END NOTES:
Matters of Style
Q.CAN YOU LAY OUT SOME DOS AND DON’TS
FOR A GOOD STYLE?
A.Sure. First, make your primary goal in writing is not artistic expression, but clear communication. Never try to sound like a writer; if you end up sounding like one that’s all right, provided the writer is you; but do your best not to try. To that end, eschew “writerly” language and constructions (“unbeknownst to her”).
Don’t force metaphors and similes. Remember that these are tools, and that tools should be used only when necessary, and not for pleasure (if you can pry a nail loose with your fingers you don’t use a crowbar).
When brooding on the choice between two words, use the shorter (for instance: I opened my answer to this question by saying, “Sure.” I might have said, “Certainly.” I didn’t. That’s the stylist in me at work.).
Clarity and concision should be your main aims. No effect for its own sake, ever.
When describing violent actions or emotions, use restrained, even clinically dry, language.
Let language carry, rather than create, humor, which should arise from situation. Humor derived strictly from linguistic high jinks is called literary humor and belongs to the last century, which can keep it.
Specify! Don’t just say “a box of matches,” say, “a box of Ohio blue-tipped safety matches.” Why? Because specificity is the solvent that dissolves cliché and genericism. Unlike literary humor, it adds authenticity to what is already there, concretely, in our stories, rather than inflating them artificially with language.
Don’t report dull dialogue; if you must, do so indirectly to sum up a long or dry exchange.
When they have something interesting to say, or an interesting way to say it, by all means let characters speak. If not, let their actions or their silences speak for them.
Don’t be afraid of adjectives and adverbs, but do question them. If a modifier doesn’t do something for the word it modifies that the word itself can’t do, then strike it. Then again, certain modifiers—quickly, quietly, cautiously, carefully, certainly— rarely earn their keep. If you can cut it, do.
When making transitions, do what Mary Gordon calls “honoring the white space.” Why drag your readers through a transitional paragraph or even a sentence when you can treat them to a nice blank spot on the page?
If you must overwrite, fine. Then go back through and cut every other word. When it comes to cutting, be ruthless. As my friend says, “Use an axe, not tweezers.”
Achieve poetry, but don’t try for it. To try is almost certainly to fail. Try for clarity, for specificity, for economy, for authenticity. And poetry may just come.
Avoid backward sentences. “He stabbed his sister-in-law in the back shortly after arriving home from work at the Piggly Wiggly.” The bullet should come out at the end of the sentence.
Don’t overuse exclamation marks. Three per story, says Frank Conroy. And unless you want your narrators to be airheads don’t bundle up on them!!!!