Spunk & Bite
SPUNK
& BITE
CONTENTS
COVER PAGE
TITLE PAGE
PERMISSIONS/ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Flexibility / A LITTLE LIGHT UNSTRUNKTION
ONE / E. B. Whitewashed: A Starting Point
Freshness / THE WALLOP OF THE NEW
TWO / The Pleasures of Surprise
THREE / Extreme Expression
FOUR / Writers’ Words, Drop by Dottle
FIVE / Upgrading Your Colors
SIX / Joltingly Fresh Adverbs
Texture / WRITING INTO THE MOOD
SEVEN / Tense: A Sticky Choice
EIGHT / Diction: We Are the Words
NINE / The Punchy Trope
Word / LANGUAGE—AEROBATIC AND INCANDESCENT
TEN / How to Loot a Thesaurus
ELEVEN / Words with Music and Sploosh
TWELVE / Coining the Bonne Locution
THIRTEEN / Words with Foreign Umami
Force / STIMULATION BY ANY MEANS
FOURTEEN / Dialogue Tags with Oomph
FIFTEEN / Enallage: A Fun Grammatical Get
SIXTEEN / Intensifiers for the Feeble
SEVENTEEN / Opening Words: The Glorious Portal
EIGHTEEN / Closings: The Three-Point Landing
Form / LIFE BETWEEN THE MARKS
NINETEEN / The Joys of Hyper-Hyphenation
TWENTY / A License. To Fragment. Sentences.
TWENTY-ONE / The Poetry of Lists
TWENTY-TWO / The Art of the Semicolon
TWENTY-THREE / Daringly Quoteless Dialogue
Clarity / “A HOUSE OF GREAT SPICKNESS AND SPANNESS”
TWENTY-FOUR / The Feng Shui of Writing
TWENTY-FIVE / Hunting Down Danglers
TWENTY-SIX / Magic in the Names of Things
TWENTY-SEVEN / The Earnestly Engaging Sentence
Contemporaneity / A LEG UP ON THE COMPETITION
TWENTY-EIGHT / Writing for New Generations
TWENTY-NINE / Hot Pop and Ephemeragy
THIRTY / Edge: Writing at the Nervy Limits
THIRTY-ONE / Parting Words: Butterflies in the Killing Fields
EXERCISES FOR PRACTICE AND STUDY
ALSO BY ARTHUR PLOTNIK
COPYRIGHT
PERMISSIONS/ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With gratitude I acknowledge the kind permission of Elena Karina Byrne for use of lines from her poem, “Sex Mask,” as it appeared in Chelsea 76; and of Christina A. Thompson (Harvard Review), John Tait (American Literary Review), and Ronald Spatz (Alaska Review) for remarks they provided for an earlier article of mine.
For other helpful kindnesses, I thank Elfrieda M. Abbe and Jeff Reich of The Writer magazine; the reference staff of the Chicago Public Library; friends and former colleagues at the American Library Association; Sean Morris, Ilene Cooper, Rudy Joenk, and William Meehan; agent Ed Knappman and editor Jena Pincott; support team Plotnik/Taub; and my constant advisor and soul mate, Mary Phelan.
Portions of some chapters appeared, in earlier versions, in The Writer magazine and The Editorial Eye newsletter. —A.P.
INTRODUCTION
Sometimes when I’m digging for the right word, I long for a terrier-like acuity, a canine’s sensory gifts applied to language. Imagine if dogs ever figured out how to put that spunkiness and bite of theirs into action verbs, or to root around for bons mots with those lubricated snoots. We dry-and-fleshy-nosed writers could be in big trouble.
Some of us are there anyway. With so many gifted authors already sniffing their way to publication, with readers drawn to ever-new distractions, who can afford a writing-as-usual attitude? Not creative writers, not journalists, copywriters, or corporate communicators. Nor can writing students gear up in all the old ways. Even bloggers, even Match.com troubadors, must realize that in today’s forest an undistinguished post falls soundlessly.
