A recent book on good writing with 36 ways to improve your sentences

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an excellent 200-page 2026 book by the husband and wife team of Neal Allen and Anne Lamott titled Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences. Google Books has a preview up to page 23. Each rule is discussed for a few pages by both Neal and Anne.

 

Their rules are:

 

Use Strong Verbs

Replace weak verbs, which are imprecise (‘walked,’ ‘stood’), with vivid verbs, which are specific (‘trudged,’ ‘malingered’).

 

Question ‘Being’ and ‘Having’

The verbs ‘to be’ and ‘to have’ are the weakest of all; by nature static, they slow a narrative.

 

Keep It Active

Pay attention to words that end in -ed or -en and are preceded by a form of ‘to be,’ and watch out for -ing endings; try flipping the sentence to get it more active.

 

Stick with ‘Said’

When attributing a quote, ‘said’ is the default verb; the reader’s attention is on who said it, not how it was said.

 

Don’t Show Off

Let others be erudite; your job is to befriend your reader.

 

Prefer Anglo-Saxon Words

Favor shorter, punchier Anglo-Saxon words over fancy, abstract Latinate words.

 

Sound Natural

Unless you’re writing a technical manual, keep your language conversational and use modern speech patterns.

 

Trust Your Voice

Your natural voice has its own tempo, pitch, ease, and overall sound. Let it ring out.

 

Question Transitions

Transitional phrases (‘then,’ ‘next,’ ‘when,’ ‘meanwhile,’ ‘however’) are not needed unless a gap in time or logic has opened.

 

Link Ideas with Semicolons

If two sentences are tightly linked and one progresses from the other, consider separating them with a semicolon.

 

Drop ‘Very’ and Other Crutch Words

The word ‘very’ seldom improves a sentence.

 

Jettison {All Those} Tiny Words

Remove the clutter of short words (pronouns, prepositions, connectors).

 

Dress Up ‘This’

Pronouns are hard for readers to follow, especially ‘this’ and ‘it.’

 

Remove the Boring Stuff

Spend less time defending what you’ve written, and more time revealing the truth.

 

Refresh Your Words

Don’t repeat a distinctive word unless you must.

 

Know Your Words Inside and Out

Examining the etymology of words makes them more concrete and useful.

 

Stay In Tune

The better word is both precise and unnoticed. A thesaurus is your book of magic spells.

 

Find the Hidden Metaphor

Metaphors mirror humdrum experiences through elegant comparison. In the hands of an expert, they both illuminate and offer depth of field.

 

Twist Cliches

We already think in cliches; you owe it to your reader’s search for novelty to remove or deconstruct your hackneyed phrases.

 

Knock Three Times

For a series of terms to land, you usually need three.

 

Stretch Out

Long sentences require attention to detail, conjunctions, and rhythm – and a payoff at the end.

 

Short Sells

Interrupt lyrical or other long passages with an abrupt, short sentence.

 

Give Your Sentence a Finale

Even if you begin your sentence with a punch, end it stronger.

 

Crystallize Your Dialogue

Dialogue needs to be as zippy and economical as the rest of the book.

 

In Fiction, Archetype Your Characters

Below the human stereotypes are common psychological patterns that readers expect.

 

Show, Then Tell

Start with the concrete – what happened – and after, when appropriate, riff on your thoughts about consequences.

 

Give Them a Hero’s Welcome

Start off by telling the reader who to root for.

 

Once Is Enough

Keep your first description of a character or place distinctive enough that you aren’t tempted to add to it later.

 

Smell the Roses

Sight is only one of the five senses; let your readers enjoy touch, hearing, smell, and taste.

 

Don’t Filter

Don’t point out that someone is thinking, opining, or experiencing what is already happening on the page.

 

Trust Your Reader

Your reader will fill in the gaps; you only need to be complete enough.

 

Layer Your Sentences

Sentences convey more than information; their other purposes must be tended.

