Read Aloud

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You can get what you need to write (as opposed to what you need to make a big nuisance of yourself at cocktail parties) by shutting yourself in a room by yourself for twenty minutes a day and reading aloud from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, and going on from that to other works of skill, until you begin to see, by hearing, how much the choice and arrangement of the words contribute to the impact of the story, even when no sound is uttered in its reading. And you will begin to see, very quickly—guaranteed.

GEORGE V. HIGGINS

How to Organize A Magazine Article

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You can organize a magazine article rudimentarily as a sandwich: two slices of experience or reporting or essay filled with a primer on the subject under discussion. I used that structure in desperation more than once and even got by with it. More sophisticated organization requires interweaving. The best way to do that is to let your narrative determine when you stop and fill in the basics. You find something in your research that you believe readers will recognize and use that to open the story. When you come to a point that's likely to be unfamiliar, you cut away long enough to explain the context, then cut back to narrative, and so on through the article.

RICHARD RHODES

Nice Writing Isn't Enough

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Nice writing isn't enough. It isn't enough to have smooth and pretty language. You have to surprise the reader frequently, you can't just be nice all the time. Provoke the reader. Astonish the reader. Writing that has no surprises is as bland as oatmeal. Surprise the reader with the unexpected verb or adjective. Use one startling adjective per page.

ANNE BERNAYS

Two Secrets for Young Writers from Harlan Ellison

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To young writers I give only two secrets that really exist...all the other hints of Rosetta Stones are jiggery-pokery. The two secrets are these:

First, the most important book you can ever read, not only to prepare you as a writer, but to prepare you for life, is not the Bible or some handbook on syntax. It is the complete canon of Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Holmes mysteries are nailed to the fixed point of logic and rational observation. They teach that ratiocination, and a denial of paralogia, go straight to the heart of Pasteur’s admonition that “Chance favors the prepared mind.” The more you know, the more unflinchingly you deny casual beliefs and Accepted Wisdom when it flies in the face of reality, the more carefully you observe the world and its people around you, the better chance you have of writing something meaningful and well-crafted.

From Doyle’s stories an awakened intelligence can learn a system of rational behavior coupled with an ability to bring the process of deductive logic to bear on even the smallest measure of day-to-day existence. It works in life, and it works in art. We call it the writer’s eye. And that, melded to talent and composure, is what one can find in the work of every fine writer.

The second secret, what they never tell you, is that yes, anyone can become a writer. Merely consider any novel by Judith Krantz and you’ll know it’s true. The trick is not to become a writer, it is to stay a writer. Day after day, year after year, book after book. And for that, you must keep working, even when it seems beyond you. In the words-to-live-by of Thomas Carlyle, “Produce!  Produce!  Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in God’s name! ‘Tis the utmost thou has in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might.  Work while it is called Today; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.”

All that, and learn the accurate meaning of “viable,” do not pronounce it noo-kew-ler, understand the difference between “in a moment” and “momentarily,” and don’t say “hopefully” when you mean “it is to be hoped” or “one hopes.” Because, for one last quotation, as Molly Haskell has written: “language: the one tool that enables us to grasp hold of our lives and transcend our fate by understanding it.”

HARLAN ELLISON

Nicholas Boileau's Advice to Writers (via Florence King)

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For advice on writing, nothing beats Nicolas Boileau, founder of the Académie Française, who wrote a creative-writing course in verse called L'Art Poetique. It dates to the mid-l7th century but it's still the best around. The translation is by John Dryden. Some samples:

On cutting

Polish, repolish, every color lay,

Sometimes add, but oftener take away.

On not messing up your murder mystery with a love story, and avoiding comic relief:

Remember always never to bring

A tame in union with a savage thing.

On avoiding too many subplots, unnecessary characters, and the urge to put all you know in one book:

Make not your tale of accidents too full;

Too much variety will make it dull.

Achilles' rage alone., when wrought with skill,

Abundantly does a whole Iliad fill.

FLORENCE KING