Stein on Writing Part 13

Catching "one-plus-ones" is a function of what is called "line editing." Shouldn't writers rely on editors to catch things like that? The hard fact is that editors do a lot less line editing than they used to. If a novel requires a lot of line editing, it is less likely to be taken on by a publisher, who has to consider the cost of editing. Which is why is it inc.u.mbent upon writers to become, in effect, their own editors. This also applies to nonfiction writers and to writers of screenplays and TV dramas.

On television, the program In the Heat of the Night had a glaring example of one-plus-one when Virgil Tibbs's wife said to him, "My parents, Mom and Dad .. "

Who else might her parents be besides "Mom and Dad"? The script writer should have kept one or the other, not both.

Most often the one-plus-one has the repet.i.tion put in a slightly different way. Here's an example from an American cla.s.sic: He was dirty. Everything about him was unclean. Even the whites of his eyes were soiled.

What did the author fail to eliminate? Before you go on, why don't you try your hand at being his editor and bracket what you'd leave out.

You could have eliminated either of the first two sentences. My preference would be to eliminate the second sentence because the short first sentence sets up the effective last sentence better: He was dirty. Even the whites of his eyes were soiled.

That example of one-plus-one comes from Sherwood Anderson's cla.s.sic, Winesburg, Ohio. Here's another example: It was a dreadful situation, a time of purest humiliation.

Here the choice is clearer. The first clause is general and familiar. "It was a time of purest humiliation" is more specific. All you have to do is delete the words "a dreadful situation" and you have a more specific sentence that doesn't say the same thing twice.

The following is an example of one-plus-one from a recent book by a much admired and successful novelist: He had time to think, time to become an old man in aspic, in sculptured soap, quaint and white.

Now let's think about that sentence. There are two images, "an old man in aspic" and an old man "in sculptured soap." What's wrong?

Both images convey the same thing. A person in aspic is immobilized. A person in sculptured soap is immobilized. Two images that convey the same thing make the reader conscious of the images instead of letting the reader experience the effect. And by cutting one of the two, the pace speeds up. If the author chose the second one, the old man "in sculptured soap," he should have eliminated "quaint and white." We usually think of soap as white unless a color is indicated. And "quaint" means "odd in a pleasing way" or "old-fas.h.i.+oned." Neither definition really helps the image in this context. "An old man in sculptured soap" is strong. "An old man in sculptured soap, quaint and white," is weaker. If the author felt he had to elaborate on sculptured soap to make the image work, perhaps he should have chosen "an old man in aspic" instead. Sometimes a one-plus-one is created by an unnecessary repet.i.tion: I noticed the finesse with which Mr. Brethson held the creases in his trousers as he sat down. I was always fascinated by what people did to keep dress-up clothes in shape.

The first-person narrator notices how Brethson holds the creases in his trousers. The narrator's generalization of what he sees is distracting. In the editing, the second sentence should come out.

Earlier in this book I have several times expressed admiration for the work of a new novelist, Nanci Kincaid, whose Crossing Blood was published in the autumn of 1992. Her effective characterization, often accomplished in a stroke, deserves high praise. But she's evidently had no training in eliminating one-plus-ones. In fact, here she demonstrates one-plus-one-plus-one equals one third! Let's look at what she does one sentence at a time: Sometimes I wished I had run after Daddy, hugged his leg like a boa constrictor.

Not bad, though perhaps the image of a boa constrictor is more negative than the author intended, as the context would seem to indicate.

Sometimes I wished I had run after Daddy, stuck to him like a Band-Aid.

A nice image.

Sometimes I wished I had run after Daddy, locked myself around him like a ball on a chain, like I was the law and he was the prisoner.

Fine. The only problem is that Nanci Kincaid used all three images, one after the other. The pa.s.sage from her novel reads: Sometimes I wished I had run after Daddy, hugged his leg like a boa constrictor, stuck to him like a Band-Aid, locked myself around him like a ball on a chain, like I was the law and he was the prisoner.

Any one of the three images would be stronger than all three strung together. And the pace would, of course, quicken. The images don't reinforce each other. Once again we break our experience to become conscious of words on paper.