 

Write the Hard Stuff

Don’t shy away from the big mysteries of life.

 

Break the Rules

A rule may be of universal use, but need not be universally used.

 

Finish the Damn Thing

Your job is to complete the project. The final quality and consequences are not yet your business.

 

Worship (Talented) Editors

Writing is collaborative, and editors save your skin.

 

 

A botched bar chart about conspiracy beliefs from a discussion of the 2025 Chapman Survey of American Fears

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On May 20, 2026 I blogged about A botched pie chart about homelessness from a discussion of the 2025 Chapman Survey of American Fears. It was in an article titled Chapman Survey of American Fears 2025 Key Findings.

 

That article has another section titled Conspiracy Theories with a horizontal bar chart created by Gabriella Bartsch, shown above, which I have annotated (in green) based on the data presented in the Methods Report for Q22 on pages 72 to 74. All seven percentages she listed for the sum Agree + Strongly Agree are wrong. They are too low by an average of 3.6%, which is much more than the web blank percentage (Don’t Know) that is 0.6% or less.

 

This graphic should have been edited by a professor to check the math before it was put into an article.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I previously discussed this chart in a post on October 24, 2025 titled An article about key findings from the 11th Chapman Survey of American Fears for 2025 has stumbling student graphics with significant errors, with another bar chart of mine, as shown above.

 

 

A botched pie chart about homelessness from a discussion of the 2025 Chapman Survey of American Fears

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On October 23, 2025 I blogged about how In the eleventh Chapman Survey of American Fears for 2025, public speaking only was ranked #46 of 67 fears at 33.7%. That survey had some additional questions with four possible agreement levels of Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree. Six of them, Q20 in their Methods Report, asked about homeless people. For example, Q20A was:

 

“Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements – Homeless people should be allowed to live on the streets or in tents.”

 

There was an article titled Chapman Survey of American Fears 2025 Key Findings, which has a section on Homelessness that included a miscaptioned pie chart (by Emma Boyd) titled OPINIONS OF HOMLESSNESS POLICY which I have shown above with added annotations.

 

The chart caption claims to show the percent who Strongly Agree or Agree, but really does not. I added the correct percent in green. The sum for all six questions is 372.3%, and the percents she shows were rescaled to add to a hundred - divided by a factor of 3.72. The largest percent, which she placed at the lower left, really is 92.4%, but she instead shows 24.8%.  

 

Also, for pie charts the usual layout is to start with the largest wedge beginning at 12 o’clock and then go clockwise in decreasing order. More careful editing could have caught these problems.

 

 

An addition mistake in a recent article from the Idaho Freedom Foundation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We need to carefully edit what we write, even just a table with a sum of six numbers. There is an article by Fred Birnbaum at the Idaho Freedom Foundation on April 30, 2026 titled Saving money should not be a thankless task for legislators. Fred’s LinkedIn page says has an MBA, so dealing with numbers should not be a thankless task for him. 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That article contains the table shown above, which I have annotated. The line for Total saved before Governor Veto is listed as $107,576,800 – but is $800 too large; it should be $107,576,000. You can easily spot that the hundreds digit is wrong, since there are two 2s and a 6 which should total to 10 rather than 8. And similarly, the Total saved after Governor Veto is listed as $107,098,200 – but it also should be $800 smaller at $107,097,400.  

 

The adding machine image came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Comparing scales for loudness and temperature

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

On November 23, 2023 I blogged about Five recent articles on using analogies and linked to an article by Miguel Balbin, Khatora Opperman and Tulio Rossi at Animate Your Science on November 7, 2022 which is titled How to write effective analogies for communicating research. They explained that:

 

“An analogy is a descriptive comparison of similarities between two or more different things. Using comparisons helps to explain complex and new ideas by linking them to something familiar.”

