Spunk & Bite Page 23
29. The use of ephemeral pop imagery in figures of speech—we call it ephemeragy—can be as captivating as, well, Spider Man’s web-goo. When the image is hot and deftly used, it amuses readers and makes the writer look with-it. But the risks are high: An image can be perceived as too obscure, too dated, too out of place. Pick a pop star, politician, and cartoon character (or other rhetorical figures) and use them in separate similes. Examples: “forearms . . . the size of Danny DeVito” (Dave Barry); “He . . . felt [his baby’s] . . . soft kitten belly, her ribs like pasta. She looked a little like George Costanza” (Matthew Klam).
30. When it comes to that much-trumpeted quality called “edge,”editors look for writing that pushes some element—situation, event, imagery, language—to the limit, to that precarious divide between uneasiness and displeasure. In literary expression, edge has less to do with foul-mouthing than with words in turmoil and an irresistibly nervous-making style: dueling voices, conflicted grammar, agitated repetition, odd usages, psychotic metaphors—whatever waggles a reader’s ganglia. Here’s a sample of Martin Amis’s agitated style:
As he climbed from the car a boobjob of a raindrop gutflopped on his baldspot. Lovetown: a sprung-rhythm land of earthquake, brushfire, and mudslide, of stripmall freeway and gridlock, of . . . blackeye, of whitehair, of yellowtongue. (Yellow Dog).
Write a few pages of biography as if some madness forces your hand, like there’s no telling your limits. Then edit the lunacy not to dull it, but to hone its edge to a diamond keenness—to a pointedness that, as much as anything, yields spunk and bite.
ALSO BY ARTHUR PLOTNIK
The Elements of Editing
The Man Behind the Quill: Jacob Shallus, Calligrapher of the United States Constitution
The Elements of Authorship
The Elements of Expression
The Urban Tree Book
Footnotes
To return to the corresponding text, click on the reference number or “Return to text.”
Chapter 16
1Sali Tagliamonte and Chris Roberts. “So Weird; So Cool; So Innovative: The Use of Intensifiers in the Television Series Friends” (paper presented at a meeting of the American Dialect Society, Boston, Mass., 2004).
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*Seamus Heaney, from remarks at a reading
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Copyright © 2007 by Arthur Plotnik
Originally printed in hardcover November 2005.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Plotnik, Arthur.
Spunk & bite : a writer’s guide to bold, contemporary style / Arthur Plotnik.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-375-72335-3
1. Authorship. 2. English language—Rhetoric. 3. English language—Style. I. Title. II. Title: Spunk and bite.
PN147.P55 2007
808’.042—dc22 2006100292
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