It's time for a word of caution. The "one plus one" guideline does not apply to a conscious piling-up of words for effect. Here is an example of a purposeful piling-up first of verbs and then of adjectives, taken from a recent nonfiction book: Their object is to tear down the individual in the eyes of the court, to deprecate, denounce, defame, condemn, and revile him, and to besmirch whatever reputation he may have had. Their intent is to leave him demoralized, disheartened, discouraged, depressed, and shaken.

Clearly, this intentional piling on of verbs or adjectives is done consciously for effect, unlike the "one-plus-ones" that diminish the effect rather than add to it.

In this chapter, we've learned to look closely at what we write, to test each word and phrase both for accuracy and necessity. We've also learned to eliminate most adjectives and adverbs as unnecessary flab. And we've found out that even successful writers trip up and reduce the effect of their work with unnecessary repet.i.tion.

Removing all forms of flab, including one-plus-ones, increases pace, helping a reader to feel that "this book moves fast."

I trust you've enjoyed improving the pace of cla.s.sics and bestsellers and knowing that you won't be making the same mistakes.

One of the most important things a writer of fiction or nonfiction can do over time is to find his individual voice, style, and view of the world. The author's "voice" is made up of the many factors that distinguish an author from all other authors. Recognizing an individual author's voice is like recognizing a voice on the telephone. Many authors first find their "voice" when they learn to examine each word for its necessity, precision, and clarity, as we are doing here. The originality of some of the writers I have worked with was immediately apparent: James Baldwin and Bertram Wolfe come to mind. Among my recent students, a young man named Steve Talsky began his work this way: I am the way, the answer and the light, through me all things are possible.

He had written this once as a joke on the headboard of his bed.

No one else I know-published or unpublished-could have written that beginning. More recently, when I saw the early pages of a completed novel by Anne James Valadez, my spirits rose in the hope that she could sustain the promise of those early pages, a thoroughly believable scene of two trees who were once lovers and now, rooted in place, can only report what goes on beneath their branches. Despite the rootedness of the trees, the story is anything but static. It is a work of remarkable originality.

An extremely small percentage of writers show signs of an original voice at the outset. It usually develops over time, and has two components, the originality of what is said and the originality of the way it is said.

Over the years, I encountered writers who felt they didn't make their mark because what they wrote was not sufficiently different from what other writers write. I developed a teaching strategy, a way for writers to discover what they alone can do. It is a high-risk, high-gain experiment. Though it can be accomplished in minutes, it takes hard thought and perseverance. If the exercise works for you, it could tap your originality.

I ask you to imagine yourself on a rooftop, the townspeople a.s.sembled below. You are allowed to shout down one last sentence. It is the sentence that the world will remember you by forever. If you say it loud enough, everyone in the world will hear you, no matter where they are. Think of shouting the sentence, even if you seldom shout. What one thing are you going to say? If you'd like to try that exercise now, write down the sentence.

Is your sentence one that could have been said by any person you know? If so, revise it until you are convinced no one else could have said that sentence.

When you've reworked your original sentence, consider these additional questions: Is your sentence outrageous? Could it be? Is your sentence a question? Would it be stronger as a question?

Make whatever changes you like. I have still more questions: Would the crowd below cheer your sentence? Can you revise it to give them something they'd want to cheer?

As you can see, I am asking question after question to help you strengthen and individualize your sentence. I continue: Suppose the person you most love in all the world were to strongly disagree with your sentence. Can you answer his or her disagreement in a second sentence? Please add it.

Some writers will try to get out of further work by saying that their loved one would agree with the sentence. People have different scripts. If your sentence is original, the chances of another person-even your closest loved one-agreeing with it without the slightest exception is extremely unlikely.

Has your second sentence weakened your first? It usually does. If so, make it stronger than the first.

When you've done that, you now have the option of choosing one or the other sentence. There may be value in combining and condensing them.

Finished? Now imagine that you look down and see that the crowd below you is gone. You see only one person, your greatest enemy, who says, "I didn't hear you. Would you repeat that?"

It is a fact that given one last sentence, addressing one's enemy can light up the imagination more than an anonymous crowd can. You don't want to give your enemy the last word or let him respond in a way that would demolish what you've said. Can you alter your sentence so that your statement will be enemy-proof?