 

There is an interesting 2025 book by Walter Murch titled SUDDENLY SOMETHING CLICKED: The Languages of Film Editing and Sound Design. Chapter 19 in the section on Sound Design is titled ODE TO SPO: The Road to Apocalypse. On page 225, he has a pair of tables first listing loudness of sounds in decibels and then temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. Most of us are very familiar with temperatures between those for water freezing (32^oF) and boiling (212^oF). Walter notes there is a close alignment between the subjective experiences for loudness and temperature, although this just is a fortuitous coincidence. I have tabulated them side by side, as shown above.

 

His discussion of film editing describes working on the 1974 mystery thriller film The Conversation. It was written, produced, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. On page 133 there is an image showing how scenes in it were edited. That is shown more clearly in a two-minute Vimeo video titled Conversation: Restructure first 40 minutes.

 

An excellent comprehensive monthly calendar for planning to improve your public speaking this year

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On January first I blogged about In 2026 only you can prevent bad presentations, and mentioned an article by Maurice Decastro at Mindful Presenter on December 28, 2025 titled 10 Ways to Develop Strong Public Speaking Skills in 2026. He has another article on January 1, 2026 titled Transform your public speaking skills: a comprehensive yearly growth calendar. It has the following categories organized by months, each of which is briefly discussed:

  

January – Prioritise what matters most

Identify your ‘why”

Focus on your strengths first

Find a trusted friend or colleague

 

February – Clarity is king

Start small and clarify one core message

Know your audience and shape the message around them

Pressure-test your clarity

 

March – Create a strong, impactful opening and closing

Begin with a compelling quote or question

Share a fascinating anecdote, statistic, or fact

Create an image

Close with impact

 

April – Managing your nerves

Ground your body to calm your mind

Shift focus away from yourself

Build confidence through preparation, not perflection

 

May – Could you listen to yourself?

Record yourself practicing

Slow down and pause

Experiment with volume and emphasis

 

June – Practice mindful movement

Connect with the ground and your hands

Connect through eye contact

Connect with yourself before speaking

 

July – Manage your bad habits

Fire, aim, read

One size fits all

The curse of knowledge

Avoiding mud at the wall

Avoiding PPI (Preparation, practice, internalization)

The tornado effect

Looking good

Avoiding the bush

The ostrich syndrome

Speed of light

Energy is key

The corporate spokesperson

The comforter

Motion sickness

Let’s count

You don’t sound so sure

 

August – Share stories

Create a personal story bank

Structure your story and make it emotionally engaging

Enhance your story delivery skills

 

September – Focus on engagement and interaction

Ask questions

Encourage reflection and gauge the atmosphere

Boost audience participation

 

October – Get out more

Attend live events

Look for opportunities to learn

Ask for help when needed

 

November – Mastering questions

Listen fully and clarify

Pause, smile, and breathe

Stay focused and strategic

 

December – Spend time reflecting

Reflect on your learning and add new techniques

Demonstrate your skills in practical situations

Create a personal development plan

 

His monthly titles had dashes for January, February, March, April, May, September, October, and November; But he used colons for June, July, August, and December. I edited to make them consistent.

 

There are three categories in each month for January, February, April, May, June, August, September, October, November, and December. But there are four categories for March, and sixteen categories for July. That is a total of 44 categories! Those 16 from July might better have left four there, and spread the remaining dozen as two each over six months.

 

The calendar was adapted from this one at OpenClipArt.  

 

 

An article about key findings from the 11th Chapman Survey of American Fears for 2025 has stumbling student graphics with significant errors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On October 23, 2025 I blogged about how In the eleventh Chapman Survey of American Fears for 2025, public speaking only was ranked #46 of 67 fears at 33.7%. Those results from the 2025 survey first were reported in a news release by Robert Hitchcock on October 21 mistitled What Americans Fear Most in 2025: Chapman University’s Annual Survey Reveals Top Fears and the Psychology Behind Them. And their detailed results are in a methods report pdf file.

