This Is How to Write With Energy and Specificity

This is damn fine writing:

“Netflix currently functions, by any measure, at a world-class level. As the year of the pandemic upends entertainment companies—Disney’s crippled theme parks, Warner Bros.’ furloughed blockbusters, AMC’s shuttered theaters—Netflix is having a moment. A moment of prestige, with a record 160 Emmy Award nominations, eclipsing the long-dominant HBO, and more Oscar nods than any other media company. A moment of influence, adding almost as many customers in the first six months of the year as in all of 2019, extending its reach to nearly 200 million subscribers in 190 countries. And a moment of profits, with sales up 25% year over year, earnings more than doubled and its stock up 50%, as most of the market gyrates wildly just to scratch back to even. Recent market cap: $213.3 billion.”

Sarah Koenig Can Write!

“Koenig writes like real people talk. Instead of telling us about ‘the defendant,’ she describes ‘the cookie baker’ facing a felony conviction for offering a marijuana cookie to an unknowing acquaintance. The man who assaulted a woman at a bar becomes the ‘ass slapper.’”

—Lessons for Writers From Serial’s Year in a Courthouse

When the Acting Is As Brilliant As the Writing

Can a Good Writer Write Anything?

I’m republishing this commentary by Paul Stregevsky, which he wrote in response to an article that argued most tech writers can only do tech writing.

Yes, Carl: We writers are one-trick ponies.

That’s why Shakespeare wrote such second-rate sonnets.

Why humorist Gene Weingarten didn’t deserve his Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

Why lawyer Scott Turow failed at crafting legal thrillers.

Why nonfiction writers Twain, Orwell, and E.B. White gave us such forgettable fiction as Tom Sawyer, 1984, and Charlotte’s Web.

Why scientists Stephen Gould, Carl Sagan, and Neil deGrasse Tyson were such failed popularizers.

Why Oscar Hammerstein III and Alan Jay Lerner, who wrote such memorable plays (Oklahoma, My Fair Lady), wrote such forgettable lyrics.

Damn Fine Writing

“Leading network news anchor Brian Williams has been placed on double-public probation by NBC News for six months, and won’t likely return to his throne. Meanwhile, over on the cable end of the dial, top news-jester Jon Stewart has told Comedy Central he’s done with the big chair and wants to do something else. Their coincidentally simultaneous exits have created something akin to a full employment act for the press corps—with endless news coverage from the hard-news guys and reflections and verdicts from members of the commentariat. Even I got two columns out of the Williams affair, and at the urging my editors, here I am on my third!”

—Jack Shafer

My Favorite Movie and TV Monologues

1. A Few Good Men


2. The Newsroom


3. Pulp Fiction


4. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip


5. Malice


6. The West Wing


7. Scent of a Woman


8. A Time to Kill


9. Glengarry Glen Ross


10. Good Will Hunting


11. Scandal


12. The West Wing


13. Demolition Man


14. The Wolf of Wall Street


15. Charlie Wilson’s War


16. Entourage


17. Entourage


18. Independence Day


19. The American President


20. Any Given Sunday


21. Network


22. Catch Me if You Can


23. Wall Street


24. American Gangster


25. Boiler Room


26. Boiler Room


27. Bulworth


28. Whiplash


29. Up in the Air


30. Sports Night


31. Sports Night


32. Sports Night

My Favorite Movie Dialogues

1. Breaking Bad


2. The Social Network


3. The Social Network


4. The Social Network


5. Primary Colors


6. The West Wing


7. Good Will Hunting


8. Shawshank Redemption

The Easiest Way to Improve Your Writing: Read the Work of First-Rate Writers

1. Here’s an example from last weekend’s Times magazine:

“Paying to simulate backbreaking labor under the watchful eye of a demanding authority figure seems to be a common desire these days. When I type ‘sledgehammer’ into Google later that day, the first suggestion is ‘sledgehammer workout,’ a search term that pours forth half a dozen enthusiastic re-enactments of life on a steel-driving chain gang. . . .

“CrossFitters represent just one wave of a fitness sea change, in which well-to-do Americans abandon easy, convenient forms of exercise in favor of workouts grueling enough to resemble a kind of physical atonement. For the most privileged among us, freedom seems to feel oppressive, and oppression feels like freedom. There’s also a very American fixation on extremes at play: more is always better. If you’re running just four miles a day and doing a few pull-ups, you’re a wimp compared with the buff dude who’s ready for an appearance on American Ninja Warrior. It’s hard not to feel awe when you watch a middle-aged woman in a Never Quit T-shirt clean-and-jerk huge weights. And it’s hardly a stretch to go from lifting a 35-pound kettlebell to wondering why you can’t run half a mile with it, especially when a CrossFit coach is right there, urging you to ‘crush it.’ Common wisdom seems to dictate that it’s not enough to look good and feel good if you’re not prepared to lift a Mini Cooper off an injured stranger.

