DAISY, DAISY: A Parable for Writers

A field of daisies? No: a daisy and a daisy and a daisy . . . .

      An Old Man and A Boy are standing in a field of flowers. The Old Man points to the field and says to The Boy, "Tell me, what do you see?"
     The Boy answers, "Master, I see a field of flowers."
     "Ah," says The Old Man. "Now kneel and look again. What do you see?"
     The Boy kneels and says, "Master, I see some daisies."
     "Ah," says The Old Man. "Now lie on your stomach and look again. What do you see?"
     The Boy lies on his stomach and says, "Master, I see two tall daisies."
     "Ah," says The Old Man. "Look more closely. What do you see?"
     The Boy says, "Master, I see a 12-inch-tall daisy with three flowers that have yellow centers, one flower with a bee on it, and another with a broken stem. The leaves are green."
     "Yes," says The Old Man. "Now look beside it. What do you see?"
     The Boy says, "Master, I see a 22-inch-tall daisy with four yellow-centered flowers, one with two ants on the petals. The petals are white, but the leaves are brown and--"
     "Enough," says The Old Man. "Stand up."
     The Boy stands up.
     The Old Man points to the field. "Now what do you see?" he asks.
     "Ah, master," says The Boy. "I see a daisy and a daisy and a daisy and--"
     "Yes," says The Old Man.
     "--and a daisy," says The Boy, as they walk away, "and a daisy . . ."

 _____________

     The preceding is an ancient parable that I recently made up. I invented it to illustrate an essential principle of good prose. For me that principle has recently gone beyond mere aesthetic suggestion and has entered the realm of Moral Imperative. The principle is this:
Be specific. Generalities lie. There is no such thing as a field of daisies. There is only a daisy and a daisy and a daisy. . . .

Good writers see specific daisies.

     "Be specific" is one of the two principles by which every great writer, from Sophocles to Shakespeare to Salinger, has lived. (The other principle is "Be concrete," which deserves an essay of its own.)
     What does "Be specific" mean? It means, don't say "stomach medicine" if you mean "Maalox"; don't say "employee" if you mean "pimply bank teller"; and don't say "bodily substance" if you mean "belly button lint" or "ear wax." It means recognizing that generalities are merely a convenient, mendacious shorthand designed to prepare the way for specific examples--specifically for at least three specific examples, because three is, for the human mind, a magic number. Here are three specific examples of what I'm talking about:

• Generality: "A sweet nothing works best when it combines understatement with a figure of speech." Specifics: "Your doe-brown eyes are neither unbeautiful nor unbewitching. Your skin is somewhat smooth and somewhat sweet--like a ripe nectarine. You are only slightly more lovely than a mountain sunrise."

• Generality: "Psychologists are neurotic." Specifics: "My last psychologist weighed 420 pounds and held her sessions in a kitchen. The one before that couldn't talk unless he was petting a cat. The one before that wore Groucho Marx glasses and called it 'role-playing.'"

• Generality: "People who receive radio stations through their teeth should feel blessed." Specifics: "To receive The Weekly Top 40 will make you young. To receive Beethoven will make you profound. To receive All Things Considered will make you wise beyond all other mortal men."

"Pickle" is "food" with a face.

     Specifics, I tell my students, are more real, more vivid, more informative, more honest, and certainly more entertaining than generalities. "Pickle" is "food" with a face. "Sweatsock" is "footwear" with a smell. "Rolex" is "time-piece" with cachet. A good writer must thus develop an eye for specific detail. He must, for example, learn the names of plants and animals. Many a hiker has blistered because he didn't know witch hazel from wisteria, many a cobra has bit the dust because he didn't know a mouse from a mongoose--and many a novelist has blistered and bit the dust for the same reasons.
     Generalities, however, are seductive. It is easier to hold one field of flowers in your head than a million individual daisies. Besides, specifics can be dangerous. In Jorge Luis Borges' marvelous short story "Funes, the Memorious," the title character is a young boy who, as the result of an accident, sees and remembers every single detail of his life, right down to "every leaf on every tree of every wood." In the end, Borges tells us, the boy dies--of congestion.

Gods—and great writers—see, not flocks, but individuals.

     So perhaps you can't see everything in particular. Perhaps that is only for a god to do, if you believe in gods. In fact, it is perhaps what makes a god a god--that he can actually pay attention to each individual sparrow that falls, not to mention each individual human being who is throwing up or chewing his nails. A god doesn't think in terms of flocks or demographics--he thinks in terms of a red cardinal with a black brow and a broken wing under a tree in Central Park or a black child with a white smile and a runaway red wagon in Brooklyn Heights. Maybe that's how a god can manage to love everything, and why he doesn't send form letters in answer to prayers.
     And that's where the Moral Imperative comes in. I think it is morally necessary that we resist the seduction of generalizations, not just as writers but as human beings. It is necessary if we are to, if not love, at least like each other. To embrace specifics, with all their warts and whiskers, is to see through prejudice with unclouded eyes and to engage the world with sympathy. In fact, in the face of specifics, isms--the Frankenstein creations of generality--wither and die. Sexism collapses before Jane Earthmother, who, widowed and plump, has raised nine laughing children all by herself on an Iowa farm. Racism vanishes before Ernest Workman, who, black and underpaid, labors at three jobs in Compton to pay for his wife's kidney dialysis and his little girl's braces. Ageism melts before your very own grandmother and grandfather.
     Exceptions to the rule, you say? There are no rules. There are only exceptions.