 

There also is an 8-page pdf article titled Chapman University Survey of American Fears 2025 Key Findings. It includes five graphics that were prepared by students. The first one, by Madeline Southern, titled TOP 10 FEARS 2025 is correct.

 

But the other four are not. The third graphic, also by Madeline Southern, is a chart titled FEAR OF DRINKING WATER POLLUTION AND POLLUTION OF OCEANS, RIVERS, AND LAKES. It plots those two fears for years ranging from 2017 to 2025. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But that chart has four incorrect entries for those two fears because, as shown above in a pair of tables, it claims to include results for 2020. Actually there was no survey done in 2020 – just one identified as 2020/21. Those four entries are offset from where they belong.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fifth graphic is a bar chart by Yasmine Hourie, which is titled FEAR OF MURDER AND PROPERTY CRIME. What she calls Property Crime in the 2021 to 2025 surveys is identified as Theft of Property. As shown above in a table, four of five entries are correct but the one for 2022 says 30.0% when the detailed results say 34.5%.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, the bar chart for Murder is completely incorrect because it lists just one item while the detailed results show both Murder by a Stranger and (somewhat lower) Murder by Someone You Know. I show those results above in a table. Her Murder result also does not match the average for by a Stranger and by Someone You Know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second graphic is a pie chart by Emma Boyd titled OPINIONS OF HOMELESSNESS POLICY and has a caption claiming it presents results for % Strongly Agree or Agree. But, as is shown above via a table, none of those percentages are correct. They instead were rescaled to add up to a hundred percent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fourth graphic, by Gabriella Bartsch, is a bar chart titled CONSPIRACY BELIEFS IN AMERICA which claims to show percentages for seven items at the level Strongly Agree or Agree. But, as is shown above in my replot, all of her numbers are smaller by an average of 3.6% than those in the detailed results (and curiously are shown with two decimal places rather than one).  

 

Chapman University obviously stumbled when preparing this article. No one bothered to carefully edit these graphics and remove the errors.

 

The cartoon was adapted from one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

An interesting book about how you first write a sentence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Moran is a professor of English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University. In 2018 he published an interesting and very usefu book titled First You Write a Sentence: The elements of reading, writing … and life. His chapter titles and subtitles are:

 

1]  A Pedant’s Apology

Or why I wrote this book

2]  The Ape That Writes Sentences

Or why word order is (almost) everything 

3]  Nouns versus Verbs

Or how to bring a sentence to life, but not too much

4]  Nothing Like a Windowpane

Or how to say wondrous things with plain words 

5]  The High-wire Act

Or how to write long and legato without running out of breath

6]  Foolish Like a Trout

Or how to join sentences together with invisible thread 

7]  A Small Good Thing

Or why a sentence should be a gift to the world

On Page 5 he explains that:

“A sentence is a small, sealed vessel for holding meaning. It delivers some news – an assertion, command or question – about the world. Every sentence needs a subject, which is a noun or noun phrase, and a predicate, which is just the bit of the sentence that isn’t the subject and that must have a main verb. The subject is usually (but not always) what the sentence is about and the predicate is usually (but not always) what happens to the subject or what is. This {subject} is a sentence {predicate}. A sentence must have a subject and a main verb, except when it leaves out one or both of them because their presence is implied. OK?” 

On pages 211 and 212 he has pithy advice in Twenty Sentences on Sentences:

 1) Listen, read and write for the sentences, because the sentence must be got right or nothing will be right. 

 2) A sentence is not about self-expression but about editing your thoughts into a partly feigned fluency, building a ladder of words up to a better self.

 3) Train your ears, for how a sentence sounds in the head is also what it says to the heart. 

 4) The bones of a sentence are just a noun and a verb, so put the right nouns and verbs in the right slots and the other words fall into place around them.

 5) Good prose is not a windowpane: a sentence reads best when the writer has tasted and relished the words, not tried to make them invisible. 

 6) Your sentences should mimic the naturalness of speech, so long as you remember that speech is not really natural and that writing is not really like speech.