“The whole notion of pushing your physical limits—popularized by early Nike ads, Navy SEAL mythos and Lance Armstrong’s cult of personality—has attained a religiosity that’s as passionate as it is pervasive. The ‘extreme’ version of anything is now widely assumed to be an improvement on the original rather than a perverse amplification of it. And as with most of sports culture, there is no gray area. You win or you lose. You leave it all on the floor or you shamefully skulk off the floor with extra gas in your tank.

—Heather Havrilesky

2. And from Nerve.com:

“There are 206.3 million blogs on Tumblr. About 11.4% of the top 200,000 are teeming with porn, adult-oriented videos, and otherwise NSFW content. The streams are filled with limbs, enterings, openings, and finishings—noted, liked, reblogged. It’s a moving menagerie of couples grinding in grainy GIFs, penetrating in JPGs, and topped off by third party-hosted videos replete with the moans and breathy articulations pictures simply don’t capture. Their bed is always open for the curious passersby; all you need to do is click.”

—Kate Hakala

Shonda Rhimes Is a Brilliant Writer—and Joe Morton Is a Brilliant Actor

ROWAN
You’re funny. You’re a funny, funny man.

FITZ
I am?

ROWAN
Or should I say boy? You’re a boy. You’ve been coddled, and cared for, pampered and hugged. For you it’s always summertime. And the livin’ is easy. Daddy’s rich, your momma’s good looking, you’re a Grant. You got money in your blood. You… are… a… boy. I’m a man.

I have worked for every single thing I have ever received. I have fought and scraped and bled for every inch of ground I walk on. I was the first in my family to go to college. My daughter went to boarding school with the children of kings. I made that happen. You cried yourself to sleep because daddy hurt your feelings. Because papa banged his secretary. Because it hurt to have so much money. You spoiled, entitled, ungrateful little brat! You have everything handed to you on a silver platter, and you squander it. You’re given the world and you can’t appreciate it because you haven’t had to work for anything!

Aaron Sorkin Reveals How to Write Unforgettable Dialogue

TOBY
You want the benefits of free trade? Food is cheaper.

SACHS
Yes.

TOBY
Food is cheaper. Clothes are cheaper, steel is cheaper, cars are cheaper, phone service is cheaper. You feel me building a rhythm here? That’s ‘cause I’m a speechwriter and I know how to make a point.

SACHS
Toby...

TOBY
It lowers prices, it raises income. You see what I did with “lowers” and “raises” there?

SACHS
Yes.

TOBY
It’s called the science of listener attention. We did repetition, we did floating opposites, and now you end with the one that’s not like the others. Ready?

Free trade stops wars. And that’s it. Free trade stops wars! And we figure out a way to fix the rest. One world, one peace—I’m sure I’ve seen that on a sign somewhere.

Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail

Addendum (11/22/2014): Here’s another West Wing explainer, wherein President Bartlet extols the virtues of being an “oratorical snob”:

“Words. Words when spoken out loud for the sake of performance are music. They have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume. These are the properties of music, and music has the ability to find us and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can’t.”

A Good Parallel vs. a Great Parallel

Good Writing
Our treatment isn’t making him better. It’s making him worse.

Great Writing
Our treatment isn’t making him better. It’s killing him.

—House, MD

All the Best Writers Use This Easy Trick

When confronted with a complex issue, the best writers often translate it by way of an analogy or metaphor. A few examples from a recent article in Time, on the subject of sleep, by Alice Park:

What Your Brain Does While You’re Awake

The difference between the waking and sleeping brain is dramatic. When the brain is awake, it resembles a busy airport, swelling with the cumulative activity of individual messages traveling from one neuron to another. The activity inflates the size of brain cells until they take up 86% of the brain’s volume.

What Your Brain Does While You Sleep

When the lights go out, our brains start working—but in an altogether different way than when we’re awake. At night, a legion of neurons springs into action, and like any well-trained platoon, the cells work in perfect synchrony, pulsing with electrical signals that wash over the brain with a soothing, hypnotic flow. Meanwhile, data processors sort through the reams of information that flooded the brain all day at a pace too overwhelming to handle in real time. The brain also runs checks on itself to ensure that the exquisite balance of hormones, enzymes and proteins isn’t too far off-kilter. And all the while, cleaners follow in close pursuit to sweep out the toxic detritus that the brain doesn’t need and which can cause all kinds of problems if it builds up.

