“If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,” said Gatsby. “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.”
Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.
It is important to note the repetition of key words over significant spaces of text. The word vanished echoes the end of chapter 1, Gatsby’s vanishing act. But enchanted anticipates the phrase at the end of the book, “a transitory enchanted moment.”
It just so happened that I was visiting Long Island while I was rereading this passage—I couldn’t have been more than ten miles from the imaginary West Egg—when I noticed that it fell on page 92. That is, page 92 of a 180-page novel! The physical, structural, virtual center of the novel.
What are we to learn from this? It should remind us that a truly great work of art is exquisitely and finely wrought. It should reveal how purposeful is the strategic vision of the author. Whatever its effect in Gatsby, it also serves as a writing lesson for the rest of us, whether we are writing fiction, nonfiction, memoir, screenplays, or poetry.
WRITING LESSONS
1. Common objects—the sea, the ferryboat, the forest, the moon, a steeple—can resonate subtly in stories and lend texture to your meaning even though they may derive from classic symbols or archetypes.
2. Stories have settings, of course (such as the north shore of Long Island in the Jazz Age). But the internal geography of a narrative can convey its own associations and influences, from the insularity of an island to the wasteland of an industrial heap to the golden metropolis to an artificial paradise. Let the landscape—in all its variety—tell its version of the story.
3. If you have a key word or phrase in a work of any significant length, remember that its repetition will magnify its significance and help readers connect various parts of a story.
4. When you want readers to see with their senses, use specific concrete details, images, and examples. When you want them to reflect, climb up the ladder for language that conveys ideas.
5. When you have a fabulous and memorable word or phrase—such as “capacity for wonder”—place it strategically at the end of a sentence or, better yet, a paragraph. Followed by white space, this language stands out from the rest, inviting the reader to pause and complete the thought.
6. Your writing should move, move, move. From concrete to abstract. From specific to general. From idea to example. From information to anecdote. From exposition to dialogue. A good book is a perpetual motion machine that drives a story and lets the reader feel the energy.
7. Words have denotations—their literal meanings—but also connotations, which are their associative meanings. There is no better way to illustrate this than through colors. Green is green, a visual perception. Daisy’s light is green. But think of all the associations that come with that color: the natural order; full speed ahead; money, money, money; but also inexperience, nausea, envy, and greed. The lawn is blue—a color we usually associate in a positive sense with sky. Here it conjures up warped values and a closed society.
8. Mark Twain was right: the difference between just the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. Be adventurous with words—even invent new ones. But beware of misunderstanding or over-interpretation, either by readers or editors.
9. Take command of the conventions of typography and punctuation, but realize they can function as rhetorical tools and not just rules. Some ancient examples of punctuation come from scripts for actors in which the writer or director helps the actor figure out the points of emphasis and the dramatic pauses. Used purposefully, punctuation can help you build elements of suspense, surprise, delight, confusion, delay, and much more.
10. The big writing lesson is this: if you have some very powerful idea or image—something of great interest and importance—introduce it early in the work, bring it back into view in the middle, and reveal its great power at the end.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Preface to the Tenth Anniversary Edition
Introduction: A Nation of Writers
Part One. NUTS AND BOLTS 1. Begin sentences with subjects and verbs.
2. Order words for emphasis.
3. Activate your verbs.
4. Be passive-aggressive.
5. Watch those adverbs.
6. Take it easy on the -ings.
7. Fear not the long sentence.
8. Establish a pattern, then give it a twist.
9. Let punctuation control pace and space.
10. Cut big, then small.
Part Two. SPECIAL EFFECTS 11. Prefer the simple over the technical.
12. Give key words their space.
13. Play with words, even in serious stories.
14. Get the name of the dog.
15. Pay attention to names.
16. Seek original images.
17. Riff on the creative language of others.
18. Set the pace with sentence length.
19. Vary the lengths of paragraphs.
20. Choose the number of elements with a purpose in mind.
21. Know when to back off and when to show off.
22. Climb up and down the ladder of abstraction.
23. Tune your voice.
Part Three. BLUEPRINTS 24. Work from a plan.
25. Learn the difference between reports and stories.
26. Use dialogue as a form of action.
27. Reveal traits of character.
28. Put odd and interesting things next to each other.
29. Foreshadow dramatic events and powerful conclusions.
30. To generate suspense, use internal cliffhangers.
31. Build your work around a key question.
32. Place gold coins along the path.
33. Repeat, repeat, and repeat.
34. Write from different cinematic angles.
35. Report and write for scenes.
36. Mix narrative modes.
37. In short works, don’t waste a syllable.
38. Prefer archetypes to stereotypes.
39. Write toward an ending.
Part Four. USEFUL HABITS 40. Draft a mission statement for your work.
41. Turn procrastination into rehearsal.
42. Do your homework well in advance.
43. Read for both form and content.
44. Save string.
45. Break long projects into parts.
46. Take an interest in all crafts that support your work.
47. Recruit your own support group.
48. Limit self-criticism in early drafts.
49. Learn from your critics.
50. Own the tools of your craft.
Part Five. BONUS TOOLS 51. Take advantage of narrative numbers.
52. Express your best thought in the shortest sentence.
53. Match your diction to your writing purpose.
54. Create a mosaic of detail to reveal character.
55. Look for the “inciting incident” to kick-start your story.
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Writing Tools Quick List
About the Author
Also by Roy Peter Clark
In Praise of Roy Peter Clark’s Writing Tools
A Preview of The Art of X-Ray Reading
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by Roy Peter Clark
Cover design by Keith Hayes
Cover photograph by Andrew Michael / Getty Images
Cover © 2016 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Preface, Part 5: Bonus Tools, and excerpt from The Art of X-Ray Reading
copyright © 2016 by Roy Peter Clark
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First ebook edition: January 2008
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“Uncle Jim” from Liquid Paper: New and Selected Poems, by Peter Meinke, © 1991. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
A version of chapter 52 appeared as an essay in the New York Times on Sept. 7, 2013. Versions of chapter 55 appeared on the Poynter Institute website and in The Writer magazine.
ISBN 978-0-316-02840-0
E3-20160722-JV-PC
Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer Page 25
