In reading a bestseller, you should find paragraphs that almost take your breath away. You say, “I wish I could write like that.” Maybe you can, but not without practice.
If we work hard to find ways to make it even better, we can absorb some of that skill into our own writing voices.
Great words from All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr:
Her Majesty, the Austrians call their cannon, and for the past week these men have tended to it the way worker bees might tend to a queen. They’ve fed her oils, repainted her barrel, lubricated her wheels; they’ve arranged sandbags at her feet like offerings.
What we might see for an improved version:
Her Majesty, the Austrians call their cannon. For the last week, they have tended to its needs the way worker bees might serve their queen. They’ve fed her oils, repainted her barrel, and lubricated her wheels. They’ve arranged sandbags at her feet like offerings of worship.
Logic for making improvements:
- The word “and” is called a “coordinate” conjunction, which means it should join like “Calling their cannon” and “tending to it” are two different actions. While it’s not wrong to use “and” as a transitional word, leaving out “and,” making two sentences, gives a distinct focus on each action.
- “The last week” might be slightly better than “the past week,” since “past” doesn’t necessarily mean the week immediately previous.
- The pronoun “they” works better than “these men,” because readers already have the picture of male soldiers. We don’t need to be told they were men.
- Whenever we have the pronoun “it,” we should look for ways to give better definition of what “it” is. So the men “tended to it.” What is the antecedent? The cannon. For a more complete picture, we might say, “the men tended to its needs.”
- We have the words “tended” and “tend” in the same sentence, which is an allowable redundancy. Yet we might ask if we could deepen the meaning by showing the men’s exceptional regard to the needs of the cannon. They would be expected to “tend” to the cannon, but they would “serve” a queen. So in the second occurrence of “tend,” let’s use “serve.”
- We need the conjunction “and” before “lubricated” in the item list.
- Instead of a semicolon, a punctuation that is falling into disuse, let’s use a period after “wheels.”
- “Like offerings” sounds like we’re dropping coins into a plate passed down the rows at church on Sunday morning. To improve the picture, we might write: “like offerings of worship.”