 7) Short words are best, for their clarity and chewy vowels, but the odd long word in a sentence draws just the right amount of attention to itself. 

 8) Verbal economy in a sentence is a virtue but an overprized one: words are precious but they need to be spent.

 9) Learn to love the full stop, and think of it as the goal toward which your words adamantly move – because a good sentence, like a good life, needs a good death. 

10) If you keep the phrases short, and leave the longest phrase until last, the reader can cut a long sentence up into pieces in her head and swallow them whole.

11) Your sentences should sound slightly more naïve than you are, for good writing is done with a cold eye but an open heart, and it is better to be always clear than always right. 

12) The reader can live with more repetition – of both words and syntax – than you think, and these echoes within and between your sentences shed light on what you mean to say.

13) Vary the length of your sentences, and your words will be filled with life and music. 

14) Because sentences have to live alongside each other, not all of them can dazzle the reader with their brilliance.

15) You can change the whole tone of a sentence by moving it from the end of a paragraph to the start of a new one, and vice versa. 

16) Shorten your paragraphs: white space between sentences never fails to be welcoming.

17) A paragraph is not a single topic hammered home with proofs, but a rhythm made by the sentences rubbing up against each other, a rhythm which is itself the argument. 

18) A reader needs no chaperone: signposting should be invisible and the sentences cohere through suggestive arrangement, not coercive connection.

19) Voice is the holding energy that glues sentences together, the elusive elixir of coherence that gives whatever it is you want to say a home.

20) A sentence is a gift from writer to reader, one that should never have to be bought – with boredom, confusion, the duty to admire the giver, or anything else. 

Cartoon images of a head and heart came from OpenClipArt.

  

Become a success by stacking your talents or skills

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a post by Bo Campbell at the Davidson Blog in 2018 titled Talent stacking – the key to standing out from the crowd. Bo explained that:

 

“The term ‘talent stack’ was coined by cartoonist Scott Adams – best known as the creator of the Dilbert Cartoon series – to describe developing a variety of skills which combine to make someone a sought-after commodity. Adams describes his own talent stack [as shown above] in the following terms:

 

‘I am a famous syndicated cartoonist who doesn’t have much artistic talent, and I’ve never taken a college-level writing class. But few people are good at both drawing and writing. When you add in my ordinary business skills, my strong work ethic, my risk tolerance, and my reasonably good sense of humour, I’m fairly unique.’ ”

 

Success may not continue unabated. The Wikipedia page about Scott Adams notes that in 2023 he was dropped by both his book publisher and his comic strip syndicator.

 

There is an article by Darius Foroux on November 6, 2018 titled Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success. A second article by Thomas Oppong at The Ladders on January 15, 2020 is titled Skill stacking: Instead of mastering one skill, build a skill set. And there is a 2020 book by Steven West titled Skill Stacking: A practical approach to life, beat the competition and do what you love. And there is a post by Naressa Kahn at the Mindvalley Blog on February 16, 2025 titled How skill stacking can future-proof your career and make you indispensable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My stack of skills (shown above) includes writing magazine articles and reports, speaking in public, creating graphics for presentations, telling stories, and blogging. I had editing experience with reviewing magazine articles for both the materials science magazine Metallurgical Transactions and the corrosion engineering magazine Materials Performance.

 

There is a big difference between an anecdote and an antidote

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a post by Dr. John Livingston at the Gem State Patriot News blog on August 2, 2025 titled Factions and Bullies. His subject was the tenth Federalist Paper by James Madison, published in November 1787 and titled The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection (continued). John began the seventh paragraph by claiming (my italics):

 

“Madison asserted and I must paraphrase that the anecdote for factional violence is a large Union with diverse life experiences and a common moral ethic.”

 

But there is a big difference between an antidote and an anecdote. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, an anecdote is:

 

“A usually short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident.”