This, of course, continues the exercise with one of its most difficult phases, creating an original sentence that is strong and to the best of the writer's ability, seemingly incontrovertible.

Suppose you found out that the only way to get your message across would be if you whispered your sentence. How would you revise it so that it would be suitable for whispering?

It isn't always easy to change a shouted sentence to one that can be whispered and heard, but it sometimes produces intriguing results and shows how the intent to whisper can produce words that are stronger than shouted words.

The last thing I'll ask is for you to look at all of the versions of your sentence. Is there a prior version that is actually stronger than the last? Can the virtues of one be embodied in another? And most important, which sentence now strikes you as the most original, the one least likely to have been written by someone else?

The first attempt at this exercise may not produce your ideal original expression. Save your results and try again. But my experience has been that often the first run of this exercise will direct you to a theme or expression of a theme that is uniquely yours. You have begun to tap your originality, to find your voice. In the meantime, you've had another lesson in the value of shunning the sentence that comes first, and honing, changing, polis.h.i.+ng the words of a single sentence to test all of its possibilities. That is, after all, the writer's work.

One day in 1962 an elderly woman with a marked Greek accent came to see me in my apartment in New York. Elia Kazan's mother arrived holding in her hand an advance copy of her son's first book, America America, which I was about to publish. Her voice betraying a slight quiver, she said that when the plays her son directed won Pulitzer Prizes and his direction of films twice won Academy Awards, her friends were not impressed because they, also Greek immigrants, did not go to the movies or see Broadway plays. Now, she said, holding America America up triumphantly, at long last she had something that she could show her friends!

The book, which had a modest first printing, was selected by the Reader's Digest Condensed Book Club, reprinted in ma.s.s market paperback, translated into many languages, made into a film, and widely reviewed as the best fiction ever on the uniquely American theme of immigration. All of that might not have happened. When the ma.n.u.script arrived, Kazan's name for it was The Anatolian Smile, which, I thought, closed the door against a wide readers.h.i.+p. The Anatolian Smile was not a t.i.tle designed to attract readers, nor did it resonate with the book's grand theme, how a young man, beset by the hards.h.i.+ps of the old world, determined to emigrate to America, and stopped at nothing-even murder-to get to the United States.

Given Kazan's considerable reputation as a director and his known ability to say no in a voice designed to quash an opponent, others might have been tempted to go with the original t.i.tle. Kazan's first book also happened to be the first book that I would be publis.h.i.+ng under the Stein and Day imprint; my idealistic determination was to make every book a winner. That t.i.tle, The Anatolian Smile, would not help. I contributed one word twice, the t.i.tle America America.

I have met many talented writers who insulate their books from the public with t.i.tles that are not likely to arouse a reader's interest or to promise a rich experience. That stubbornness is persistent. Many years after Kazan's book left my care, he recycled his original t.i.tle and had another publisher, perhaps less willing to oppose his strong will, issue a novel with the t.i.tle The Anatolian. That was the first time one of his novels missed a run on the bestseller list. The author was the same. The quality of writing was the same. The t.i.tle, an avoidable mistake, may have turned off the many millions who were part of his longstanding audience. The novel quickly dropped from sight, its door closed.

A book's life depends on reviewers, booksellers, and readers. Picture a reviewer standing before shelves loaded with the many dozens of review copies that arrive from publishers each week. He can review only one. Which does he pull down from the shelf to see if he might be interested in reviewing it? Would he pull down a book called Argghocker! And how will people know Argghocker is wonderful if it doesn't get reviewed?

Venture into any bookstore and look at the t.i.tles of new novels on display. Take note of your reactions to the t.i.tles of books by authors you don't know. You'll see how many books don't tempt you to pick them up because of their t.i.tles, and which t.i.tles intrigue you enough to want to take them down off the shelf and read the flaps.

t.i.tles are equally important in nonfiction. While the subject matter of an ordinary nonfiction book is often enough to attract initial interest to it, a lively t.i.tle will help even a how-to book. As nonfiction ascends in ambition and achievement, the t.i.tle becomes as influential as for a novel. One of the authors I worked with closely over many years was Bertram D. Wolfe, whose best work became cla.s.sics. Wolfe wanted to do a biography of Diego Rivera, one of the great twentieth-century painters Wolfe had known well. The hitch was that two decades earlier Wolfe had already written a biography of Diego Rivera that was published by Alfred A. Knopf, one of the finest publishers in America. The book was t.i.tled simply Diego Rivera. Though published in a beautiful edition, it did not do well. Wolfe put forward that Rivera had lived another eighteen years after the first biography was published, the events of those years unrecorded. Moreover, Wolfe a.s.serted, in the intervening years he had acquired more insight into the artist and his work. And so he embarked on a new biography, which he t.i.tled The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera.

