Chip's Writing Lessons #59
IN THIS ISSUE
Writers Speak | Ta-Nehisi Coates on killer endings
Interview | 4 Questions with Nicola Twilley
Guest Craft Lesson by Sue Horner | 5 ways to help make numbers make sense
Writing to Savor | “Freedom, Wyoming,” by Kim Cross, The New York Times
Tip of the Week | Dodge dependent clauses
WRITERS SPEAK
“I always tell my students when you’re really writing, it’s not just the lead that gets them, it’s the ending that kills them.”
— Ta-Nehisi Coates.
INTERVIEW | 4 QUESTIONS WITH NICOLA TWILLEY
Nicola Twilley
Nicola Twilley is co-host of the award-winning Gastropod podcast and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. Her first book, “Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine,” was co-authored with Geoff Manaugh and published by MCD, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, in July 2021. She is currently writing a book about refrigeration for Penguin Press.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned as a writer?
I’ll give you the lesson I have learned and learned again, but still fail to apply far too frequently: write your notes and thoughts down as soon as possible. Sometimes when I’m reporting, especially when my schedule is packed and I’m tired, I get lazy and let my smartphone do the work, figuring I’ll just take some photos, record the conversation, and go through it all later. Then, at the end of the day, I collapse instead of jotting notes and mentally reviewing what I experienced. But, while I believe in photographing and transcribing everything (no better way to relive the interview and capture the nuances of voice, as well as details I might have missed in the moment), looking at photographs and transcripts later just doesn’t yield all the same richness that bubbles up when you sit down at the end of a long day of interviews and let your mind tell you what was important.
What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
That I can write! I grew up thinking that, if I was good enough to be a real writer, I would already know—the way athletes know whether they’re good enough to be professional by university or before. I thought it was a matter of innate talent, and that, if I had that kind of talent, someone would definitely have mentioned it at some point. I didn’t know any writers, so I had no real-world point of comparison, either. It wasn’t until my husband started a successful writing career that I realized that, if he could do it, maybe I could too. (He also believed I could, which helped!)
If you had to use a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be and why?
I’m a combination detectorist and carpenter. The reporting part is all about finding nuggets—you can develop a sense of where they might be and how to extract them, the way detectorists find buried treasure. The writing is carpentry—I can’t start writing till I have my first sentence, but then it’s a relatively straightforward matter of joining everything together so it forms a pleasing structure, and planing it down to try to get rid of anything extraneous. A slow, careful, craft-ful assembly process.
What’s the single best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave you?
To write my notes and thoughts down as soon as possible! (See answer 1; this came from Michael Pollan, and, whenever I have the discipline to follow it, I am grateful.) My favorite piece of writing advice to give to others is to read good writing. I firmly believe that beautiful language is contagious. That, and use the right dictionary.
GUEST CRAFT LESSON BY SUE HORNER | 5 WAYS TO HELP MAKE NUMBERS MAKE SENSE
“Adding whipped cream to millions of Starbucks Corp. drinks emits 50 times as much greenhouse gas as the company’s private jet.” — Eric Pfanner, Bloomberg News
If you’re going to use numbers to make a point, be sure you’re helping make those numbers make sense. Here are five ways to do it:
1. Do the math, and give numbers context.
“Over a period of between 40 and 70 days, a lake formed, growing to more than 0.5 cubic kilometres in volume—as much water as it would take to fill the Houston Astrodome more than 400 times.” — Andrew Findlay in Canadian Geographic
Researcher Jake Hofman says perspective helps people recall unfamiliar numbers, estimate numbers they hadn’t seen before, and detect errors in “potentially manipulated numbers.” Instead of saying “Americans own almost 300 million firearms,” for example, he suggests, “To put this into perspective, 300 million firearms is about 1 firearm for every person in the United States.”
2. Make a large number understandable by comparing it to something known.
“The travel and hospitality sector lost almost $4.7 trillion in 2020—as much as if all 7.9 billion people in the world threw $595 straight into a garbage bin.” — Ann Handley
“To store a gigabyte’s worth of data just 20 years ago required a refrigerator-sized machine weighing 500 pounds. Today, that same gigabyte’s worth of data resides comfortably on a disk smaller than a coin.” — IBM
3. Make a small number or size understandable by comparing it to something known.
“Above all, atoms are tiny—very tiny indeed. Half a million of them lined up shoulder to shoulder could hide behind a human hair.” — Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
“A tiny blackpoll warbler, a bird no heavier than a ballpoint pen, makes an epic journey each year.” — Kenn Kaufman in ScienceNews
4. Show significance without actual numbers.
“[The alligator gar is] a toothy giant that can grow longer than a horse and heavier than a refrigerator.” — Tammy Webber in the Toronto Star
“A new calculation shows that if space is an ocean, we’ve barely dipped in a toe. The volume of observable space combed so far for E.T. is comparable to searching the volume of a large hot tub for evidence of fish in Earth’s oceans.” — Lisa Grossman in ScienceNews
5. Make time relatable.
“[Sir Richard Branson’s] round trip, from New Mexico to the stars and back, will last about 90 minutes, or roughly what it takes to drive from Toronto to Niagara Falls.” — Vinay Menon in the Toronto Star
No matter how well you’re able to help readers understand numbers, try to use as few as will get the job done. “Never clot a bunch of numbers in a single paragraph; or worse, three paragraphs,” says writing coach Roy Peter Clark. “Readers don’t learn that way.”
Sue Horner loves being the “go-to” writer for small communications teams who need writing that has warmth and personality. A full-time freelance writer, she launched Get It Write in 1991 and has used her experience as a corporate communicator to help companies connect with their employees. She is particularly known for turning complicated, dense information into readable and understandable content for feature articles, newsletters, profiles and more. Clients appreciate Sue’s ability to find the human angle in any story, capture the essence of a discussion and provide a fresh perspective on a routine subject.
WRITING TO SAVOR | “FREEDOM, WYOMING” BY KIM CROSS, THE NEW YORK TIMES
With summer drawing to an end, Mike Wilson, a deputy sports editor at The New York Times, sent seven sportswriters in search of a story, armed only with the eternal theme of freedom and a caveat: a 900-word count. He dispatched author and award-winning sportswriter Kim Cross to Freedom, Wyoming, population about 200, with “a post office, a church, zero stoplights.” Cross emerged with a poignant story about a 6-year-old boy with a dream: to swim in a chilly creek despite a puncture wound from a nail in a 101-year-old barn. The story reveals how a gifted nonfiction writer can weave literary devices employed by short fiction writers—an unforgettable protagonist and setting, eagle eye for observation and the natural world, exquisite language, and a carefully assembled plot that ends with a clear resolution—into a magical true story that lingers in the heart.
TIP OF THE WEEK | DODGE DEPENDENT CLAUSES
Dependent clauses rob sentences of energy and clarity. Effective sentences employ subject-verb-object format, the engine of clear prose. By delaying the sentence meaning, readers may forget what came before and have to go back and read again.
An example: “Since graduation from college in 2020, exercise has been her passion.”
The problem: “exercise” didn’t graduate.
The solution: Replace the dependent clause with a subject-verb-object construction.
“Exercise became her passion since she graduated from college in 2020.”
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May the writing go well, and may you be well.
Nulla dies sine linea / Never a day without a line
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