Money
Making money
How to self-edit: an extract from Write On!
Journalist and author, Martin Gurdon's book Write On! aims to help wannabe writers learn the tricks of the trade. In this extract he guides us through the art of making yourself clear:
Are you keen to learn a foreign language? If so, perhaps you would like to 'speak Italian like a Roman'?
Then again, perhaps not. I came across this gem in a column of small ads. It was the work of a linguist keen to pass on his skills, and I can only hope that his grasp of the Italian language as it is spoken is better than his use of English when written down.
Why? Simple. The Romans spoke Latin, not Italian. Yes I know the natives of Rome the city speak Italian, and they might be described as 'Romans', but Italian is the indigenous language of modern Italy, and that innocent-looking, five-word phrase contains a very clumsy mistake.
Such errors are all too easy to make. Sentences and paragraphs that have more than one meaning, or are actually nonsense when read over with a little more thought, are waiting in the shadows of your brain, and will take great pleasure in leaping onto the page and embarrassing you.
I once made the mistake of using the phrase 'sound and fury' when describing a rally driver who was on the way to winning an event. This was a lift from Shakespeare's Macbeth, and has become a piece of descriptive writing shorthand. However, it had to go when a colleague pointed out that the sentence from which it was lifted actually ran, 'It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' This wasn't really the word picture I wanted to paint, and I suspect the rally man would have been less than amused if this clunker hadn't been spotted and put to death.
Not everyone would have noticed or cared, but given that you can't legislate for who will see what you've written, it's worth weeding out such anomalies before they get the chance. Taking the trouble to do so means that you've genuinely read what you've written, and where necessary changed it in a dispassionate way.
The incorrect use of words can also torture or tickle readers. Here's another small ad:
Exploding organic health care business (people and animals) needs distributors.
Are the advertisers really looking for distributors to blow up people and animals with organic healthcare products, or is the business itself about to detonate?
I think what they're trying to say is that demand for their wares is 'exploding', but the word is in the wrong place and out of context, because it hasn't been explained. Really, something like: 'Successful human and animal healthcare products business seeks distributors' would have said the same thing without raising a titter.
Words can trip you up just by an unfortunate juxtaposition. So can the omission of words that 'bridge' subjects, people and happenings. I came across a classic example of this in a book manuscript, whose author, impatient to get her work under the noses of potential publishers, had sent it out without giving it a final, necessary polish. A single sentence described a small boy visiting his grandmother, and playing with his dog in her kitchen. It went something like this:
Lewis's grandmother smiled as he played 'tug' with the spaniel. His ears flapped up and down wildly as they skidded across the kitchen floor.
Exactly whose ears are flapping up and down? Rationally we know they don't belong to the child, unless he has some horrible medical condition, and the writer is referring to the spaniel, but the sentence is badly constructed, and does not, in the strictest sense, make the distinction clear. It should. Detail of this sort ought to be explicit. Forcing the reader to second-guess what is meant really isn't good enough, nor is saying 'but isn't it obvious?' There ought to be no room for doubt or confusion, and left as it is, this sentence has a degree of accidental comedy to it.
Changing a few words would have made it entirely straightforward. So, it could have read:
Lewis's grandmother smiled as he played 'tug' with the spaniel. The dog's ears flapped up and down wildly as he and Lewis skidded across the kitchen floor.
I've given ownership to the ears by using the words 'the dog's'. Changing 'as they skidded across the kitchen floor' to 'as he and Lewis skidded' is being slightly pedantic, but I don't want any implication that it's the ears or grandmother who are doing the skidding.
Yes, I know the end product is a bit longer, that the title of this chapter is 'Cut the Crap', and one of the mantras of this book has been that simple is generally best, and simplicity and brevity often go together. However, if adding three or four words changes writing from grotty, woolly English into something that makes sense, then it's worth doing.