Consider this: The author was the same. The subject was the same. But the t.i.tle had a power and a resonance that the earlier t.i.tle lacked. The new book was selected by a book club, nominated for a National Book Award, sold well, and became a standard work. I attribute that success in large measure to the excellent t.i.tle of the second book. The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera promised the reader much more than the earlier t.i.tle.

How do you go about finding the right t.i.tle for a book? Let's look at a spectacular example of a bad t.i.tle and how it was changed. In the early eighties, one of my editors brought in a ma.n.u.script by Cecil B. Currey, a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, a professor of military history, and the author of eight previous books. The book described, sometimes in harrowing moment-by-moment detail, the destruction of an American infantry division in World War II. The ma.n.u.script, based on previously cla.s.sified doc.u.ments and firsthand testimony from both German and American survivors, demonstrated the tragic consequences of inept commanders. Despite the book's importance, I thought the author's straightforward t.i.tle for it would kill sales. He called it The Battle of Schmidt.

First, n.o.body had heard of a place called Schmidt, much less of a battle fought there. And Americans, including the members of our editorial board, couldn't keep from laughing at the sound of Schmidt, not an appropriate response to a serious book. What we needed was an intriguing t.i.tle with the right resonance.

Many effective t.i.tles have come from poems and songs, and I thought of a song that would likely be remembered by a prime audience for the book, the tens of thousands of infantry officers of World War II. In Officers Training School at Fort Benning, Georgia, young men sometimes kept their spirits up during the "eighteen weeks of h.e.l.l in Georgia" by singing a ditty someone anonymous had composed to the tune of the Cornell University alma mater, "High Above Cayuga's Waters." See if you can pick out the words that became the t.i.tle of Cecil Currey's book: High above the Chattahoochee Near the Upatoy Stands an old abandoned s.h.i.+thouse Benning School for Boys.

Onward ever, backward never Follow me and die To the port of embarkation Next of kin goodbye.

As you may have guessed, The Battle of Schmidt became Follow Me and Die, with the subt.i.tle The Destruction of an American Division in World War II. "Follow me" was the motto of the Infantry School, and the cynical use of it in the song had the perfect reverberation for the book, which went on to be selected by the Military Book Club, and had a life in hardcover and later in paperback, none of which would likely have happened with the original t.i.tle.

Nonfiction t.i.tles are usually easier to come by because in the great majority of cases the author can and does fall back on a short description of what the book is about. If Henry Kissinger calls his book Diplomacy, that's enough. But Diplomacy by an author whose name is not widely known would be what book sales reps call "a tough sell."

What many nonfiction writers neglect is the appeal more imaginative t.i.tles hold for readers. Take the simple matter of making a book of shorter pieces of previously published nonfiction. Saul Bellow, whose novel t.i.tles are admirable, in 1994 published a collection called It All Adds Up. Some of the content is vintage Bellow, but if you're not familiar with Bellow's shorter nonfiction, would you hurry to look inside a book called It All Adds Up! (The subt.i.tle is no better: "From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future.") John Updike published a collection that he called by the blah t.i.tle Picked-Up Pieces, which seems to minimize the content. Long ago I published a collection of such pieces by Lionel Trilling, which he called by the charming t.i.tle A Gathering of Fugitives. There is no reason to give any book a handicap in its t.i.tle.

t.i.tles by academicians are sometimes intentionally dull in order to sound serious. However, Allan Bloom, a professor at the University of Chicago, presumably knew that a typical academic t.i.tle might restrict his readers.h.i.+p to other academicians. When he wrote a book on "how higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students," Professor Bloom called it The Closing of the American Mind, which surely contributed to the book's becoming a bestseller.