END  

Ageism melts in the face of a specific old cat and a specific grandmother. 
(This is my late mother with her late cat Chow-Chow.)

   

WASTE NOT YOUR WORDS: How to achieve conciseness

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Melville's whale of a book (above) is just as concise as                                                                                             Hemingway's sleek marlin of a novella (below).

Conciseness is a principal virtue of good writing.

Let me be clear: “Conciseness” does not mean simply “fewer words.” If that were the case, The Old Man and the Sea would be considered more “concise” than Moby Dick, and all short stories would be considered more “concise” than all novels. On the contrary: A Shakespearean sonnet is not more “concise” than an epic poem like Paradise Lost—it is simply shorter, and that has nothing to do with conciseness. (Both Shakespeare and Milton, by the way, are masters of conciseness. Consider: “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” [from Macbeth]. “Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven” [from Paradise Lost]. Has more ever been said in fewer words?)

Nor does “conciseness” refer to the length of sentences. One of the deep-rooted, time-stretching sentences of William Faulkner or one of the multi-layered, massively qualified, intricately knotted sentences of Henry James is just as likely to be effectively concise as one of Ernest Hemingway’s tight-knit phrasings.

No, “conciseness” simply means the virtue of conveying the most information with the fewest words, the length of the document (or the sentence) notwithstanding. Conciseness comes down to this: Don’t waste words. For a writer, that’s worse than wasting water.

That said, here are fifteen ways to help you say more with fewer words:

1. Remove implied redundancies.

Wordy: “The young girl screamed loudly as she sat on the soft fluffy dog in the white snow.”

Better: “The girl screamed as she sat on the fluffy dog in the snow.”

When you take out “young,” “loudly,” “soft,” and “white,” you’ve lost no information. A girl is by implication young. A scream is by implication loud. (If it’s a soft scream, then the adjective “soft” should be added.) Can a fluffy dog be anything else but soft? No. Is all snow white? No. But if you simply say “snow,” the reader will see white.

2. When possible, replace adverbial words and phrases by using one well-chosen base word.

Wordy: “walked with great confidence”

Better: “strode” or “marched”

Wordy: “extremely large”

Better: “huge” or “enormous” or “gigantic”

Wordy: “spoke under her breath”

Better: “whispered” or “mumbled” or “murmured”

3. Most of the time, use active-voice verbs. 

Wordy: “The words were spoken by my uncle.”

Better: “My uncle spoke the words.”

Wordy: “The ducks were shot by Norm.”

Better: “Norm shot the ducks.”

(Note: The passive voice has its place. For more on the passive voice, see this link: http://writeyourbest.blogspot.com/2011/02/cowards-cop-out-abuse-of-passive-voice.html .)

4. Avoid noun-based phrases where a single strong verb will do.

Wordy: “I have hopes that I will pass the test,”

Better: “I hope I will pass the test.”

Wordy: “We made a decision to climb the mountain”

Better: “We decided to climb the mountain.”

Wordy: “She came to the conclusion that she would apply only to state schools”

Better: “She opted to apply only to state schools.”

5. Avoid most intensifiers. These include words like “very,” “really,” and “extremely.”

Wordy: “I am very eager to take on really difficult subjects in the extremely challenging college curriculum.”

Better: “I am eager to take on difficult subjects in the challenging college curriculum.”

The intensifiers add nothing to the original sentence and in fact make it seem that the student is trying really very extremely too hard.

6. Avoid most deintensifiers. These include words like “rather,” “somewhat,” and “quite.”

Wordy: “I am rather eager to take on the somewhat difficult subjects in the quite challenging college curriculum.”

Better: “I am eager to take on difficult subjects in the challenging college curriculum.”

The deintensifiers add nothing to the original sentence and in fact make the writer sound rather somewhat quite wishy-washy.

7. Avoid pompous phrasing.

Wordy: “at this point in time”

Better: “now” or “today”

Wordy: “He engaged in the utilization of the chain saw.”

Better: “He used the chain saw.”

A worker engaged in the utilization of a chain saw?

8. Consider changing “there are” and “it is” phrasing.

Wordy: “There are many people who prefer bagels to donuts.”

Better:  “Many people prefer bagels to donuts.”

Wordy: “It is often the case that college seniors get careless about doing their schoolwork.”