 

And an antidote instead is:

 

“A remedy to counteract the effects of poison”

                                         or

“Something that relieves, prevents, or counteracts“

 

As usual, Dr. Livingston didn’t bother to proofread what he wrote. Perhaps he just dictated it.  Rather ironically on July 27, 2025 he blogged about What’s in a Word. I last blogged about another mixup in a post on July 25, 2025 titled There are haves and have nots; but there are just two halves, and no halve nots.

 

An image of a story book came from OpenClipArt, and an image of a medicine bottle was adapted from the Library of Congress.

 

 

Editing as Excavating

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Editing may involve serious digging. There is a useful article by Yi Shun Lai in The Writer magazine on September 20, 2024 titled The editor, the excavator and subtitled Sometimes it takes another set of eyes to see what your story is REALLY about. She begins:

 

“The essay begins nicely. It’s fabulously written, ostensibly about the way a young man feels having his life chronicled each week in his mother’s newspaper column.

 

About three-quarters of the way through, the writer recounts an event that makes my ears prick up, something so significant that it gives the words and events in the pages before a new angle. And then he kind of just drops it. I can feel him physically dragging the essay back to what it was about before, trying to give due diligence to the narrative plan he’s laid out for himself.

 

The essay holds my attention all the way through, but by the end of it, I’m feeling hungover, literally, because hangovers are accompanied by the sense that you know you did something last night; you just can’t place exactly what it is. I read the writer’s cover letter, thinking there might be some hint as to whether or not I’ve misread the essay, but it doesn’t elucidate the issue for me, so I ping the writer an email asking for a phone conference.

Long story short, we published the writer, but what went into our literary magazine was a reasonably far cry from the submission I received. The lead-in had changed. The event that had gripped my attention was given more clout, and was recounted all the way through. The final touch was a new title for the piece, since the essay was no longer about what it used to be about.”

 

 

 

 

 

Dropping an event is known as Chekhov’s gun, which I blogged about on July 12, 2019 in a post titled Chekhov’s Gun – speechwriting advice from a cartoon. Both Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and the Yale Book of Quotations state it as:

 

“One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”

 

An image of a Caterpillar 330 Excavator came from Wikimedia Commons, and a Winchester rifle came from OpenClipArt.

 

 

Using funhouse mirrors to evaluate your speechwriting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ada Community library branch closest to me is a couple miles away on Lake Hazel Road. But another branch is a couple miles north of it on Victory Road. Recently I visited that branch to look for new books and movie DVDs. I also looked on the shelves for books about public speaking, whose call number is 808.51. Just to the left under 808.02 I found an interesting 1999 paperback book by Eric Maisel titled Deep Writing: 7 Principles that bring ideas to life. There is a brief article by Heather Grove at Errant Dreams on June 20, 2006 about it titled “Deep Writing: 7 Principles that bring ideas to life,” Eric Maisel. I skimmed through the book, and was intrigued by the following section on pages 124 to 128:

 

“FUNNY MIRRORS

 

I recommend the following special way of evaluating your work. It can feel strange at first, because it involves a process that is intuitive and impressionistic, but once you master it you can learn what you need to know about your writing in almost an instant. I call this process funny mirrors.

 

Imagine that you’ve taken your work to a surrealist amusement park, and you discover a funhouse there. You go inside and encounter a long corridor lined with mirrors on both sides. On one side are mirrors with names: the mirror of the adjective, the mirror of the original idea, the mirror of the living thing, and so on. On the other side are mirrors that have a place on them for you to inscribe your own names: the mirror of Editor Jane, the mirror of the German-American reader, the mirror of the subplot, and so on.

 

When you hold up your work to one of these mirrors, you see only and exactly what that mirror reflects. In the first mirror you might encounter a talking head, in the second an image or a scene, in the third a phrase written out in script. Sometimes nothing will appear, a nothing full of information, as when you hold up your work to the marketplace mirror and the mirror can find nothing in your work with commercial appeal. Sometimes there are question marks, exclamation points, or strange squiggles in need of deciphering. This is a surrealistic funhouse, after all, and sometimes what you see will need interpreting.

