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Writing and Publishing, Part 6:
Creating the content:
Writing Exposition:
In writing fiction our goal is to entertain and hopefully influence
our reader. In exposition, we also have a goal. Our goal is to
inform and/or instruct. That is, we expose something for others.
As a consequence, logical progression is imperative. Ideally,
we will begin with things our readers know, or understand, and
proceed logically to illuminate the things we wish to teach. In
short, our presentation must be well organized.
To do this effectively, requires a plan or outline. These are those techniques we learned in our highschool composition courses. The whole thing is quite mechanical and procedural. If you don't know how to prepare an outline, perhaps a refresher course in report and essay writing is in order. Some local highschool adult education programs can be useful here.
About highschool, think back to who your best teachers were, the ones you really liked and looked forward to. They were animated and excited about their subject, and they communicated that to you. They inspired you to learn. Thus, It is not just the mechanics of procedure and usage which are important, style is just as important. We cannot teach well if we are boring. To teach effectively, we must know how to communicate. So, in exposition, both good usage and effective style are imperative. We must remember we are teaching. Others are depending on us to be able to communicate the information well.
Many of the angry attacks on me result from people reading my essay "Message to Writers." In a nutshell, it says, if you want to be a writer, learn the trade, learn the language. That seems to make some people quite angry. A person will spend five years or more learning to be a scientist or manager of some kind. Then, that same person expects to sit down, start writing, and be successful, without even attempting to learn the trade. This is because most people think they know their native language. In most cases, they are wrong.
In any business, it is important to know the tools you expect to use. Now, the purpose of this series of essays is not to teach anyone how to use the English language, nor how to develop an effective style. In addition, I, or any other editor, will not have the time to teach these things to people who submit bad manuscripts. If you don't know these things, you should take formal training. What we can do is discuss some of the concepts of good usage. Yes, good usage is important, with some exceptions.
The purpose of language is to communicate. Thus, if we use our language so that people who hear us have a reasonable understanding of what we intended to say, we have used language effectively. Although we have all met folks with annoying verbal habits such as utilizing utilize when they should be using use, or saying irregardless when they mean regardless, most of us manage quite well in the spoken language.
That is, when we speak informally, people do have a reasonable idea of our meaning. Albeit, we all make mistakes and we tend to overuse cliches. We say "fur" when we mean "for," even though we know how to spell it. We also belly up to the bar, we get in the right ballpark and we use our collective wisdom, but we do manage to communicate in our routine life.
It is in the formal parts of communication that we often get derailed. We seem to get carried away with the weight of words and employ the heaviest ones we can think of. Quite often this results in a complete failure to communicate, sometimes because we bore the heck out of our victims and they stop reading, but also because our victims are often not sure of the meaning of the words we have discovered.
Here are some pointers I have picked up about writing. If the average word size is greater than seven characters or if the average sentence size is greater than 20 words, your document will be unreadable to all but the most determined masochist. There is no excuse here. You don't have to count words or characters. Even the simplest of the word processors will give you these numbers.
Keep the average word size under seven characters and the average sentence size to around 15 words or less if you want most people to struggle through it. This does not mean you cannot have a sentence of fifty or sixty words. It means that kind of sentence better be the rare exception. Most folks will not reread very many sentences. They will simply put the work down and say it was too complicated.
Another point on size is to avoid paragraphs which fill half a page or more. The reader needs breaks to rest his eyes. There is nothing more daunting than to turn a page and see no white space; just solid text from top to bottom. Think how you react when you see that. If you have a paragraph of half a page or more, look at it carefully. Even if the thoughts are closely linked, there is a place in the paragraph where a speaker will take a breath. More than likely, that is a natural break. Put a carriage return there and see if it reads better. Perhaps you need to add a word or two to smooth the flow.
Those of us who intend to earn income through the use of language have a serious responsibility to first learn it. This does not mean we will not make errors. Nor does it mean we should not use slang or misuse the language. Some of the best humor we see depends on doing just that. And dialogue would be dead without an understanding of slang and dialects.
The key word is understanding. When we misuse language it should be the occasional error or a deliberate act, never the result of ignorance. We do not want the language to become so diluted by our example that it is no longer effective. When in doubt, we must take the time to look it up. Do the research!
I use an exercise which has helped me avoid the worst effects of verbosity. Whenever I write something and it seems complete, I take the final step. I try to reduce the size of the work by half while retaining the entire meaning, effect and content. I do this by reducing word size and word modifiers.
Years ago, someone I respected did this to one of my tomes and it was very humbling. After that I learned to do it myself. It's less painful and more satisfying to do it yourself. That's as true of writing as it is of potty training. There are no hard rules. Occasionally, I am surprised to discover that a sentence reads better when I add a modifier or two. In general, though, I can improve readability by removing parts of my magnificent prose.
Probably the most difficult task of writing is the accurate portrayal of dialect and dialogue. Some folks, of course, seem to do it naturally. These are the friends and acquaintances we like to call great storytellers. Story telling is an art form older than written language and was once essential to the maintenance of our history. Now it's just great fun whether the stories are true or not. And we never question the veracity of the story or the storyteller.
The way to reveal people; the way to do dialect is to listen, listen, listen to the people. You do this listening everywhere you go, be it taverns, town halls, or tabernacles. You listen for the music until you start to get the flavor of it. You start to feel the special music in the sounds. Regardless of the locale, be it North Carolina, Georgia, Maine, or Mississippi, there is a music and rhythm to the speech patterns. This I call the flavor of the dialect. Once you have it, it's like you hear in an entirely new way. It's like listening to music all the time. You finally get that the apparent cacophony of human communication is really the greatest musical production ever conceived and it's ongoing. Bernstein captured a small part of it in West Side Story.
In writing the dialect you exaggerate this music just slightly. You do this even if you must misspell words, use words out of place or invent words. It's not about proper usage. It's about drawing a portrait with words. In this, the writer is allowed the same liberties of interpretation as the painter or musician. This exaggeration requires great care and practice. Too much simply creates an insult to the very people who gave you the music. Too little and you come over as yourself trying to sound like your characters.
That's enough pointers on language. Next time we can get into
some of the other aspects of learning the trade.
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