One might wish to live by one’s words, but language or style that is less engaging, less stimulating than the competition, is, frankly, dead on arrival. Imagine legions of writers setting off on the marathon run to success. Among them are thousands who have mastered the basic skills of composition. Should you need to catch up, scores of worthy grammar/style books are standing by to help. But if your goal is to break away from the pack, some über force, some jack-rabbit anima has to inhabit your writing.
Enter this book. Looking at all types of contemporary writing, Spunk & Bite distills the elements that make for punch and vivacity; it demonstrates enlivening techniques, including those spurned by conventional guides; and it illustrates its advice with sparkling examples from our best writers. Although occasionally tweaking “correctness” to the times, Spunk & Bite is not another Strunk & White—as the iconic writer’s rule book Elements of Style is known; instead, it addresses those whose composition skills compare with the next writer’s, but who itch for creative ideas, smart locutions, and realistic takes on language for today’s media.
Not that I claim a hound’s quickness in seizing the prize; but I do have one special gift, perhaps the odd fruit of a life as editor, author, and reader: I see dead writing.
I see language that follows the rules but lacks the vigor and inventiveness ever to rise off the page. It talks to me; weeps over lessons learned too late. I feel its anguish, and sometimes as an editor I’ve applied a stitch here, a jolt there, so that it might stagger among the undead. But the only authentic way to enliven a piece of writing, give it corporeal clout, is to invigorate it at the outset. To this end, Spunk & Bite fosters some unorthodox approaches; it is not, however, about out-shrieking the next writer or trashing the language authorities. Its observations and advice (to be read in order or, after Chapter 1, randomly) are meant to energize writing and liberate it from certain outdated style conventions.
Of course, throwing off restraints is one thing; using newfound freedom is another. Will it be to create self-indulgent drivel, or adventurous art that engages editors and readers? If you aspire to the latter, if you write to get published and heard—or if you simply enjoy the pursuit of vivid language—then this spunky dog will hunt, I tell you, or I’m a French poodle.
—A.P., Chicago
Flexibility
A LITTLE LIGHT UNSTRUNKTION
ONE
E. B. WHITEWASHED:
A STARTING POINT
Place yourself in the background. Do not affect a breezy manner. Do not inject opinion. Use figures of speech sparingly. Avoid foreign languages. Prefer the standard to the offbeat.
What have we here—a gulag for deviant writers? Whenever I review those dictates from The Elements of Style, that cynosure of American composition by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, I feel I should make a dash for it, vault the gates into the free zone.
In the course of a long writing career, I have often been on the lam from Composition 101 and its constables, Strunk and White. After all, I want my opinion heard. I want to be offbeat. What writer doesn’t? I want to be so offbeat that crazed readers chase me down alleys. And yet I keep staggering back to The Elements of Style to review those sensible rules I want to savage—or embrace— in my next piece.
Schizoid? Not given the yin-and-yangness of today’s readership: half focused, half distracted; half in the armchair savoring the well-chosen word, half seeking thrills in the electronic wilds. Somehow the writer must flag attention in a swirl of divergent moods, trends, and affinities. If the idea of writing is indeed to be published and read, then writers want flexibility. They want both sheriff and outlaw roaming those right brains to rein in the yang or conspire with the yin. Of course, in brains attuned to the The Elements of Style, the sheriff is already on the scene—and he is one puissant little cuss. Just about every writer of American pros
e feels Strunk and White’s tug. How astonishing that this diminutive book has maintained such a hold on our writing. How did this happen? How is it justified? Which of Strunk and White’s teachings should writers respect? And which should they rebel against?
As an author of writing advice, I’ve tried repeatedly to answer such questions to my own satisfaction. And whenever I think I’ve done so, new waves of adulation for Elements of Style dampen my convictions. But one thing stays with me: Each time I return to Strunk and White’s otherwise purehearted classic, I discover what I can only describe as a certain troublesome whitewash in their approach. And though I’m not the only one to have discovered it, I’m the only one who’s going to tell you about it here and now, for your own good!
