Chip's Writing Lesson #42
IN THIS ISSUE
Writers Speak | Neil Gaiman on the Necessity of Plot
Interview | 4 Questions with G. Wayne Miller
Craft Lesson | How Brain Science Can Make You a Smarter Writer
A Reflection to Savor | Thomas Boswell on the High-Wire Act of Deadline Writing
Tip of the Week | Write for Your Online Readers’ Attention Span
WRITERS SPEAK
"If the plot works, then people remember how much they loved the characters and the way they felt when they read it. If the plot doesn’t work, then people only remember how much they didn’t like any of it."
— Neil Gaiman
INTERVIEW: THE NEED TO LISTEN | 4 QUESTIONS WITH G. WAYNE MILLER
G. Wayne Miller
G. Wayne Miller is a Providence Journal staff writer, filmmaker, screenwriter, podcaster, visiting fellow at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, and co-host and co-producer of the Telly Award-winning weekly national PBS TV and SiriusXM Satellite Radio show “Story in the Public Square.” He is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, five novels and three short-story collections. His latest novel, "Blue Hill," was published in October. He is also the author of “Kid Number One: A story of heart, soul and business, featuring Alan Hassenfeld and Hasbro.” Visit him at gwaynemiller.com or facebook.com/GWayneMillerNews/.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned as a writer?
Listen. Meaning several things:
First, in nonfiction, let the subject speak, putting yourself on the sidelines until absolutely necessary (I still struggle with this). Second, whether nonfiction or fiction, listen to a good editor or someone else you respect who will read drafts and give an honest critique. Third, listen to your characters; real-life or fictional, they will guide you as you write and rewrite. And a few more lessons, if I may: feel for others, get up early, write every day, fail, and never stop.
What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
How it has brought me to so many actual and imagined people and places, in the process opening the doors to storytelling forms including journalism, fiction, filmmaking, podcasting, screenwriting and screen production. Writing is at the heart — is the start — of them all.
If you had to choose a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be?
Wow, wonderful question! Never been asked this or even contemplated it beyond the tired old “ink-stained wretch,” which frankly I never really bought.
I thought first of some sort of bird, and then a mirror, and then a small little river, probably in Maine, that meanders from a spring in a foothills through woods and past villages, reflecting what it passes on its way to the sea.
But I’ll go with a camera, one you can bring with you into a dream.
What’s the single best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave you?
I heard this first from Joel Rawson, former editor of The Providence Journal) actually, although others before him (Faulkner, Stephen King, etc.) also have said it is great advice:
Kill your darlings.
And it IS the best advice. I still struggle with it!
CRAFT LESSON: HOW BRAIN SCIENCE CAN MAKE YOU A BETTER WRITER
A TV ad for kayak.com features an unscrupulous doctor manipulating a patient’s exposed brain, turning him into a puppet who flails away at a keyboard, hunting and pecking for online travel deals. It’s funny to some, offensive to others, but it illustrates a larger point that is important for writers. The brain influences the way readers respond to words, for better or worse.
A growing body of research reveals that different parts of the brain respond to language in unique ways. Neuroscientists learned this by observing brain scans as subjects read. Writers can take advantage of these findings to connect with readers in deep, intimate and lasting ways. And you don’t have to be a brain scientist to do it, just apply the same kind of techniques that writing teachers have been preaching for years.
The science of “this is your brain; this is your brain on stories” is relatively straightforward. It starts with a geography lesson, based on the principle that the map of the brain locates multiple areas that control the way we move, see, hear, taste, smell, touch and remember.
It’s long been understood that the neocortex, the thinking part of the brain that separates humans from all other species, interprets language through the Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, which center on how the brain processes written words. But their powers are limited: they enable us to understand words, but nothing more.
That’s why traditional news articles with their passive verb forms, collective nouns (“officials said”) and clichés have so little impact on readers. Flabby prose turns off readers because it doesn’t turn on the brain. Neuroscience shows how carefully chosen words and the tools of storytelling activate parts of the brain other than those that process language to make reading a deep, resonant and lasting experience.
A fascinating essay, “Your Brain on Fiction,” by Annie Murphy Paul, details these developments.
She describes how researchers at Emory University earlier this year discovered that the phrase “he had leathery hands” aroused the sensory cortex that activated the sense of touch. Spanish researchers found that words like “cinnamon” and “soap” triggered a response from the olfactory cortex, which processes smells.
