Bestselling authors may write great paragraphs, but we can learn ways to make them even better.
A great paragraph from The Key to Midnight by Dean Koontz:
The club wasn’t completely dark: Two low-wattage security lights glowed above the smoky blue mirrors behind the bar and made the beveled edges of the glass gleam like the blades of well-stropped knives. An eerie green bulb marked each of the four exits. Beyond the bar stools, in the main room, two hundred chairs at sixty tables faced a small stage. The nightclub was silent, deserted.
What we might see for an improved version:
The club was almost dark. Behind the bar, two low-wattage security lights glowed above the smoky blue mirrors, making the beveled glass edges gleam like blades of well-stropped knives. An eerie green bulb dimly lighted each of the four exits. Beyond the bar stools, chairs stood at random around fifty tables in front of a small stage. The nightclub was silent. Deserted.
Some logic for making improvments:
- We do best by stating what something is, not what it isn’t. Therefore, it’s better to say the club was almost dark, rather than say it wasn’t completely dark.
- The focus of sight needs to be described before we’re told what was seen, so “behind the bar” needs to move to the front of the sentence.
- Writing is strengthened whenever we can replace the meaning of a prepositional phrase with an adjective. “Beveled glass edges” is better than “beveled edges of the glass.”
- Since the feel of the paragraph focuses on the darkness and the small amount of light, we can strengthen that feel by having the eerie green bulbs dimly light the exits rather than simply “mark” them.
- “In the main room” sounds like the viewpoint character is looking through a door into another room, but he’s already entered the room, standing near the bar. We might say, “in the main part of the room,” but that’s stating the obvious. Readers will get the picture without that phrase at all, so we should leave it out.
- To add emphasis, giving even more attention to the empty feel of the room, we can change the last explanatory word, deserted, to a standalone sentence.
