Writing Right with Dmitri: Going for the Gold
Created | Updated Aug 12, 2012
Words, words, words. That's what we're made of. Herewith some of my thoughts on what we're doing with them.
Writing Right with Dmitri: Going for the Gold
It's that time again: the Olympics. Which means that writers everywhere are trying to make sport seem more exciting to those who do not usually follow it. Stretch that metaphor, lift those spirits. . . quick: how many ways do you know to say, 'the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat'?
Writing about sport is an art form, although you might not think so if you read the often badly-written (and misspelled) effusions on websites everywhere. Most of us tend to wince when we recall some of the commentary we've been subjected to on radio and television.
One famous commentator in the US was a former baseball player named Dizzy Dean. Dizzy didn't have much education, and English teachers complained – especially about Dean's saying 'ain't' on the radio. Dean replied, 'A lot of folks who ain't sayin' "ain't," ain't eatin'. So, Teach, you learn 'em English, and I'll learn 'em baseball.'
Another baseball colour commentator, one Red Barber, filled the airwaves with catchphrases such as 'in the catbird's seat' and 'slicker than boiled okra'. In more recent days, US sport commentators have contributed such unfortunate expressions as 'undergo a sea change'. We suspect that some reporter, stranded in a motel room, picked up a discarded volume of Shakespeare by mistake when looking for a Gideon Bible.
Sport requires exaggeration, all agree. Try this classic of sport writing:
From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.
"Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted someone on the stand;
And it's likely they'd a-killed him had not Casey raised his hand. – 'Casey at the Bat', by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, 1888.
The commentator on the television has just said, 'Ricardo needs to pace himself – it's not a sprint, it's a marathon.' He is talking about beach volleyball. Plus ça change.
Baseball is an amazing inspiration to writers. When talking about a sport many find incomprehensible, and others boring, writers soar. They invent enduring fictional characters, like Mighty Casey, or Roy Hobbs.
Who is Roy Hobbs, you ask? Besides being Charlie Brown's hero (suitable, a fictional baseball player for a fictional kid), Hobbs is the hero of Bernard Malamud's 1952 novel The Natural. You may have seen the film – if so, for you, Roy Hobbs is Robert Redford, putting out the lights in the stadium with his baseball and his magic bat.
Of course, the big British sport is cricket. Lots has been written about cricket, but the most famous fictional cricketer who springs to mind is the wonderful Raffles:
Everybody knows how largely the tone of a public school depends on that of the eleven, and on the character of the captain of cricket in particular; and I have never heard it denied that in A. J. Raffles's time our tone was good, or that such influence as he troubled to exert was on the side of the angels. Yet it was whispered in the school that he was in the habit of parading the town at night in loud checks and a false beard. It was whispered, and disbelieved. – The Amateur Cracksman, by EW Hornung.
Note that Raffles has it all: Sport, criminal activity, snobbery, and the public-school angle. Wow, hard to beat that combination. Raffles uses his cricketing reputation to get invited to posh country houses, where he livens up the cricket match by day, and breaks into the dining room and steals the family silver by night. A fun guy, Raffles, and you'll enjoy his amanuensis, the beautifully-named Bunny.
Of course, you can write about unusual sports, like fly fishing. A publisher once rejected Norman Maclean's novella A River Runs Through It because 'it has trees in it'. PG Wodehouse manages to make golf almost interesting:
This book marks an epoch in my literary career. It is written in blood. It is the outpouring of a soul as deeply seared by Fate's unkindness as the pretty on the dog-leg hole of the second nine was ever seared by my iron. It is the work of a very nearly desperate man, an eighteen-handicap man who has got to look extremely slippy if he doesn't want to find himself in the twenties again. – The Clicking of Cuthbert, by PG Wodehouse.
Of course, most sport readers would prefer you stay on the subject a little better than Wodehouse manages to do:
POSTSCRIPT. – In the second chapter I allude to Stout Cortez staring at the Pacific. Shortly after the appearance of this narrative in serial form in America, I received an anonymous letter containing the words, "You big stiff, it wasn't Cortez, it was Balboa." This, I believe, is historically accurate. On the other hand, if Cortez was good enough for Keats, he is good enough for me. Besides, even if it was Balboa, the Pacific was open for being stared at about that time, and I see no reason why Cortez should not have had a look at it as well. – The Clicking of Cuthbert, by PG Wodehouse.
Our take-homes here?
- Know your audience. US sport fans may be touchy about Cortez. (And are unlikely to have heard of Keats.)
- Metaphor is your friend – the wilder the better.
- There is no sport so dull that it cannot be made exciting by the right writer.
So, fore. . . or play ball. . . or 'pass the skeleton key, Bunny, old man.' Have fun out there, but remember your shin guards.
Writing Right with Dmitri Archive