A French team learned that action verbs, such as “Pablo kicked the ball,” fired up the motor cortex, which governs how the body moves. Not only that, but verbs that involved different parts of the body, such as the arms or legs, activated the parts of the brain that control those specific limbs. Evocative language also reaches into the hippocampus, the seat of long-term memory, and plays an important role in the way the mind turns language into meaningful experience, a goal for all writers.
Based on these findings, we can take advantage of this three-pound organ with its 86 billion nerve cells to enrich our writing. Here are five ways:
Create scenes. The combination of characters in action, dialogue and evocative settings lies at the heart of what novelist John Gardner called “the vivid continuous dream” that captivates readers.
Dig for details, the more specific the better. If you want to get a reader’s mind to visualize what they’re reading, a “cherry-red ’67 Mustang convertible” does a much better job than “a car.” “The recording of such details is not mere embroidery in prose,” Tom Wolfe wrote in “The New Journalism.” “It lies as close to the center of the power of realism as any other device in literature.”
Choose vivid action verbs. “Michaela grabbed her umbrella and dashed into the rain” triggers the motor cortex. Strong verbs are not just words on the page. They represent action in the reader’s mind.
Avoid passive verb forms. “The body was found” is not only a flabby word choice that robs the verb of energy and fails to ignite the brain. It usually signifies weak reporting. “A seven-year-old newsboy found the body” heightens the senses.
Cultivate “a nose for story.” Consider the power of the scented details in this sentence by Anne Hull of The Washington Post: “Apartment 27 smelled like years of sweat and Lemon Pledge and perfect bacon.” The brain’s olfactory bulb not only lets us smell. It also triggers memories in the hippocampus. “Hit a tripwire of smell,” Diane Ackerman writes in “A Natural History of the Senses,” “and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.”
Neuroscience offers profound lessons on the power of story. You can use this knowledge to bring stories alive in readers’ minds. For writers and readers, the brain is a terrible thing to waste.
A REFLECTION TO SAVOR
Washington Post sports columnist Thomas Boswell has covered every World Series for the paper since 1975. He ended his 252-game streak this year. “Last month, I decided not to go to this World Series, because I don’t think it’s smart for a 72-year-old man in a pandemic.”
Boswell’s readers are poorer as a result, but in the column announcing his laudable decision, Boswell gave an insightful lesson about the risk and rewards of the high-wire act of deadline writing familiar to so many writers, no matter their subject.
“You can’t plan out World Series stories ahead of time,” he wrote. “You’re left with adrenaline (which you may need for five hours straight), fear of failure, the power of the game itself and the hope that — one more time, please, just one more time — your fingers will start flying. The ideas and insights will rush faster than you can type, and you will suddenly be in a place that you have never reached in any other way.”
TIP OF THE WEEK | WRITE FOR YOUR ONLINE READERS’ ATTENTION SPAN
My friend Michael Weinstein, former editor and writing coach at The Charlotte Observer, sent along a very helpful article with tips for writing online. Citing Poynter’s landmark turn-of-the-century Eyetrack studies, trainer Ann Wylie provides advice on the need for pithy writing online.
“Paragraphs should be short,” she writes. “And online paragraphs should be really short.” One to two sentences short.
Long paragraphs “are a visual predictor that a story won’t work,” says Jon Ziomek, associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism says.
Says Wylie: “So if your paragraph is too long, then you might as well stamp on it in red ink: ‘Don’t bother reading this paragraph. Our lawyers made us add this stuff. We formatted it this way on purpose so you’d skip it.’”
With most of us consuming our news, emails and other information on our phones, Ziomek provides a useful formula for mobile writing:
1 idea, expressed in
2 to 3 sentences,
taking up no more than 4 to 5 lines on the page
Ensure your connection by emailing yourself the paragraph and reading it online. “If it passes the 1-2-3-4-5 Test," Wylie says, “then you’re good to go.”
Does the formula hold true for fiction or narrative nonfiction? I don’t think so. Readers drawn to such content are, I believe, accustomed to, and welcome, longer paragraphs, but only if they are artfully crafted.
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Nulla dies sine linea / Never a day without a line
Black Lives Matter.