IN ACTUAL MONEY!" But another part of me--the deeply humanist part--says that everyone should be able to express their ideas and make themselves clear to others, and that this ability is at the core of a democratic society. Words and language should not become a tool of the few, at the service only of those willing or able to pay the few. (And I have a funny feeling that somehow the compartmentalization of writing and the consequent demand won't lead to higher wages for writing workers.) 

Perhaps this is why I'm drawn to the particular type of editing I love best: coaching. It's easier for both me and my authors if I just fix the problems with manuscripts. But I love teaching, and I know that most authors who pay for my help want to lbecome better writers. And while I hope that I am not planting the seeds of my own career destruction by coaching ( although it's always important to get multiple sets of eyes on any important document), there's little more thrilling than receiving a very good end-stage manuscript from an author whose writing has improved from our work together.