The VERB Writing Ezine - July '07

CLEANING UP PROSE

He was neither fat nor thin. He was neither handsome nor ugly. He was not rich or poor.

Well, what the heck was he?

These are inverted descriptions. They focus on the negative instead of the positive. The imagination, however, cannot flourish when it's merely told what is not.

Tell the reader what is.

EXAMPLE:
Physically, he was nondescript. Not blond like surfers, not buff like bodybuilders, not tanned like lifeguards.

CLEANED UP:
His hair shimmered bright orange, not blond like the surfers. His frame shouted scrawny, not buff like the bodybuilders. His skin glared pasty white and freckled, not tanned like the lifeguards.

EXAMPLE:
She lived in an upscale area of Greeley, but the house wasn’t a mansion. It didn’t have the gated entrance, the security system or the well-manicured lawn.

CLEANED UP:
She lived in an upscale area of Greeley, but her house, a humble white Ranch, stood on a corner lot with a small swimming pool and brightly-colored toys in the yard.

EXAMPLE:
By the time she reached the window, she saw the beast approaching the very chair she had occupied less than five minutes ago. It wasn't a wolf or even a large dog that surveyed the area, but it was a frightening sight.

CLEANED UP:
By the time she reached the window, she saw the beast approaching the very chair she had occupied less than five minutes ago. It walked on all fours, like a wolf or dog, but it surveyed the area with the head of a snake. Shiny. Black. Demonic.

TESTIMONIAL

"The Opinion as a whole was beneficial, but I especially found intoxicating your psychological study of my protagonist. Knowing the why behind his actions is as important as the what. Thanks ever so much!"

Frederick Hill

SAMPLE OF EXCELLENCE

What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air.

How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”—was that it?—“I prefer men to cauliflowers”—was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace—Peter Walsh.

He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished—how strange it was!—a few sayings like this about cabbages.

- VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway

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