RULES VS USAGE: THE WARRING SIDES
Pound for pound, no American writing guide is more revered than the five-ounce Elements of Style, aka Strunk and White. No reference book sells more copies or draws gushier superlatives (Timeless!; Nonpareil!; The best book of its kind!). With some ten million copies rooted on as many reference shelves, Strunk and White has become the ivy (if not the kudzu) on our great walls of clarity and correctness.
Yet for all its glory, the book can be a magnet for bashers. For one thing, it is geriatric: First published in 1918, it underwent its fourth resuscitation in 2000. It is also small and vulnerable—as pokable as the Pillsbury doughboy for determined critics. Its two authors are thoroughly dead, white, and male. And the coddling it enjoys, together with the rules it imposes, makes rebel blood boil—as if Strunk and White were the imperial force in that battle for the language galaxy, the War of Rules versus Usage.
The War began in the late 1950s, pitting liberal language authorities against conservative ones. Taking a stand against elitist notions of correctness, the liberals argued that language derives its validity from actual use, and not from a bunch of prescribed forms. This so-called descriptive approach to standard English was viewed as toxic by the prescriptivists, who not only believed in established rules of expression, but supported a continuum of “worthiness” ranging from illiterate and vernacular to formal.
One such prescriptivist was the essayist and New Yorker writer E. B. (Elwyn Brooks) White, who condemned the descriptivist view of language as an “anything goes” position. Encouraged by a publisher, White entered the fray by updating a stern little handbook written in 1919 by William Strunk Jr., his English professor at Cornell—a privately printed book that Strunk had named The Elements of Style. White began the new Elements with a paean to Strunk and to the professor’s belief in “right and wrong.” He then livened up Strunk’s mundane points regarding grammar and form, closing with a classic piece of advice titled “An Approach to Style,” in which he showcased his own skills and warned against the excesses that tempt new and youthful writers. Except in this closing essay, the updated Elements addressed mainly a sampling of usage problems and what the authors saw as the most commonly violated fundamentals, a few dozen issues in grammar and composition. A small number of entries supported such fading niceties as the distinctions between shall and will, or reflected White’s antiquated bugaboos—for example, the sin of using fix to mean mend in formal English.
In White’s pre-digital view, there was little use for here-today, deleted-tomorrow language. Good writing was writing that would endure. Language needed vigor, yes, but also a certain hauteur to distinguish it from the rants of the undisciplined. And so he was quick to discourage use of the “offbeat”—vogue words, slang, and advertising-influenced locutions, vigorous though they were. Stick to the standard, White decreed, because “by the time this paragraph sees print, uptight, ripoff, rap, dude, vibes, copout, and funky will be the words of yesteryear.” That was some thirty years ago—and, dude, those words are still very much around.
But if White missed the mark with a few predictions, he scored a bull’s-eye with millions of struggling language users—those seeking a quick, authoritarian fix for shaky writing skills. Selective and quirky as it may be, The Elements of Style has succored multitudes of confused students and sloppy communicators. As a guide to the plain English style, the book may yet save America from choking on its own jargon and obfuscations.
What powers the little work as much as anything is its strict formulation of “correctness” in English. This is what sustains Strunk and White’s appeal in a world menaced by disorder, and what every writer must take seriously. Most readers quickly sense “correct” or disciplined patterns, whether or not they favor or even understand them. Jarring this sense of correctness can have opposite effects: It can lose readers, jerking them from the subject at hand into concerns about rules and wrongness; or—as Elements fails to make clear—if done artfully it can rocket words off the page. It can jolt readers awake. It can set them dancing.
RULES MEANT (SECRETLY) TO BE BENT
Therein lies the whitewash. Both Strunk and White knew well that bending the rules—judiciously breaking them—can give writing its distinction, its edge, its very style. Bending the rules can spring writers from ruts—get them out of themselves, out of the ordinary, and into prose that comes alive, gets noticed, gets published.
