Published in 1965, Dwight V. Swain’s “Techniques of the Selling Writer,” some feel, is a bit outdated. Written before the ubiquitous word processor, Google, and AI gives the book some age; however, after reading the book once and studying through it a second time, I think the book has good information. It is still in print, which speaks about the book’s endurance. The book has information for a freshman writer, like myself, or a senior writer. I’ll be studying through the book again and presenting some of my observations.
Dwight Swain (1915-1992) began his writing career in the 1930s. From publishing short stories, his writing evolved to include mysteries, westerns, and action-adventure stories. He was also a screenwriter.
Swain taught in the Professional Writing Program at the University of Oklahoma, where he oversaw the development of student writers. Students in the program submitted writing assignments. From these submissions, Swain drew many illustrations used to support his points in his nonfiction books about writing, such as Techniques of the Selling Writer, the focus of this discussion.
Writers and Words
In Chapter 2, Swain focuses on words; after all, he says, “A story is words strung on paper.” He puts grammatical syntax in second place, almost as if it’s nearly irrelevant. This may be a little hyperbolic, for a reader who comes across frequent grammatical blunders may forget about the story and focus on syntax.
Anyway, this chapter focuses on words. He argues that a beginning writer, like me, needs to learn three things: 1. How to choose the right words; 2. How to make copy vivid; and 3. How to keep the meaning clear.
In “How to find the right words,” Swain says that the job of a writer is the selection, arrangement, and description of words.
a. He argues that the selection of words is basic because they provide peepholes through which a reader looks into the lives of other people.
b. Words should be chosen depending on who is in view. A lawyer, for example, would use different words than a merchant.
c. Words vary depending on when a writer views a character. A teenager’s vocabulary differs from a manager’s vocabulary.
d. A character’s activity also affects his vocabulary. A physician would undoubtedly use one vocabulary in his office, another when he is leading worship, and yet another when lying in bed with his spouse.
e. The writer, Swain says, uses vocabulary, words, to stress important details of a character—color of hair, height, or other significant details.
f.
Words, Swain says, determine how readers view a character—through the eye of the hero, the villain, or the writer.
a. Words also determine the sequence of events—cause to effect, effect to cause, or chronologically.
b. Words bring the story to life through description. Rightly chosen, words allow the fragrance of flowers to waft from the printed page through the reader’s imagination, or chill him with the roar of a lion, or make him cringe at the sound of a pistol shot.
c. Write simple, short sentences, with short words in short paragraphs, he says. Though some writers abandon that suggestion with a flurry. While simplicity is a virtue, Swain thinks, the primary virtue is vividness. While simplicity and brevity are virtues, vividness should be the objective.
d.
Swain tackles the issue of how to write vividly in “Making Copy Come Alive.” He begins with nouns—names for something. The noun should be vivid. “Mustang” is more vivid than “car,” which is more vivid than “automobile,” which is more vivid than “machine.” The more specific, the more vivid—“T-bone” is more vivid than “steak,” which is more vivid than “meat.” “He sat down to a T-bone” is more vivid than “he sat down to a steak.”
One other important question is gauging the reader’s understanding of the nouns. Swain offers two principles: 1. You guess, and 2. You hope. To help the reader, choose the particular noun over the general, the definite over the vague, and the concrete over the abstract.
As he leaves nouns, the author offers one parting observation: “The singularity of a noun is almost always stronger than the plural.
From nouns, the author moves on to verbs—action words. Words that show something is happening. He has two suggestions. First, stay away from “to be’s” because they are static; they don’t move action forward; they stop. The writer needs active verbs, verbs showing that something is happening.
Second, the worst of all “to be” verbs is the past perfect tense marked by the helping word “had.” This word snaps the writer into the past, stopping forward movement, which, he says, is the kiss of death for a story. There are many ways to describe past events without jerking the reader to a standstill. For example, “He was impressed that this girl won the high school ‘Most-Likely-to-Succeed Award.’”
For pronouns, words that stand for nouns, he advises to make sure that the antecedent is clear, that each pronoun refers back to its correct noun.
Adjectives, words modify nouns, help nail down a meaning more precisely.
A little creative wordsmithing can eliminate most adverbs, words modifying verbs and almost always ending in -ly.
Ending his discussion of word choice, Swain says that vividness is the target; it even outranks brevity.
Before leaving words for other fields, Swain makes one last point: a writer needs to be aware of both the denotation and connotation of words, with emphasis on the connotation. He illustrates with the word “propaganda,” which denotes information put forth in a systematic manner. However, the word has picked up a negative connotation—falsehood, distortion, dishonesty, and misrepresentation. Using the wrong noun or adjective, for example, can prejudice the mind of the reader. Let the writer describe a character as “sullen,” “wanton,” or “ineffectual,” and he may damn him to a fate worse than if he had called him a thief. “So,” Swain says, “beware! Pay attention not just to words as words, but also to the feelings they mirror when people use them.”
Besides the important, elemental choice of words, Swain suggests other areas in which writers frequently go awry. First, they allow their sentence structure to become monotonous. Too many short sentences or, conversely, too many wordy sentences can fatigue the reader. At the same time, a writer should be aware of variety for variety’s sake. “Syntactical acrobatics,” he says, distract the reader, detract from the story, and can lead to the sure road of disaster.
Second, a writer can become tangled in his writing and allow the subject and verb to become separated. The advice he offers is not to try and cram too much into a sentence, especially if it separates the subject and verb. If a sentence becomes so complicated that it needs a few words of explanation, in all likelihood it’s too long.
Third, a writer can misplace adverbs, which he says should either be at the beginning or the end of a sentence. There may be a few occasions when the adverb could be placed right next to a verb it modifies, but most often the effect of the modifier is lost upon the reader.
Fourth, the unintentional repetition of words or phrases, which should be caught in careful proofreading, can jar a reader and distract from the story. On the other hand, if a writer wants repetition in order to achieve a particular effect, he should remember the cliché, “three’s the charm.”
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