clarity is the writer’s first goal, because without it, art cannot affect its audience. It eliminates vagueness, avoids awkwardness, and shies from over-writing. Revise for clarity by showing us what something—an emotion, a person, a setting, a gesture—is not, while also attempting to show us exactly what it is. Using precise details and your ear for language, aim to make the ordinary extraordinary, and the imaginary real.
NO: The woman would wait for the bus every day, looking tall and cold.
YES: She waited for the 61C. She resembled the bus signpost, but without the mantle of snow across her shoulders.
***Until April 12, the official release date of “The Editor’s Lexicon: Essential Writing Terms for Novelists,” I will be posting one definition a day here. Check back often! Read more about the book here.
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