What Happens When You Don’t Get Enough Sleep

Brain cells that don’t get their needed break every night are like overworked employees on consecutive double shifts—eventually, they collapse.

This Is the Voice You Need if You Want to Write for Gawker

Written in 2008, this internal memo from Valleywager Paul Boutin holds up remarkably well today.

1. DENTON’S FORMULA: MIX A PLUS AND A MINUS
If someone screwed up in business, find something nice to say about them: “The charmingly incompetent CEO.” If someone succeeded, find a way to slap them. “The wildly successful blowhard.” Denton says this is a key to Gawker posts about people, and when he got lazy he slipped on it and readers noticed in a roundabout way that the site felt less brilliant.

2. PEOPLE, NOT COMPANIES OR PRODUCTS
Write about Steve Jobs or Jonathan Ive rather than “Apple” as an actor. Or find out who their VP of sales is if they’ve had a wildly successful quarter and credit him/her, a nice detail. I don’t want to read that the Zune is a flop, I want to read that Wink Twinkerton, head of the Zune division, has done for portable music players what Bill Gates did for CEO sex appeal.

3. BE INSULTING, BUT BE SURPRISING
Calling Ron Paul a loon isn’t edgy. Much better was “voting for Ron Paul sends a message. The message is you’re crazy and hate the FDA.” That’s a nice setup and punch line, and a good non-cliche detail rather than an unspecific “loon.”

4. DON’T LET YOUR ANGER GET TO YOU
If someone whose politics or opinions you disagree with says something you want to call out, don’t do a straight-ahead criticism. Instead, take their argument further to a simple but ridiculous conclusion. When Hillary Clinton proposed a moratorium on home foreclosures and a freeze on loan rates, Jordan Golson asked, “Why not a moratorium on people paying their mortgages? That seems easier.”

5. BEAT-DOWNS ARE BAD
You’ve wrung this out of them mostly, but I still see the young ones do the old-school Ann Coulter/Molly Ivins thing of insulting someone three times in a paragraph when once would be better. Pick the one best dig and save the others for another time.

6. NO FISKING
If someone says several stupid things in one piece, just quote them and don’t rebut each line separately. Do a 100-word version with only the dumbest parts. Readers will get it.

7. IF YOU WOULDN’T SAY IT IN A CONVERSATION, DON’T WRITE IT
Avoid journalist-speak like “He takes umbrage with our statement.” You never say umbrage in real life.

8. AVOID JOURNALIST MATH, USE SPECIFICS
Some, many, few ... these are journalist numbers for when they want to imply a trend. Often they’re used to overstate the number of people who do or don’t do something. “Some feel that Obama ...” Cut that, and instead give me a specific quote from a linkable person that sums up the general mood you’re talking about.

9. ONE JOKE PER POST
We’ve slipped on that. Too many jokes comes across as not having enough to report. Keep the post short and move onto the next one.

10. BAIL EARLY
Surprise readers by quitting on a review or report halfway through it, once you know you’ve hit the hight points already. Find some reason to explain your exit. Melissa Gira Grant started to summarize the SF Bay Guardian’s annual sex guide, but when she got to a piece that was restaurant suggestions, she wrote, “I stopped reading here.” It keeps posts short, and breaks the mold of the reviewer who takes 400 words to wind down.

11. SATIRE AND PARODY
Should be used to illustrate someone’s foibles. E.g. “President Steve Jobs issues the most expensive U.S. budget ever, but it fits in a manila envelope.”

12. JUST NEVER USE THESE WORDS
Douche, douchebag, douchery, asshat. TechCrunch uses them, need I say more. (To which I’ll add: “teh,” “intarwebs,” “lulz.”)

What Makes Malcolm Gladwell Such a Wonderful Writer?

Consider this passage from Gladwell’s book Outliers:

The “achievement gap” is a phenomenon that has been observed over and over again, and it typically provokes one of two responses. The first response is that disadvantaged kids simply don’t have the same ability to learn as children from more privileged backgrounds. They’re not as smart. The second, slightly more optimistic conclusion is that, in some ways, our schools are failing poor children: we simply aren’t doing a good enough job of teaching them the skills they need. But here’s where Alexander’s study gets interesting, because it turns out neither of those explanations rings true.

As English professor Rob Jenkins points out, in less than 100 words, Gladwell accomplishes four major feats of writing that make you want to continue reading:

1. He varies sentence length to create a subtle sense of pace.

2. He smoothes out the rough edges of the sentences through liberal use of contractions (generally considered a no-no in academic prose).

3. He only addresses readers directly, but also includes us in the discussion (“our schools,” “we … aren’t”).

4. He uses simple, everyday words when such words carry the desired meaning, while not altogether avoiding longer words (like “phenomenon”) when needed. (“Simple,” in this case, does not mean “simplistic.”)

“Granted, Gladwell is one of the very best writers working today,” Jenkins concludes. “But isn’t that exactly what we ought to be teaching our students—what the best writers do?”

Do You Like Words? Prove It!

When copywriter Robert Pirosh landed in Hollywood in 1934, eager to become a screenwriter, he wrote and sent the following letter to all the directors, producers, and studio executives he could think of.

The approach worked, and after securing three interviews he took a job as a junior writer with MGM. Pirosh went on to write for the Marx Brothers, and in 1949 won an Academy Award for his Battleground script.

Dear Sir:

I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demimonde. I like suave “V” words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land’s-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.

I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around.

I have just returned and I still like words.

May I have a few with you?

Robert Pirosh

So, to recap:

Description of Word	Example #1	Example #2	Example #3	Example #4
fat, buttery	ooze	turpitude	glutinous	toady
solemn, angular, creaky	straitlaced	cantankerous	pecunious	valedictory
spurious, black-is-white	mortician	liquidate	tonsorial	demimonde
suave “V”	Svengali	svelte	bravura	verve
crunchy, brittle, crackly	splinter	grapple	jostle	crusty
sullen, crabbed, scowling	skulk	glower	scabby	churl
oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land’s-sake	tricksy	tucker	genteel	horrid
elegant, flowery	estivate	peregrinate	elysium	halcyon
wormy, squirmy, mealy	crawl	blubber	squeal	drip
sniggly, chuckling	cowlick	gurgle	bubble	burp

How to Turn an Awful Sentence Into a Crystal-Clear One

In the 1970s, a frustrated reader handed Roy Peter Clark an editorial that contained this daunting sentence:

“To avert the all too common enactment of requirements without regard for their local cost and tax impact, however, the commission recommends that statewide interest should be clearly identified on any proposed mandates, and that the state should partially reimburse local government for some state imposed mandates and fully for those involving employee compensations, working conditions and pensions.”

Clark translates this as follows:

“The state of New York often passes laws telling local government what to do. These laws have a name. They are called ‘state mandates.’ On many occasions, these laws improve life for everyone in the state. But they come with a cost. Too often, the state doesn’t consider the cost to local government, or how much money taxpayers will have to shell out. So we have an idea. The state should pay back local government for some of these so-called mandates.”

Lessons:

1. The reader benefits from shorter words and phrases.

2. The reader benefits from simple sentences.

Somewhere, George Orwell is smiling.

Write to Be UBER

That’s

• Understood
• Believed
• Enjoyed
• Remembered

Good Writing Is Good Writing

Regardless of your audience or publication, good writing is good writing. Whether you’re writing a children’s book or an op-ed, your words should bristle with energy and elegance. Whether you’re writing a letter of recommendation or an insurance policy, your words should be clear and crisp. Good writing is good writing.

How to Write Vigorously

See this three-day exchange between Nick Gillespie of Reason and Tim Cavanaugh of the LAT.

How to Write with Verbs

John Fund, of OpinionJournal.com, shows how it’s done. Behold the vigorous verbs from his latest column:

• trade. “Tonight 10 Republicans go on stage to trade sound bites in a debate at the Reagan Library in Los Angeles.”

• swept aside. “In every election some conventional wisdom is swept aside.”

• scoop up. “Rivals scoop up cash, campaign talent and endorsements while noncandidates sit and wait.”

• battered. “While official candidates are scrutinized relentlessly for gaffes and battered by ‘independent’ opposition groups, noncandidates can be selective in their media exposure and appear high-minded.”

• top. “A straw poll at the Oklahoma Republican Party's convention saw noncandidates Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich top the field.”

• fuels. “Persistent doubts about Hillary Clinton's electability or Barack Obama's seasoning fuels speculation that Al Gore or some other savior will enter the race.”

• parachute. “Even if he doesn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize this fall, he could parachute into the presidential race.”