 

The following are the named mirrors:

 

The Mirror of the Adjective

When you hold your work up to this mirror, you get back a single word: dark, confused, rushed, sentimental, stiff, clever, simplistic, elegant, unflinching, detached, depressing, deep, commercial. This is the mirror’s understanding – that is, your intuitive understanding – of your work’s current state, summed up in a single word.

 

The Mirror of the Original Idea

Your piece of writing started somewhere, with a feeling, an image, an idea. This mirror will reflect back to you insights about whether and to what extent the work is still harboring that original idea and is still guided by it. You might see a tiny dot: all that remains of your original idea. You might see an abstract painting: the idea gone wild, fragmented and mutated in the writing.

 

The Mirror of the Living Thing

In this mirror you get a sense of your work’s organic growth: whether it is growing tall and spidery, short and squat, spare and anemic. It may have nothing of the original idea left in it, but may still be a healthy, thriving organism, growing with its own fine logic.

 

The Mirror of Alternatives

In this mirror you get a snapshot of how your work might look if written differently. This mirror is invaluable: you get to see powerful alternatives that might have eluded your vision because of

 your focus on the work-as-it-is. Each time you hold up the work you see another alternative: how the book might look if narrated omnisciently, or if Sally told the story instead of Harry, or if Sally’s best friend did the telling.

 

The Mirror of Shape and Form

Every piece of writing has its own shape, its own architecture. In this mirror you might see reflected a skyscraper with the top fifty stories separated from the bottom fifty by a jarring gap of open air. Your book may be missing the middle chapter that connects the first half with the second. You might see a Calder mobile, which reminds you that the twittering bird chapter early on needs balancing with a meditation on the lightness of being.

    

The Mirror of the Ideal Reader

In this mirror a face appears and chats with you. He or she is serious, respectful, intimate, and understands your intentions but also has his or her own ideas about what is or isn’t working. If you hold your work up a second time, a different ideal reader may appear, one with a different history and different tastes but one still absolutely on your side and interested in seeing your work succeed.

 

Here are ten more mirrors:

 

The Mirror of the Typical Reader

The Mirror of Narrative Flow

The Mirror of Rhetorical Power

The Mirror of Intention

The Mirror of Voice

The Marketplace Mirror

The Mirror of Mystery

The Mirror of Grandeur

The Mirror of Truth

The Mirror of Goodness

 

Can you imagine how each of these mirrors works? What do you see reflected in each of them?

 

When you want to know something in addition to the information available in the named mirrors, walk down the other side of the corridor. There stand the mirrors waiting to be named by you. You might hold your work up to a mirror you call Mary and get a short, important answer about whether Mary is an effective character or a distraction. You might hold your work up to a mirror you call Dialogue and learn that your character John is making boring speeches and that Howard is barely grunting. You might hold the work up to a mirror you call Ending and learn whether your whisper of an ending is necessary, a problem, or both.

 

When you’re working with an editor, then naturally you will want to add an Editor mirror to your funhouse array. When you hold your work up to this mirror you get to hear your editor’s thoughts about the book. Editor Jane appears and says, ‘Darn it boy, didn’t we discuss this? I wanted much more action and much less philosophizing!’ With this mirror you foretell editorial objections and nip problems in the bud by engaging in dialogue with your intuition. This mirror alone is worth the price of admission.

 

Visit this funhouse when you want to evaluate your work. Use exactly as many mirrors as you need. Invent the ones that will help you the most, creating custom-tailored mirrors that answer your most pressing questions. Have you written several short stories and wonder if they amount to a collection? Invent a mirror. Is your self-help book helpful enough? Invent a mirror. See what there is to be seen.”

 

The mirrors at Science City in Calcutta came from Wikimedia Commons.