As White himself wrote in 1957, “I felt uneasy at posing as an expert on rhetoric, when the truth is I write by ear, always with difficulty and seldom with any exact notion of what is taking place under the hood.” And Strunk earlier affirmed that “the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the readers will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation.”
What is “compensating merit?” To me (if I might again violate Style Rule Number One and emerge from the background) it means forceful, stimulating writing. Punchy. Engaging. Several of White’s principles—intended to sedate hyperactive students— instead can chill the creative impulse. Try achieving force, originality, or texture without injecting opinion or leaping from the background—without the figures of speech that drive rhetoric; without the breeziness that freshens stale prose; without the foreign borrowings that lend vivézza; without the offbeat; without a freaking exclamation point!
Writing is risk taking. We bungee jump from a sentence and pray the cord stops short of catastrophe. We day-trade in language, gambling that a hot image will hold up. White described expression as “a living stream, shifting, changing, receiving new strength from a thousand tributaries.” And yet, he advised, “there is simply a better chance of doing well if the writer holds a steady course, enters the stream of English quietly, and does not thrash about.”
Who, then, draws strength from these tributaries that feed written expression? Whose prose comes alive in the churning waters? Some writers “thrash about” and go under—but others make waves. White’s admonitions may apply to students in a composition class, or to those with riveting stories that best tell themselves. But what happens in today’s media-mad din, when becalmed expression meets overloaded and understimulated brains? In White’s era, the well-wrought essay found receptive minds; readers willingly entered into quiet dialogue with authors. But the last several decades have brought New Journalism and its rude vitality; in-your-face media; manic Internet blab; the voices of ethnic, pop, youth, and other subcultures; globalization; class meltdown; and mass attention deficit. In this sometimes disparaging, sometimes liberating environment, expressiveness calls for break-a-leg performance. It demands rock-solid command of the language, yes, but also aggressiveness, surprise, exuberance, responsiveness, intensity, rebelliousness—most of which White seemed to disdain, except in his own prose.
In his essays and three unconventional children’s classics, White went his own way as a writer. Yet in Elements of Style, he offered little encouragement for others to do so. Instead, he warned aspiring writers against the “disinclination to submit to discipline.” But how inclined to submission was White himself? As a youth, he skimped through Cornell University with “anemic” interests in everything but writing. Shunning his native
East Coast, he peddled roach powder in Minneapolis, reported for the Seattle Times, and served as a messboy aboard a ship cruising the Aleutian Islands before returning East as an advertising copywriter.
White considered himself disciplined, but took some wild leaps in both his life and his writing—including the death-defying stunt of telling others how to write.
He probably never meant to advise against taking chances, against drawing on all levels of language to animate expression, against demolishing a rule to get attention.
It just comes out that way.
LOCUTIONS WITH SPUNK AND BITE
Perceived correctness can be comforting to the reader, like a tidy house. But what distinguishes a piece of writing is the ambiance—the environmental mood—that language can create. That’s why locution, locution, locution is so important to us realtors of words.
In its broad sense, locution refers to a particular mode of speech—the use of a word, the turning of a phrase in some stylistic manner. It doesn’t have to be fancy. “If a thing can be done, why do it?” was one of poet Gertrude Stein’s typical locutions. The British, queenly locution, “We are not amused,” is an understated mode of expressing displeasure. And New Yorkers will recognize this locution as one of their own: “That terrific woman, which you should have married her!”
As distinctive ways of saying something, locutions tend to be judged on their aptness, inventiveness, color, sound, rhythm—the qualities that stimulate us, that make expression fetching or thrilling. “Spunk and bite” is our shorthand for such qualities, and in the following chapters we illustrate them with examples both eloquent and funky. My interest—and yours, as a writer in competition with others—lies not with hierarchies of speech, but with a rise from feeble locutions to bell-ringers.