Can an imaginative t.i.tle help a how-to book? Indeed it can. I recall several people resisting the t.i.tle of Jo Coudert's first book, Advice from a Failure. "Who wants to listen to advice from a failure?" is what they said as we deliberated over the t.i.tle. The author and I stuck with her provocative t.i.tle. Advice from a Failure turned into a long-lasting, popular success.

Even better as a t.i.tle was one that came with a child-care ma.n.u.script from a pediatrician with sound advice and a sense of humor. He called his book How to Raise Children at Home in Your Spare Time. It was taken by twenty-eight book clubs, and I'm certain the t.i.tle helped.

One of the more influential nonfiction editors of our time, Alice Mayhew, has a particular talent for devising resonant t.i.tles for major books. Witness All the President's Men, Den of Thieves, and Parting the Waters.

Good article t.i.tles can help catch the attention of the reader browsing through a periodical. An intriguing t.i.tle is sometimes sufficient to promote an article to the front cover of a magazine. James Thurber called one of his pieces "The Secret Life of James Thurber." Readers are attracted to secrets the way anteaters are attracted to anthills. Edward Hoagland attracted attention to an article by calling it "The Courage of Turtles." Most readers would not think of courage in the context of turtles. The t.i.tle arouses curiosity. Long ago, William Hazlitt ent.i.tled an essay "On the Pleasure of Hating." Hatred as a pleasure? The reader's curiosity piqued, he wants to see what the author has to say.

A t.i.tle that people respond to can spur completion of the work. For years F d been writing an autobiography called Pa.s.sing for Normal, which I began working on seriously only after the t.i.tle became known to my friends and they responded enthusiastically without having read a word.

I recall asking partic.i.p.ants in one of my Fiction Weekends for their t.i.tles, and at least two of them were so good I hoped their novels-in-progress made it to publication: Driving in Neutral and Scenes from a Life in the Making.

Good t.i.tles are hard to come by, even for some writers of the first rank. Consider a book once called The Parts n.o.body Knows. Is it a medical text? The talented author ret.i.tled the book, To Love and Write Well, which sounds amateurish, though the author was by that time world famous. Still struggling to find a t.i.tle for the book, he tried again, this time calling it How Different It Was, which might excite some curiosity about what "it" is, but is a weak t.i.tle nevertheless. The author, still searching, went from not so good to much worse, coming up with yet another t.i.tle, With Due Respect.

With due respect, that t.i.tle is simply awful. Then the author made his final decision, and called the book The Eye and the Ear. That had to be his final choice because Ernest Hemingway died before the book was published.

His widow, Mary, had a better ear for t.i.tles. She took the book's final t.i.tle from another ma.n.u.script. The book was published as A Moveable Feast.

Hemingway, one of the great innovators of twentieth-century American fiction, was often inept when it came to t.i.tling his work. One novel he at various times called As Others Are, The World's Room, They Who Get Shot, and The Carnal Education. Another t.i.tle for that book was An Italian Chronicle, later changed to The Sentimental Education of Frederick Henry. By now you may have guessed that the book's final t.i.tle was A Farewell to Arms, a resonant metaphor that lingers in the mind. And there you have the first clue as to what many great novel t.i.tles have in common, the use of metaphor.

Another American author, winner of the n.o.bel Prize, had a novel that for a while he called Twilight. Not exactly a grabber that invites you to open to the first page. The author is William Faulkner. Does Twilight conjure up the energy of The Sound and the Fury?

One way of enticing a reader is to t.i.tle a novel with the name of the leading character plus an energizing factor. Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March promises more than the name Augie March. His Henderson the Rain King resonates; the name Henderson would not. D. H. Lawrence discarded an inadequate t.i.tle, Tenderness, before he called the book Lady Chatter ley's Lover. It's hard to imagine that Scott Fitzgerald used Hurrah for the Red White and Blue before he hit on The Great Gatsby. What makes that t.i.tle intriguing is the adjective "Great."

When an author successfully builds a wide audience for his work, the "t.i.tle" for his next and future books is usually his name. After The Naked and the Dead, any book of Norman Mailer's was sold as "Norman Mailer's new book" rather than under its t.i.tle.

