Black Hippy Chick Day: Choosing Your Words Carefully

Abstractions are one of the most common criticisms you’ll see in this workshop. Abstract language deals in ideas rather than objects, and generalisations rather than details. Which of the following two sentences is better?

As he talked, Mr Ben-Gurion transformed.
As he talked, Mr Ben-Gurion transformed from a rather tired man suffering from influenza, sitting in a blue bathrobe in a hotel room, to one of his nation’s greatest visionaries. (Harry Gilroy)

What about:
Senor Maza was nervous.
Nervously, Senor Maza twisted a yellow pencil in his hands. (Lindesay Parrott)

Or:
Mr Khrushchev read from a text rather than making an unrehearsed statement.
Mr Khrushchev read from a text rather than making an unrehearsed statement. The silver-rimmed glasses that he uses for reading gave him an unusual professorial look. (Willian J. Jordan)

Those little dashes of colour are powerful. They put an image in your readers’ minds and give them a huge amount of information to draw from. That bout of influenza and yellow pencil can tell your readers a hundred different things that simple abstractions never will. If you must use abstractions, couch them in specifics. What do they look like? What do they smell like? How do they play out in the real world?

A picture speaks a thousand words. It’s a cliché because it’s true, and even writers must use pictures. We get an extra superpower that artists and photographers don’t: We usually get to choose which details go in the picture. A happy setting might come with a blue sky. Discomfort might occur in a wet and icy room. Love might play out on a boat at midnight. You have the power to pick your pictures, so choose them well.

Even adjectives come in abstracts. Your readers won’t see much if you mention a “beautiful vase.” Beauty is nonspecific and means different things to different people, so even a red vase would be better than a beautiful one. At least it puts an image in a reader’s head, and that’s something worth shooting for.

Feelings are abstract, too, so a teary eye is usually better than a sad one. Furrowed brows are usually better than anxiety. This doesn’t need to be complicated. William Carlos Williams knew it well:

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens