Spelling out acronyms

We live in a world of acronyms, alphabetical abbreviations, such as U.S.A. or F.B.I. or C.I.A. They save space, and are easier to write and read than “United States of America” or “Federal Bureau of Investigation” or “Culinary Institute of America.” We use them all the time, so we assume our readers understand them. Not necessarily.

Readers appreciate explanation, and they don’t resent explaining things they might know, but might not. So we spell out acronyms the first time we use them in a piece, followed by the acronym in brackets. After that, we simply use the abbreviation, like this: “After graduating, she joined the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Three years later, she developed innovative pat-down techniques that caused less embarrassment for TSA officers.”

Remember that one acronym can stand for a number of titles. “C.I.A.” can mean any of the following:

Central Intelligence Agency
Certified Internal Auditor
Cleveland Institute of Art
Chemical Industries Association
Culinary Institute of America.

You can’t assume that your readers will decode the right one.

Clusters of acronyms, so-called “alphabet soup,” can confuse readers, like this: “ARUFON sent a FOIA request on UFOs to the CIA.” You can’t make a rule about how many acronyms one sentence can contain. Like everything in writing, it’s a balancing act among common usage, brevity, and clarity. But the greatest of these is clarity.

How do you know if your readers will understand an acronym? Ask three other writers who don’t cover the subject what the letters mean. If two of them miss it, spell it out for your readers. If in doubt, spell it out.

[Got any anecdotes about acronyms?]

Debriefing

What would help you the most in the whole writing process? A good debriefing.

Debriefing involves a person asking you organizing questions just before you type. Most of the problems happen in the ORGANIZING stage, and debriefing comes at the end of that stage, before you DRAFT. The main topics are what you want to say and how, that is, content and structure.

Debriefing always begins best with the most magic of magic questions: “What’s this about?” That takes care of content. If you can’t answer that question, or the debriefer can’t understand your answer, you don’t know what you want to say. You have to rethink or GATHER some more. (Plungers need to type to figure out what they want to say, so they should type awhile before debriefing.)

The next question is usually about structure: “What are the parts or sections of the piece?” The debriefer listens to see if the structure will work for the readers, and if all the parts make sense.

Then the debriefer asks about length: “How much space do you need?” Since writers want all the space in the world, I ask how much space the READERS need to understand the piece, how much explanation the readers need. If the debriefer is the editor, this question turns into a negotiation. The writer knows the material and how much space it will take to explain it, and the editor knows how much space is available. Editors also judge how much room the subject and treatment are worth in the context of their publications. So the writer and editor settle on a length.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful not to have space restrictions, if the editor just said, “Take as much space as you want.” No. Writers who start typing without a length in mind type long in space and time, and tend to file drafts instead of finished pieces, and turn them in late. If you don’t know how much space you have, you can’t select and design the material to fit the space. Freedom is knowing how much room you have, not having infinite space.

ALWAYS DRAFT WITH EXACT LENGTH IN MIND.

A good debriefer tailors the session to the characteristics of the writer. For example, the debriefer may know that the writer never puts any people in the story, so the next question is something like this: “Do you have any real people in the piece to illustrate this topic?”

Who has time for all this when you’re ready to type? You do, and most debriefings take about two minutes. Let’s look at a sample:

DEBRIEFER: Okay, Jane, what’s your piece about?
WRITER: Well, Agatha, it’s about getting rid of squirrels in your attic.
DEBRIEFER: I’ve had that problem myself. How do you get the little monsters out of there?
WRITER: Not easily. There are pest control companies (very expensive), gunfire (dangerous), noisemakers (problems with neighbors), home remedies, etc. I’m going to focus on home solutions, mostly chemical, like moth balls, and talk about the other methods as background.
DEBRIEFER: Sounds interesting. What are the parts?
WRITER: I’ve planned four parts. I’ll lead with a family struggling with squirrels who chewed through their soffit. Then there’s a section on home remedies that actually work and why, followed by another section on methods that don’t work, or that cause other problems. Then I’ll talk about the pros and cons of pest control specialists. And I have some really good stuff on getting rats out of the basement….
DEBRIEFER: What do rats have to do with squirrels?
WRITER: Nothing, but I’ve got some funny quotes on cellars full of rats….
DEBRIEFER: Don’t write that part. As usual, I don’t hear an ending. Got one?
WRITER: Well, no, but I could come back to the homeowners in the lead. They actually got rid of their squirrels.
DEBRIEFER: Good. How much space do you need?
WRITER: I can do it in about 30 inches, or a little more.
DEBRIEFER: No way, how about 15 inches with a photo?
WRITER: Maybe 20, 22?
DEBRIEFER: 20, with a photo, done. Write it fast. I want to read it. Thanks.

That debriefing took 75 seconds. At the end of it, the two players are on the same wavelength, the writer knows what she wants to say and how, and has her supervisor’s approval. She’s ready to write with confidence and understanding.

Notice that the debriefer did not tell her what to do, except to omit the rat section. She asked prompting questions, focused the writer’s ideas, and set expectations. You can debrief with someone who’s not your editor, even by asking yourself questions. But that other person is your first reader, representing the interests of all your future readers.

[Had any experiences with debriefing?]

A sample briefing

BRIEFING is a short conversation between a writer and an editor before the writer starts gathering most of the information. The purpose is to pitch an idea, get it approved, and think out what it might be about. It begins the production process with everybody on the same wavelength, which prevents misunderstandings later. Here’s a sample briefing.

EDITOR: Okay, what’ve you got?
WRITER: An amazing invention, a new kind of fishing lure. Get this: it projects a hologram of bait fish underwater to attract larger fish and hook them.
EDITOR: You’re kidding me….
WRITER: No, I’m not. I’ve got an interview with the inventor this afternoon to see the actual machine.
EDITOR: What’s this likely to be about?
WRITER: Well, our readers fish, and it might be a tipoff of a great new product coming. Or it might be a business story. The guy actually invented it for the tuna-fishing industry.
EDITOR: Big story? Little story?
WRITER: Can’t tell until I see how real this is, and how close to getting financing. I’ll call you this afternoon after the interview.
EDITOR: Who else have you talked to?
WRITER: A friend at Rapala tipped me off. He gave me some names in the tuna industry.
EDITOR: Got a picture?
WRITER: Not yet, but I’ll see if I can get a snapshot with my phone camera. If this turns out, we’ll need a photographer who can shoot underwater.
EDITOR: I like it. Keep me informed.

Notice that the writer has done some gathering and planning and arranging ahead of the briefing, and that’s the secret:

KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT.

The editor asks prompting questions about subject, size, sources, and visuals. Done well, briefings are short and launch writers knowing what they’re after, with the supervisor’s approval. Briefings also launch the editor, who now knows what’s likely to happen, and can start thinking about photos and graphics. Freelancers and their editors profit most from briefing.

[Any success stories about briefing in your career?]

How to procrastinate

I collect techniques for writing, and it suddenly dawned on me this morning that I only collect techniques that work. So I want to find out some techniques that get in the way. Would you please send me via comments your strategies for procrastinating, your tactics to keep from typing? Many thanks, Don

Getting better in one year

Most writers I know feel burdened by the amount of material they have to produce. This load ranges from a Singaporean magazine writer, who asked me how anybody could expect him to write well when he had to produce one piece a month, to some newspaper reporters cranking out eight pieces per day. Nobody can write eight good pieces a day.

Writers who feel overwhelmed often ask me how they can get better under their particular load. Three ways: tune up your writing process, magnify strengths, and selective effort.

This whole blog (and book) show you how to tune your process so that your collection of techniques makes you fast and accurate and powerful and confident. You get rid of bad habits and assumptions, and substitute ways that work for you.

Second, most people think you improve things by getting rid of bad (other) people or mistakes. But here’s the secret of improving anything:

STRENGTHEN YOUR STRENGTHS

Figure out what you’re really good at, and magnify those things. I’m good at memory and decisiveness, so I ask how to use my memory better. I put a premium on speed, so I ask how to make good decisions faster. Actually, my memory is beginning to fade, so now I’m figuring out how to buttress it by using memory devices, taking more and sharper notes, and devising a faster way to capture ideas and things I want to use later. For instance, I often think up a little bit of a larger piece that I want to incorporate eventually. Formerly, I would have depended on remembering it and writing it later. Now I jot down a quick, good-enough draft and store it.

Third, you can improve your writing over a period of about a year by apportioning effort. Let’s say you have to write one piece a day, five a week. You can probably figure out the week ahead roughly what the subjects will be. Then you decide which one of the five subjects has the possibility of being written better if you devoted more effort to it. Let’s call the stories a, b, c, D, and e. You estimate D will be better if it gets a little more time and effort. So you reduce your time and effort on a, b, c, and e, by ten to twenty percent each, not doing them badly but quicker. Then you invest the extra time and effort in D.

Writers who have tried this trick typically gain about five or six hours added to D. Then the next week you do it again: select the likely candidate and transfer a little effort from the others. At the end of a year, you’ll have maybe fifty better pieces. Actually, you’ll have more than that because the other four stories will gradually get better.

One more technique magnifies this process. At the end of the week, ask yourself why the better story is better, and then ask how to make it better still.

[Got any anecdotes about jumping in quality?]

Avoiding anecdotal leads

The anecdotal lead begins a piece with a little vignette or story, or a character doing something. Essentially it begins with a person. Business writers who found their subject matter boring invented the anecdotal lead to hook readers. First, you tell the anecdote, then what the piece is about, and follow with the rest of the text.

Readers begin a piece by predicting its subject. If their prediction comes true, they keep reading. But if they find material other than what they predicted, they feel confused, and drop out.

Anecdotal leads predict that the story will be about the person featured at the top. Let’s try an example:

Carole Blizzo stands in line at her local Commonwealth Bank for 45 minutes, finally reaching Harold Peterson, the man she knows as her “relationship banker.” She’s unemployed and four months behind on her adjustable mortgage, and desperate to find a way to keep her home. Peterson smiles, until he learns what she wants, and then he says, “You should have thought of that before,” over and over.
The Obama administration’s Mortgage Relief Program was supposed to help nine million Americans like Carole, but ….

Readers will predict the story’s about Carole, and they want to know what happens to her. But the story never mentions Carole again; she’s just the hook. Readers resent this kind of “bait-and-switch” tactic, and that resentment means they might skip a story they need to read.

On the other hand, Carole might serve as the spine of the story, weaving in and out of the data and analysis. Then the anecdotal lead is functional and unifies the piece, helping the readers’ understanding by providing someone they can identify with.

Besides confusing readers, they can also turn into “a writing job.” If you consider your subject matter boring and think you need a tricky lead to get anybody to read it, you’re likely to overwrite that lead. Anecdotal leads are so much more fun to write than business or government or swine-flu gibberish. If you consider your subject dull, maybe you need a new subject.

Anecdotal leads tempt copy editors to write anecdotal headlines on top of them. The headline is supposed to tell readers what the story is about. If the lead and the headline don’t tip the readers off, they get hit twice with confusing signals.

Can you make anecdotal leads effective? Sure, pick an anecdote that directly concerns the subject, put an informative headline on it, keep it short and simple, and continue the character in it throughout.

Better, don’t write anecdotal leads. Start with a solid headline, write a short lead that tells the reader what the piece is about, and follow with a brief, relevant anecdote that introduces a character readers want to know about.

Tell stories, rather than trying to fake out your readers.

[Yes, I know you love anecdotal leads. How do you make them effective?]

Showing versus telling

Many writing guides advise, “Show, don’t tell.” Bad advice. You tell readers about things, but you show things to them. I can tell you that my mother was the worst cook in the history of the world. Or I can show you:

My mother boiled everything for eight hours, vegetables, fruits, meats, destroying all food value. She used no herbs or spices, except salt. Everything she cooked turned gray. When I was 18, I was served rare roast beef at a banquet. I turned to my companions and asked, “What is this?” I did not recognize it as food, much less meat.

You need a combination of showing and telling; essentially, the telling frames the showing.

David Finkel covered the aftermath of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, focusing on one family in Los Gatos, beginning like this:

Patty Hermann is leading the way through her house. The kitchen is bad – cracked walls, broken dishes. The dining room is bad, too – more cracks, plaster everywhere. Then comes the living room, the room that two days after the earthquake, Hermann won’t go in.

In this room, there is no longer an outside wall. There is only a wide hole where the wall was, and a sagging, unsupported roof. There is also a TV set, still plugged in, still tuned to the channel showing the World Series, but Patty Hermann is too afraid to retrieve it.

“We are working up our nerve,” Mark Hermann, Patty’s husband, says.

“Sickening, isn’t it?” says Patty. “It was,” she adds, “a spectacular house.”

Finkel shows us the devastation and the family’s reaction to it, with a little telling: “The kitchen is bad – cracked walls, broken dishes. The dining room is bad, too.” Patty tells us, “It was…a spectacular house.” Finkel follows her statement with a little telling of his own, making a transition into context: “It was, indeed, and it is no more. Instead, it is unsalvageable. It is the most severely damaged structure in Los Gatos, and, in its own way, it illustrates how there wasn’t one earthquake in northern California Tuesday, but two.”

Later, he returns to showing: “the cafe next door with the pink napkins still folded on the plates,” and the family camped out on their lawn because they’re afraid of their trees.

Showing has more power than telling, as Finkel shows you above: “The kitchen is bad” versus “ “cracked walls, broken dishes.” Showing hits readers harder.

My favorite essay, Hank Stuever’s “The Couch that Warped Space Time,” switches back and forth between telling about cosmology and showing how to get two sofas up a staircase:

But right now let us turn our attention to the size of the universe. Theoretical physicists would like very much for the cosmos to fit nicely into the mathematical space they’ve calculated for it, only, of course, it doesn’t. There is an indescribable longing to know what we’re dealing with here, and in how many dimensions a tidy “final theory” explaining both the subatomic and the celestial. You could go mad trying. Einstein died without resolving the scale issue, and so the universe goes on not quite fitting. Some physicists have deemed it larger than previously thought; others see it as smaller. One day it is older than they ever estimated; the next day, younger.

This does not mean that occasionally someone won’t come along with another TOE, which stands for “theory of everything” — a superstring theory, for example-to explain away the heavens above and the atoms within. Everyone grabs a corner of the universe and lifts. Papers are presented at Los Alamos.

By now you may have figured out the problem. Neither sofa — the Jennifer Convertible nor the Hecht’s Special — will fit up the stairs of the couple’s three-story row house in Mount Pleasant in Northwest Washington, which was built about 120 years ago, shortly after the supposed Big Bang, when things were small.

The rest of the piece continues this comic alternation of telling and showing, abstract and specific. The most graphics parts show the sofas and people struggling with them.

How do you achieve such power? First, you look for patterns that you can tell, and details that will show those patterns, and you write them in your notes. You might jot, “Shoes too small.” But then you’d look for what made you draw that conclusion: “Wincing with each step.” You might note that the chef’s a bully, and put down: “Screaming ‘idiot,’ throwing bacon, smacked sous chef with ladle.” If your notes only say, “Chef bully,” you have to remember what made you think that.

Then you use specific details to create images, active verbs to capture action, and quotes to convey character. In REVISION, you recast long spells of telling with showing. But you can’t do that unless you GATHERED what you need to show in the first place.

[Know any good examples of showing and telling?]

Q&A Drafting

I accidentally invented a new drafting technique while writing this blog, which I call “Q&A Drafting.” I just fell into it on bad days, when I had trouble deciding what I wanted to say and what order to put it in. I typed questions and answered them, mostly one paragraph at a time, although some answers sprawled for a screenful or two. Then I would rearrange the paragraphs and later revise the questions into statements.

Some people use this technique to write leads. They ask, “What’s this about?” and answer the question. Then they write the body text, and later rewrite the lead without the question.

This blog has a number of discussions that start with questions, something I seldom did before. The question-and-answer format sounds conversational and invites readers to think, which is part of my voice.

Then unexpectedly, the technique broadened into a way to organize. I wrote down a series of questions in a logical order, and treated the list as a plan. Then I drafted the answers and rewrote the questions. It turned out to be a relatively fast way to draft, even on good days. Once you start monkeying around with techniques, they turn into new ones.

[Got any good ways to use Q&A in your writing?]

Devices that create voice, part 3 of 3

PERSON AND TENSE:
Journalists avoid the first-person singular “I” because it makes them sound unobjective. Overused, it sounds egotistical; lightly used, confessional and personal. The first-person plural “we” sounds inclusive; I use “we” a lot in this blog to include you in the fraternity of writers. The second-person “you,” singular and plural, addresses readers directly, and involves them, unless you use it too often or in a commanding way. Third-person is the norm of prose, but has a slight distancing effect.

Most writing involves the past tense, again a comfortable norm. Shifting into the present tense creates a sense of immediacy and presence, but staying in the present becomes mannered and tiresome.

CONFIDENCE AND ASSURANCE:
A confident tone creates authority and results from sounding sure of what you’re saying, accompanied by clarity. Have you ever noticed how scientists seldom sound confident? They put a lot of qualifiers in their sentences; they keep telling how they’re not sure, concepts are theoretical, and the evidence is not totally solid. Natalie Angier explains, “By accepting that they can never know the truth but can only aproximate it, scientists end up edging ever closer to the truth.” But that hedging makes them sound uncertain. You can adjust assurance by the number of qualifiers you include. (Just because you know you’re a phony doesn’t mean you have to tell the reader.)

SOPHISTICATION OF REFERENCE & EXPLANATION:
References to works outside the text create a sense of breadth and depth. A persona explaining the reference will come off as helpful, unless the explanation is condescending. Unexplained references imply sophistication and either learning or hipness, depending on the thing referred to.

Natalie Angier says, “Obviously my sense of scale has been out of whack and off the map, a puerile version of Saul Steinberg’s often imitated Manhattanite’s view of the world.” This iconic cover hangs as a poster in millions of rooms, and Angier assumes you know it, although she has not described or explained it. My son drops names of rock groups and websites that I don’t get, and I weave in medieval names that mean nothing to him. Density of references and their explanation or not create a relationship with readers. You can share what you both know, you can bring new information, or you can puzzle them with things they haven’t heard of.

AREAS OF REFERENCE:
Where you draw references from will characterize your persona. My friend Bill Blundell used masculine references only; he once said, “I went to Houston, and talked to the guy in charge there, and she told me….” I apologize because we’re now in the realm of stereotypes, but stereotypes shared with readers help create voice. Lots of sports or military references imply maleness, while domestic imagery suggests the female. And so on.

NAME DROPPING:
Personal names form a large part of reference, and can create the illusion that the persona actually mixes with the people mentioned. Lots of current names suggest a persona who’s an insider, and the familiarity of the reference can increase it. Consider the effect of “First Lady Michelle Obama” versus “Michelle.”

ECHOES, ESPECIALLY OF STANDARD TEXTS:
Many authors consciously or unconsciously imitate the rhythms, language, and imagery of recognizable texts, especially Shakespeare and the Bible. Melville often sounds like the King James Version. (In view of our discussion of reference above, notice that I did not spell out Herman Melville or the King James Version of What.) Such echoes give depth and a sense of sophistication. If the imitated passage is recognizable, it interacts with the text.

IMAGERY:
Imagery functions somewhat like references. Certain images and clusters of images become a signature in voice. My friend Roy Clark falls into images of sex, and I tend toward military metaphors.

WIT AND HUMOR:
Humor is funny, while wit is merely amusing. Humor or the lack of it inform voice. The sophistication of the humor determines its effect, whether it elevates or deflates prose. (A piece of advice: don’t make humor part of your voice unless you’re a funny person. I’m not.)

POINT OF VIEW:
Point of view is where the persona views the world from, mostly determined by references and names. Columnist George Will always speaks from the inside, Woody Allen from the outside. Point of view can also seem spatial. Some voices see everything from high altitude, others up close. At a larger level, voices can have a world view, essentially a stance toward nature and the human race. The higher the world view, the more remote the voice.

ZEST:
Some voices show enthusiasm for what they’re writing about, and for life in general, and some show the opposite. Cleveland Amory, despite his love affair with cats, was grumpy about almost every thing else. Zest engages the reader, and suggests youth.

Devices that create voice, part 2 of 3

DEPENDENT CLAUSES AT THE BEGINNING OF SENTENCES:
Such clauses delay the subject, and dim the clarity of the sentence. Longer and more complex ones delay it even longer, causing frustration for readers. Lowered clarity lowers authority. I avoid beginning dependent clauses as much as possible, because I’m a clarity freak, and I want my readers to think I sound like one.

INSERTIONS:
Insertions put one unit inside another unit, such as a parenthetical aside. They give a sense of a person thinking, unless there are so many that they become confusing, in which case, they make the voice seem wishy-washy. Like everything else in writing, it’s a balancing act. Insertions, especially those between subject and verb, sometimes with insertions inside the insertion, and even going on for half a page, drive readers crazy, the way this sentence drove you crazy. See?

REPETITION: WORDS, PHRASES, IMAGERY:
Repetition has meaning because it ties things together. Used clumsily, it links things you didn’t intend, and becomes confusing. The French novelist Stendhal famously tried never to repeat the same word on a page, depriving himself of a powerful device.

Repeating key words and phrases makes them prominent in the readers’ memories, unless you repeat them too much, in which case readers notice them, and they make the voice tedious. Repetition puts things in parallel, and invites readers to compare them.

Repeating meaningful images sparks readers’ memory in new contexts. Frank McCourt is the master of this technique, constantly taking readers back to his miserable childhood, Ireland’s tragic history, his clotty eyes, etc.

PARALLEL STRUCTURES:
Parallels are repetition in form. A series of clauses or sentences with the same shape creates a compelling rhythm, a sense of unity, and authority. Remember Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream,” and especially Winston Churchill’s great rallying speech of 4 June 1940:

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air,
we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender.

Variation increases the power of parallels, as we see in the slight changes in form after each “we shall ….” Parallels have the same compelling quality as chant.

ACTIVE, PASSIVE, AND LINKING VERBS:
Active verbs create a sense of power, mostly by being graphic and specific. Passive verbs dilute the voice, and linking verbs (“to be”) weaken it. On the other hand, American informal speech uses mostly linking verbs, so they create a conversational sound. The active voice used exclusively will sound formal.

CONTRACTIONS:
Contractions make prose sound conversational, and the more contractions, the more it sounds like speech, unless the readers notice them. Such illusions are like perfume; they work only if the target doesn’t catch on to them. A total avoidance of contractions raises the level of formality.

ECONOMY OF WORDING:
Remember Strunk and White’s commandment: “Omit needless words.” Wordy sentences sound more conversational because ordinary speech isn’t edited. But if you trim sentences skillfully, they flow better, becoming conversationally friendly. On the other hand, extremely tight sentences come off as formal, distancing, and even huffy, like “Omit needless words.”

I recently ended a post inviting to readers to comment: “Done any experiments with creating a voice?” Let’s add and subtract words to see different effects, moving from tightly formal to loosely conversational:

Ever experiment with voice?
Have you tried experiments with your voice?
Have you done any experiments with creating a voice?
What has been your experience with trying to create a voice?

I wouldn’t call any of those words “needless,” although I could (and would) cut a lot of them in all three of my voices. I might leave some of them in, if I was trying to sound especially chummy.

RHYTHM:
Rhythms can range from jerky to, as we said of Jefferson, “mellifluous,” which means honeyed and flowing. We’re talking here about the sense of movement, how the sounds lead from one to another. Jerky rhythms make the voice seem disorganized, slightly out of control, even angry. Rolling rhythms create order and unity. Easy flow sounds poetic.

ABSTRACT AND SPECIFIC:
Abstractions make the voice seem elevated, sophisticated, and learned. If you use too great a density of abstractions, the prose becomes remote and tedious. Specific words and images create authority by drawing readers in close. They experience an illusion of “being there,” and a sense of the persona as someone who knows things in detail. For greatest power and authority, use a few abstractions to frame a lot of specifics.

[Stay tuned for part 3 this week.]