New York magazine once had a compet.i.tion for its readers to turn good t.i.tles into bad t.i.tles. Someone suggested downgrading Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead to The Nude and the Deceased. Though the words mean the same, the latter t.i.tle for the same novel might have quashed the book's chances in the marketplace.

An author presumably controls the t.i.tle of his book, but he is subject to heavy influence from people on the publisher's staff. They are the money and the power. An author doesn't always get to exercise his prerogative when it comes to t.i.tles.

I lost out once. I had a novel I called A Stopping Place. The jacket design included a swastika as a prominent feature. The t.i.tle, in the presence of a swastika, had exactly the kind of low-key resonance I wanted for the book. However, shortly before press time Publishers Weekly carried an announcement of a novel by an author in India who called his book A Stopping Place. t.i.tles can't be copyrighted (only motion picture t.i.tles can be protected by registration). I wanted to go ahead with my t.i.tle but the publisher was afraid there might be confusion in the marketplace. Reluctantly, and because everyone was in a hurry for a t.i.tle change, I okayed the publisher's suggestion of The Resort as a t.i.tle, though I never liked it. It had no resonance.

The point to remember is that the primary function of a t.i.tle is not to provide the locus of a story, but to entice the reader. Would you believe The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was once called The Mute! Or that The Red Badge of Courage was originally t.i.tled Private Fleming, His Various Battles! Or that The Blackboard Jungle went by the name To Climb the Wall!

Is there a factor that above all others contributes to making a t.i.tle intriguing and memorable? I've studied the t.i.tles that have captured the public imagination during my lifetime. Add to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Red Badge of Courage, and The Blackboard Jungle the following t.i.tles that almost everyone seems to like, and ask yourself what they have in common: Tender Is the Night A Moveable Feast The Catcher in the Rye The Grapes of Wrath All seven of those t.i.tles are metaphors. They put two things together that don't ordinarily go together. They are intriguing, resonant, and provide exercise for the reader's imagination.

A beginning writer might say, "Stein, those are all books by famous writers. What can we do?"

A great deal. A good t.i.tle, as I've said, can inspire a writer's work. One of the students in my advanced fiction seminar had problems with his work until he came up with an intriguing t.i.tle, The Pa.s.sionate Priest. He backed it up with an excellent first chapter that fit the t.i.tle. Then, after our discussion about the metaphoric resonance of so many good t.i.tles, he came up with an even better one that drew immediate approval from all of his colleagues: A Heart Is Full of Empty Rooms.

Are there questions you might ask yourself about the t.i.tle of your work? Yes.

Does it sound fresh and new?

Does it, like a metaphor, bring together two things that haven't been together before? If not, is there a way of doing that with a variation of your present t.i.tle? Can you use the name of the princ.i.p.al character in an interesting context?

The point to remember is that the primary function of a t.i.tle is not to convey meaning as much as to sound enticing and if possible exude resonance.

Sometimes one is tempted to wax cynical about t.i.tles. Raymond Chandler once said, "A good t.i.tle is the t.i.tle of a successful book." That is certainly borne out by the book that won the 1993 National Book Award for Poetry. Its t.i.tle was Garbage. Occasionally, a book with an awkward or bad t.i.tle will somehow make it in the marketplace. Since my aim is to ease the reader's path to publication, I'll fall back on my experience as a publisher: a good t.i.tle is like coming to a house you've never been in before and having the owner open the door and say "Welcome." A good t.i.tle can make a tremendous difference in the early acceptance of a book.

It is immensely valuable for the journalist, biographer, and other writers of nonfiction to examine the techniques that novelists and short story writers use. In editing many articles and hundreds of nonfiction books over the years, I worked on almost every conceivable kind from child care to philosophy, from books that with hindsight probably should not have been published to works that zoomed high up on the bestseller lists or that became standard works. For our purposes here, I will divide all nonfiction into just two categories: practical and literary. There is some overlap, of course, but the basic distinctions are as follows: Practical nonfiction is designed to communicate information in circ.u.mstances where the quality of the writing is not considered as important as the content. Practical nonfiction appears mainly in popular magazines, newspaper Sunday supplements, feature articles, and in self-help and how-to books. The subjects tend to be instruction, guides, tips, collections of facts, "inside" stories about a particular industry or locale or celebrated personalities, so-called inspirational material, popular psychology, medical and other self-help for the layman. The vocabulary of practical nonfiction is usually as simple as is permitted by the subject matter.

