The Stylist

What does it mean to write with style?

Before I answer that, let me ask you a question. Name three people whose writing style you admire? Having trouble? If you are, it would be perfectly reasonable. Why? We don’t seem to value a person’s writing style anymore. We read for information or leisure. We don’t seem to care much about someone’s speaking style either. It is still valued, but mainly in high school and college classrooms. Take a look at a book on great speeches. The two most anthologized ones are Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address or Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech. They are not selected solely for their historical value, but for the way they were composed. And even though we don’t have a recording of Lincoln presenting the Gettysburg Address, it is easy to imagine how he would have recited it.

Think about how many Americans typically say, "I really enjoyed the author’s style." Not many. We like a good story or a clear report or a good manual. Some computer manuals make attempts to sound funny. But overall, we’re more likely to want to know "just the facts."

To express what you have to say in a way that differentiates yourself from others, you need style. What are the techniques that can distinguish what you have to say from others? You may have an idea what you would like to say, but may not know how you want to say it.

So let’s talk about six ways you can make this happen, or six ways I can help you make it happen.

Being original

If you want people to take notice of what you say, say things in an original way. If you’re writing a memoir about childhood, you could say, "Old people seemed to have scary-looking hands. The skin was all yellowy and spotted." Or you could say it this way, "Adults had misshapen, knuckling hands loose in their skin like bones in bags." This was written by Annie Dillard. That’s originality.

Showing, Not Telling

Many people have a tendency to explain a story rather than show a story. Here is an example of explaining: "I was lucky enough to rent a house that had big windows because I always wanted to have a view of the countryside." Can you see it in your mind? I can’t. Here is how Alice Walker expressed it: "It was a house of many windows, low, wide, nearly floor to ceiling in the living room, which faced the meadow, and it was from one of these that I first saw our closest neighbor a large white horse, cropping grass, flipping its mane, and ambling about." Can you see it now?

Being clear

If you leave a reader scratching his or her head, you have a problem. So, consider this sentence about the value of growing up on a farm: "You might not make a whole lot of money by being a farmer, but it sure is rewarding." Okay. Does that clear things up? Are you convinced? How about this from Wendell Berry: "Finally, I think we must allow for the possibility that a family farm might be very small or marginal and that it might not entirely support a family. In such cases, though the economic return might be reduced, the values of the family owned and family worked small farm are still available both to the family and to the nation." I think you get the point.

Being concise

Nature writers need to be concise. So do travel writers. They may be describing something you’ve never seen. Here’s the description of a toad: "When spring comes around, toads start coming out of the ground now that the warm weather has arrived." I know what spring feels like. I know what toads look like. I even know what the ground looks like. But do I know anything more about toads than I did before? Furthermore, do I even care? Here’s how George Orwell put it: "The common toad salutes the coming of spring after his own fashion, which is to emerge from a hole in the ground, where he has lain buried since the previous autumn, and crawl as rapidly as possible toward the nearest suitable patch of water." Are you at least a bit interested now?

Avoiding wordiness

You might try to make something sound more interesting than it is by using lots of words, but it usually won’t work. Here’s an example. "At an auction on eBay a few weeks ago Charlie Sheen’s Mazarati had only a puny bid of $5,000 and that was an hour before the auction ended. I couldn’t believe my eyes. So I waited until 15 minutes before the auction ended, and checked back. It was still $5,000. Wow. It was three in the morning West Coast time, so I figured everybody was asleep. I put in a bid for $10,000 maybe eight minutes before the auction ended. I walked away from the computer, came back with my heart beating really fast, and checked the final bid, figuring it would be mine. It wasn’t. The car had sold for $88,000." Do we need all that stuff? How about my edited version: "There were just eight minutes remaining before the bidding ended on eBay for Charlie Sheen’s Mazarati. I placed a bid for $10,000 and crossed my fingers. When I came back I looked at the final sale: it was $88,000. Oh well, maybe next time."

Being coherent

Life is just one damn thing after another. So is writing. How does this CEO’s memoir sound? "He struggled with the final report, but the achieved results wasn’t worth the paper it was written on." Does that sound coherent to you? Maybe my version is better: "He struggled with the final report, but he finally gave up. He just could not communicate his ideas clearly."

Having a way with words

If you are communicating something special, don’t you want your words to sound special, perhaps even poetic? Can you sound poetic about the frustrations of working in a committee? How’s this? "The trouble with working in the committee is everybody is thinking about himself or about herself. This basically takes up so much time that you never get around to getting things done you had planned to." Well, that sentence is not incorrect, but it is rather clunky. Try this from physician/writer Lewis Thomas: "Thus when committees gather, each member is necessarily an actor, uncontrollably acting out the part of himself, reading the lines that identify him, asserting his identity. This takes quite a lot of time and energy, and while it is going on there is little chance of anything else getting done." Now read it out loud. The passage has rhythm, just like music. But it’s not just music. It has meaning.