Expanding on an Elliottism

I do so enjoy Eva D. Coleman's daily list of Steve Elliottisms. But one from last night's game, while accurate, left me unsatisfied. Asked what writers I follow, I said, "I don't follow bylines." That was a woefully incomplete answer and one that I will try to expand on here.

I don't follow writers as much as I follow information and ideas. Pretty much any writer good enough to have a book or article published is a good enough writer to follow. I'm best positioned to teach others how to write, but I'm not particularly hung up on format as long as it's best to tell the story. Mike Simons pointed out The New York Times' mind-bogglingly good interactive package Snow Fall. It's a good example of different elements coming together to share information and ideas in the most compelling way possible. The key for me is depth of information and context, with the facts delivered simply and sharply.

But if the question is what I consider particularly good writing in terms of structure and ideas and ways to teach it, I have some suggestions below.

Steve Elliott
Arizona State University
Phoenix


Sports Illustrated: It offers great examples of how to make things that may have happened a week ago relevant along with some of the best personality profiles around. If you subscribe, the iPad edition is a model.

NPR: Sarah-Anne mentioned this in a tweet. Make your students read with their ears. From news reports to Ira Glass and Garrison Keillor, NPR provides examples of people using their voices to carry listeners through complex information and create strong mental images. That's what effective writers do. I like Charles Osgood too.

Fiction Writers Who Engage You: Philip Roth is probably the best pure writer I've read, at least among contemporary authors. Cormac McCarthy's writing can be all over the place -- "No Country For Old Men" had me reading some sections twice to make sure I didn't miss anything, while his writing in "The Road" is elegant -- but the ideas and images he conveys are incredibly vivid. Right now I'm reading Kate Southwood's "Falling to Earth," and I'm enjoying it just as much as Roth and McCarthy because the ideas are so compelling. I like science fiction as writing to model when the authors, from Isaac Asimov (try "The Gods Themselves") to Orson Scott Card (try "Ender's Game"), put scenarios beyond this world in context.

Poetry: In addition to using the six-word rule, have students try summing up situations they covered in haiku or limericks. Share poems that speak to you and show how the words explode with mental images and insights and how the constraints of format help force that to happen.

Old Writing: I find lessons in writing produced when it wasn't easy to write things down, including verses passed through the centuries in song. It may not work in public schools, but the Bible (I recommend the Revised Standard Version) is one good way to show how to do a lot with as few words as possible. In writing presentations, I'll read passages from Genesis ("In the beginning ..."), Psalms and other parts of the Old Testament along with the Gospel of Mark to show that tight writing with specifics beats adjectives. When one of my writers offers an adjective, I ask, "What details did you see that made you use that adjective?" I'll pull passages from Homer, Sappho, Aristophanes. One of the best examples of ancient writing is when Gilgamesh mourns Enkidu. With simple sentences spoken for centuries before etched in clay, it sets a scene and offers the impact of TNT through simile and metaphor:

And Gilgamesh wept over Enkidu. With the first light of dawn he raised his voice and said to the counselors of Uruk:

'Hear me, great ones of Uruk,
I weep for Enkidu, my friend,
Bitterly moaning like a woman mourning
I weep for my brother.
O Enkidu, my brother,
You were the axe at my side,
My hand's strength, the sword in my belt,
The shield before me...'

I'd love to know what others do to bring writers along.