the end. “The wages of sin is Death” — despite the singularity of the verb — makes mortality more final than “Death is the wages of sin.”
Can this verbal skill be taught? Is it possible that, just as some folk (mostly black) seem to be born with a better sense of rhythm than people who inhabit northern parts of the Earth, timely words come more easily to writers for whom climax comes naturally, whether in bed or at the desk?
This is a matter that warrants further study, in this case by someone else. The main point: avoid prematurely ejaculating the important word. Your partner (the reader) will be better satisfied, unless of course you have contrived a very long sentence, such as this, from which it is difficult to emerge before your reader has dozed off.
The Good Book puts it succinctly: “How forcible are right words!”
THE EFF-WORD
Some writers — usually of the older generation — wonder whether they should use the eff-word in their novels or short stories. Even if they are writing dialogue as part of the scene of an auto collision or marital dispute, they still may hesitate.
Bite the bullet, ma’am.
To be true to real life, dialogue will include the eff-word in just about every sentence. It is very difficult for a character to display emotional disturbance — even that caused by a minor crisis such as a flat tire — without uttering the eff-word.
Yet it can be done. The downside: you may be restricted to writing drama for daytime television. Or a newspaper opinion column. But there is a market for work devoid of eff-less monosyllables, if these are selected with care. (Fudge as a surrogate is too cute to be borne.)
However, some writers pepper their work with the eff-word as a token of artistic integrity — and blame rejection on the craven media. But the hard, not to say tumescent, fact is: the eff-word has lost its shock value even for the reader who has lived a remarkably sheltered life.
Also, it would be a shame to discard a virile verb that displays such conjunctive versatility, coupling with a variety of prepositions — “eff off,” “eff up,” etc. — as well as being singularly onomatopoeic.
The eff-word may, in fact, be the most versatile, as well as the most popular, verb in the English language. It just needs to be used where and when appropriate and should never serve as the mainstay of the writer’s vocabulary.
This lets the writer blunder, in all good conscience, into pornography. The vogue of print porn has suffered greatly from the surrender of civilization to the Internet. Smut dot com has pretty well deleted the market for raunchy novels. Not only is a picture worth a thousand words, but we live in a time when, verbally, anything goes, as long as it doesn’t affect the drinking water.
(Note: the word pornography derives from the Greek words porne [prostitute] and grapho [write], so that pornography literally means the writing of harlots. Apparently, the floozies of ancient Greece found time to write, but as yet nothing too noteworthy has emerged from Las Vegas.)
(Another note: Just as a woman can’t be somewhat pregnant, a book can’t be a bit pornographic. In for a shilling, in for a pound. That was the secret of the success of the Marquis de Sade, who wrote the randy novels that earned him more or less permanent residency in the Bastille. Which had pretty good room service for those who, like the count, were living off the avails of prosecution.)
Reading is the best way for the would-be writer to familiarize herself with words put on paper, rather than heard on television or seen in graffiti. Quiller-Couch recommends reading the classics — Homer, Virgil, et al. in the original Greek or Latin, but this may be a tad much for the novice writer whose reading background has been limited to the menu at McDonald’s.
Our mentor stresses the value of reading in absorbing the role of vowel sounds. If the consonants are the percussion section of our verbal orchestra, the vowels are the violins. This doesn’t mean that the composer may use them with abandon (loose vowels), but that they serve as the major affective instrument in the concerto for pen and paper.
So if our Homer is more of a pop fly, what kind of reading provides the best tonic for the writer’s vocabulary? The tabloid newspaper that suffices for too many readers is fashioned for mouth-breathers, folk who view words of more than one syllable as a threat to comprehension. At the other extreme are today’s “critically acclaimed” novels that employ words that have a difficult relationship with their meaning, or are so arcane that even the author seems unsure of their connotation.
The classics are safer for reading. Their durability is testimony to the authors’ concentrating on the story to be told, without readers having to commute to the nearest Webster.
The public library: that is the place to find reading that fructifies vocabulary. Walk straight past the table of latest bestsellers to the stacks that bear the classics. When you check out a work by William Makepeace Thackeray or Anton Chekhov, the librarian will look at you with new respect.
For maximum benefit this reading should be done in bed. The brain seems to benefit from having the feet somewhat elevated. The prone position, too, facilitates distribution of such blood as is flowing to the cortex, though falling asleep over your book may invoke suffocation.
What is not verbally salubrious is reading on the computer. Google is no substitute for good books. On the Internet all paths lead to naughty pictures, regardless of whether the reader set out to check a ferry or train schedule. If he or she is impoverished for human company, the Internet readily seduces the reader into an exchange of e-correspondence with another loner in Tibet — and into the delusion that this matches the quality of the letters of Bernard Shaw and Ellen Terry.
No, the computer, as an editor, has no talent beyond bugging you about your spelling. Picky, picky, picky, and not a good word to say about your punctuation.
This is a rather special trade for the writer who is able to sublimate ego to further income. Which can be hefty enough to compensate for the loss of integrity, freedom, and a normal sex life.
Nearly all the words we hear on the Tube or read in magazines (such as Time) have been crafted by writers with a special talent for le mot juste, or catchy phrase, honed in company. Yes, collegial composition, without the ivy. The major market: comedy.
Several stand-up comedians (Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld) have become so successful they were able to sit down. And hire other writers to help them script TV series and films that rendered them millionaire status.
The downside of team comedy writing: the pressure of the weekly deadline can severely test the emotional and mental balance of the writer, resulting in temporary impotence and/or shingles. If a person is already taking medication for hypertension or piles, or is serious about giving up smoking, he or she might be well advised to consider a more contemplative medium.
For reasons not clearly understood, comedy-writing teams are usually male in composition, the members already certified
