'Cut to the chase!' Have you heard people say this? I strongly suspect that most of the people who use this expression have no idea of its origin, which is in cinema. While building a horse opera, say, the film editor may have been lingering too long over the pastoral beauty of grazing cows, or the schoolmarm-heroine gazing soulfully at the guy in the ten-gallon hat. The director urges, 'Cut to the chase!', meaning 'Get back to the action!' I am urging you to do otherwise.

You may have noticed, as you write poetry, prose, or essays for this ezine, that you get comments. And, sadly (I use this word advisedly), many of these comments are not germane to your work. In fact, the comments make it clear that the poster has not even bothered to read your work. Instead, they have skimmed over the title – possibly, half the title – thought of what they wanted to say instead of you, and posted like a house afire.

You may safely ignore these rude people. You're not writing for them, as you are not writing for chickens. As the Bible sayeth, 'Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth.' (Isaiah 45:9). People who say, 'What I thought you said was so much more interesting than what you said,' deserve our opprobrium. Just hand them the business card of the nearest Miracle Ear™ dealer and move on.

This week, I'm urging you to learn to avoid 'cutting to the chase'. Instead, follow the advice of that great songwriter, Paul Simon.

Slow down, you move too fast

You got to make the morning last

Just kicking down the cobblestones…

Yeah, like that. What are those cobblestones like? Are they small and bricklike? Worn smooth by centuries of feet? Or are they huge, round ballast stones from 18th-century trading ships, like the ones you find in Philadelphia's Old City? Are they interspersed with Stolpersteine that bear witness to Europe's sad past? Are the manhole covers misplaced?

A h2g2er once said to me about my journal, 'You can make more out of less than anyone I know.' I took that as a compliment (though it may not have been meant that way). How in the world are you going to make a story interesting if you don't pay attention to the details?

A word of warning: no, not the boring details. Nobody cares how long that bridge is, or when it was built, or by whom, unless that's a plot point. It might be, if you're writing an epic novel about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. Otherwise, probably best to leave out details like that. But the how and the why of doing something can be interesting, when skillfully handled. From those details, you can wrest humour, excitement, even pathos.

There are no small stories. Just small minds.

How do you make the little things interesting? By asking yourself, 'Which details make this story richer? Which create a more vivid picture in the reader's mind? Which ones will act as a gift to the reader, rather than an imposition?'

Here's an example of what not to do.

I was walking down Main Street on my way to the Historical Society. It was a beautiful day. I'd thought about wearing a hat, but the weatherman said it wasn't going to rain. I was glad, because I just wasn't in a hat mood that morning. Well, anyway, I decided to stop at CVS and buy a comb, because I'd just broken mine. Don't you just hate it when those cheap plastic things break? CVS didn't have the colour I like, either, which was a big disappointment.

Go over that mess and cross out everything that's boring to everyone in the universe except the speaker. There won't be much left, I promise you. Nobody wants to know your personal preferences. Save those for Facebook. The advertisers over there are eager to find out your favourite colour. They will try to sell things to you on this basis. That's why they want to know. Nobody without a commercial interest in product-pushing gives a flying pig about your colour-scheme preference. You can quote me on this.

End of rant.

Back to how to slow things down. You want to make walking down Main Street interesting. Hm, how to do that? By noticing things. Things that aren't you. Things that aren't even about you. See, to be a writer, you have to pretend to be interested in other people and things. That's why politicians so seldom write anything but their memoirs, and why Jimmy Carter is such a dear, even if his Nobel Prize is definitely not for poetry.

Walking up Main Street, Jim was pleased at the change in sound, even if it was only from the beep, beep of the backing backhoes to the more usual rush of pickup trucks, as always totally ignoring the signs that proclaimed 'Speed Limit 25 mph.' The breeze as they whooshed past fanned the sweat off Jim's brow. It was rather warm for September. He waved cheerily to the kids on the playground equipment in front of the Catholic school.

Continuing up the sidewalk, Jim puzzled for the thousandth time over the motivations of the architect who had committed the design for Immaculate Conception. Who in the world thought that Sydney Opera House belonged in this town? It amused him, also for the thousandth time, to see the golden arches of McDonald's wedged between this example of Mid-Century Imaginative and the stately spire of the brick Baptist church, its prim Carpenter Gothic seeming to sniff at it all.

Okay. See, I managed to work in an opinion (my own in disguise), some otherwise boring exposition, and a few fun facts to know and tell. I still got Jim from Point A to Point B (he is now approaching the Post Office, where anything might happen) without killing everybody.

Here's an exercise, in case you're finding this breaking-down business difficult: turn your story setup, or lead-in to an event, into a storyboard. Plan a brief comic strip. (You don't have to draw it, unless you like to draw.) Figure out which actions go in what panels. Notice what panels are funny, or sad, or exciting. Then write it that way.

Remember when you've finished writing the paragraph to go back and edit. You'll probably find that you've said too much. Prune judiciously. You'll still find your writing getting more interesting to other people – and that's who you want to read it.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

30.09.19 Front Page

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