Book Review:
Getting the Words Right
By Theodore A. Rees Cheney
By Teri Sandstedt
© 2007,
Teri Sandstedt
Getting the Words Right:
How to Rewrite, Edit & Revise
By Theodore A. Rees Cheney
A multitude of writing
books cover all aspects of writing from plot to publication. But while
most mention the importance of editing, few offer much advice on the
mechanics. A new writer advised to edit may still have no clear idea
how to begin.
Getting the Words Right
fills this gap with aplomb. It makes no pretence about trying to teach
how to write or sell your work. Nowhere does Mr. Cheney touch on
creating characters or marketing. Instead he begins with the written
word of a finished draft.
His obvious love affair
with words begins in the introduction with a paragraph full of synonyms
in search of one that summarises the editing process. He finally
settles on revision. "The idea of re(vision) is clearly there," he
writes, "a writer must periodically re(look) at what he or she is
writing."
This view permeates
Getting the Words Right. For Mr. Cheney, revision is not a chore to
rush through, but a process of re-experiencing the thrill of writing, of
finding "the more and the better," and of creating--in every sense of
the world--a piece of writing that comes closer to conveying the vision
in the writer's mind. His reader-centric philosophy is as applicable to
the writer who wants to touch the soul of the reader as it is to one
writing instructions to help readers fix their kitchen sinks.
Communication is always in the forefront of Mr Cheney's advice.
Though he acknowledges
that an experienced writer will undergo all aspects of revision more or
less simultaneously, Mr Cheney encourages the writer new to editing to
look at the process in three stages. And the book, weighing in at 210
pages, has only three chapters.
The first, and shortest,
section is titled REVISION BY REDUCTION. Here he encourages searching
for "opportunities" to get rid of words. He quotes the Victorian writer
Walter Pater: "All art doth but consist in the removal of surplusage,"
and then proceeds to help his reader understand what that surplus might
be. He writes of Greater Reductions of whole chapters and paragraphs,
of Lesser Reductions of a sentence here and there, and of Micro
Reductions of using a shorter word in place of a longer. And he
emphasises the impact of blunt Anglo-Saxon words over the longer,
possibly more precise, ornate Latin counterpart.
Touching on subjects such
as redundancy, tangents, modifiers, and idle words, he uses concrete
examples from his own and his students' writings to illustrate each
point.
This is the only section
which may jar with some writers' perceptions. His opinion is that
professional writers write long first drafts. Remarks like
"Seventy-five percent of all revision is eliminating words already
written" and that professional writers "tend (in fact intend) to let it
all hang out" may rub raw against writers who produce short first
drafts.
However, this book still
contains useful advice. Writers with a short first draft may simply
chose to wait until the work is the required length before opening Mr.
Cheney's book. And they will probably find far fewer Greater Reductions
than those of us who let it all out. Alternatively, they may use the
chapter on reduction as a reminder of things not to include when beefing
up the manuscript.
The second chapter,
RETHINK AND REARRANGE, focuses on 'Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis'. The
examples continue as he describes various levels of unity. Page 48, the
beginning of the section on 'Unity of Sentence and Paragraph', is
permanently bookmarked in my copy. I refer to it constantly to re-read
his advice on making each sentence flow inexorably into the next.
Another aspect of that topic (on page 71) is the transitions between
sentences, covered under the subheading 'Coherence'.
Emphasis, he next
describes, is a matter of chemistry. "[Words] actually change the
chemistry of our reader's brain. Those changes are filed away as bits
of memory." Whether you believe him or not, it gives rise to thought
and opens discussion of an otherwise unmentioned punctuation mark: white
space. The last word in a section or sentence stands out.
This chapter flows through
the logics of order, repetition, alliteration, and length, and ends with
sections on typography and de-emphasisers: tools that should emphasise
but don't, either through overuse or abstraction.
The final chapter, REVISE
BY REWORDING, touches on style and is the most abstract chapter of the
book. Here Mr. Cheney covers diction: the verbs, nouns, and adjectives
that have survived so far. He appeals to the senses, to rhythm, and to
sound, scrutinising each word until it fits most pleasingly with its
fellows. He covers figurative writing, allusion, and personification.
And warns of the dangers of overextended metaphors. Here also, he
discusses cliches and jargon, and ends Getting the Words Right
with a selection of common misspellings and commonly misused words.
Once you've read Mr.
Cheney's paragraph on Nauseous/Nauseated you'll never say you are
nauseous again.
Getting the Words Right:
How to Rewrite, Edit &
Revise
By Theodore A. Rees Cheney
Writer's Digest books
ISBN 0-89879-420-X
Author's note:
This article on editing was edited with Mr Cheney's book on my lap and
using his advice to the fullest. Changes include, but are not limited
to:
1) cutting the entire last
paragraph, following his advice that "you may be surprised and delighted
to find the perfect ending (or the makings of one) hiding there,
somewhere near the end, but not where you first wrote the ending."
(sic)
2) inserting the title at
two strategic locations (at the end of a sentence and the end of the
review) to emphasize the subject and to fix the title in the chemical
memory of the reader.
3) cutting words that
don't change the meaning by their omission. (This reduced the review by
about 80 words.)
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