Literary nonfiction puts emphasis on the precise and skilled use of words and tone, and the a.s.sumption that the reader is as intelligent as the writer. While information is included, insight about that information, presented with some originality, may predominate. Sometimes the subject of literary nonfiction may not at the outset be of great interest to the reader, but the character of the writing may lure the reader into that subject.

Literary nonfiction appears in books, in some general magazines such as the New Yorker, Harper's, the Atlantic, Commentary, the New York Review of Books, in many so-called little or small-circulation magazines, in a few newspapers regularly and in some other newspapers from time to time, occasionally in a Sunday supplement, and in book review media.

It should be no secret to readers of this book that I favor work in which the writer presents his best not his quickest, and where the language used comes not from the top of the head but from a consideration of precision, clarity, euphony, and alternatives.

Reporting in nonfiction can be accurate, like a photograph taken merely to record. The best of nonfiction, however, often sets what it sees in a framework, what has happened elsewhere or in the past. As the recorded events march before the reader, a scrim lifts to convey other dimensions, sight becomes insight, reporting becomes art.

Like fiction, nonfiction accomplishes its purpose better when it evokes emotion in the reader. We might prefer everyone on earth to be rational, but the fact is that people are moved more by what they feel than by what they understand. Great orators as well as great nonfiction writers have always understood that.

Nonfiction concerns itself with people, places, and ideas. Ideas seem to attract readers when developed through anecdotes involving people. Some nonfiction writers say they are jealous of novelists who create their characters; they are stuck with life, the characters in the news, the people they have to interview. No matter, the techniques for rounding the characters and making them come alive are similar.

When the nonfiction writer reports to the reader about a living person, the writer has two options. He can characterize the person the way a layman would or he can strive to give the person life on the page. In biography, the choice is clear. If the characters do not breathe, the exercise of a.s.sembling the facts of their lives may be of use to scholars but not to readers. When it comes to making the people we write about in nonfiction spring to life on the page, the techniques are useful for all nonfiction writers, not just biographers and historians. Too often, though, what we get in newspapers and magazines is the person's name and t.i.tle and little else, sometimes a photo or drawing. We may know what the person looks like, but we don't yet know the person. Characterization matters. The reader's attention to a story and the pleasure he derives from it is often measured by how alive the partic.i.p.ants seem, which stems, of course, from the skill with which they are portrayed.

It doesn't take much to make people come alive on the page. Novelists learn to provide vitality to minor characters in a sentence or two, usually by selecting one characteristic that is unusual. You will recall the beginning of Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run?, in which the sixteen-year-old protagonist is described as "a little ferret of a kid." Our dictionaries are full of animals, fish, birds, and insects that can be used in the characterization of people: the wolf as predator, or someone who wolfs down food; the yearling as innocent; the toucan as beak-nosed; falcons and hawks as high-fliers; the bat whose sonar for staying out of trouble is more effective than the sonar of most politicians. Plants, from the p.r.i.c.kly cactus to the abrasive nettle, are also useful to help characterize. Live-forevers, weeds, invasive clover, fast-growing fescue, wild-flowers are among the suggestive names of plants that a writer can use for brief and colorful characterizations.

The best way to make a person come alive is by rendering the person's appearance with some specific detail. Here are some examples from articles, news stories, and books. See if you can detect the key words or phrases that characterize the person: The garage attendant's hat was parked perilously on an excessive amount of hair.

This characterization has a touch of humor in that the verb "parked" is used for the garage attendant's hat. The visual image is of an ill-fitting cap that might fall off at any moment. It's enough to enliven this pa.s.sing character.

How do you enliven an accountant?

His accountant is an owl of a man who keeps one eyelid half shut not because of an affliction but because there is much in this world he is not prepared to see.

Note the key words and phrases. "Owl" characterizes the man physically, the rest of the sentence characterizes him psychologically.

John Updike, who writes much nonfiction in addition to his celebrated novels, can characterize in a sentence: His face is so clean and rosy it looks skinned.