Better: “College seniors often neglect their schoolwork.”

(Note that I’ve also changed the long-winded phrase “get careless about doing” with the crisp verb “neglect,” which contains all the same information. Well-chosen verbs are at the heart of good, concise writing. Note also that I say consider changing "there are" and "it is" constructions. That doesn't mean get rid of all of them. They have their place.)

9. Put statements in positive form.

Wordy: “It was not uncommon for Ted to talk too much.”

Better: “Ted often talked too much.”

Wordy: “None of the dogs in the room appeared sick or injured.”

Better: “All the dogs in the room appeared healthy.”

Wordy: “I hardly ever saw Jane when she was not drunk.”

Better: “I rarely saw Jane sober.”

(Like most rules, this can be broken in certain circumstances. For more on this subject, see this link: http://writeyourbest.blogspot.com/2011/03/dont-tie-yourself-in-nots.html . I first learned this advice from the wonderful book The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White, which you should read tomorrow.)

10. Avoid empty “all-purpose” nouns.

Wordy: “The dining situation in the dorms is inefficient.”

Better: “Dorm dining is inefficient.” 

Wordy: “Drinking water is a factor in preventing dehydration.”

Better: “Drinking water prevents dehydration.”

Wordy: “Grades are a consideration to be an issue in college admission decisions.”

Better: “Grades influence college admission decisions.”

11. Avoid long imprecise phrases where a single precise word will do.

Wordy: “wooden interdental stimulators”

Better: “toothpicks”

Wordy: “electronically-regulated traffic-control mechanisms”

Better: “stoplights”

(Note: These two wordy examples come from real government documents. For more examples of bad writing, see this link: http://writeyourbest.blogspot.com/2011/01/can-you-translate-this-16-real-examples.html .)

An electronically-regulated traffic-control mechanism?

12. Avoid redundant categories.

Wordy: “The campus is a place where people feel safe.”

Better: “People feel safe on campus.”

Wordy: “My mother is a person who cares about others,”

Better: “My mother cares about others.”

Wordy: “Waitressing is a job that teaches many life skills.”

Better: “Waitressing teaches many life skills.”

13. Avoid redundant pairs.

Wordy: “our goals and objectives”

Better: just “our goals” or just “our objectives”

Wordy: “your hopes and dreams”

Better: just “your hopes” or just “your dreams”

14. Tighten too-loose sentences.

Wordy: “There I was, walking in the woods, and it was 6 a.m. in the morning, and the sun was just above the horizon in the east when I saw twelve crows and they were flying low above the wheat field.”

Better: “Walking in the woods at 6 a.m., the sun just above the horizon, I saw twelve crows flying low above the wheat field.”

15. Subordinate or reduce minor ideas into clauses and phrases instead of giving them their own sentences.

Wordy: “The dog was brown. It was also large. It came at me slowly. It was snarling. The wind was rising. Rain could be seen in the east, where there were hills. I began to run.”

Better: “The large brown dog crept toward me, snarling. The wind was rising, and I could see rain in the eastern hills. I began to run.”

(Note: There are other good ways to merge these ideas into sentences. How you do it depends on the effect you wish to achieve.)

Note that in all this advice, I don’t recommend that you save words by removing ideas, information, examples, or concrete images from your writing. Indeed, they are the substance of good writing. When you save words by using such tactics as I’ve listed here, you have room for even more substance.

I must add, here at the end, a mild caveat: There may be times when, for stylistic reasons (rhythm, sentence variation, a shift of emphasis, and so on), the sentence that best serves your needs contains more words than you might require for purely informational purposes. As with any writing advice, the command to be concise must be weighed against the other demands of good writing.

# # #

HOW TO WRITE A COLLEGE APPLICATION ESSAY: One man's advice

Chocolate milk: A perfectly good subject for an essay.

These days, most colleges require that your application essay be no more than 500 words. In that essay, colleges expect you to reveal your writing ability and, just as important, the real You, with a capital Y. Who are You? What makes You tick? What are Your hopes, expectations, fears, joys, tastes, desires, foibles, sins, and virtues? That’s a lot to expect of 500 words.

Of course, you can’t say everything about yourself in 500 words. Forget that list two sentences ago; you can’t fit all that in 500 words. You must narrow the focus of your essay. So what do you write?

Some experts suggest that you start your application essay with a brief personal story and then draw a “moral” from it that expresses your values. There’s nothing wrong with that advice, but if I were a college admissions officer, I’d be sick by now of essays that begin with a touching little tale about a wise grandfather, a handicapped sibling, or a South American orphan the applicant met on a summer good-works trip. I’d prefer hearing about why you still drink only chocolate milk at the age of 17, or how Bonnie Sue McKay broke your heart at the age of twelve (and how you got over it by learning to quilt), or why table tennis is your favorite sport, or how you, with your tin ear, wept the first time you heard Schumann’s Piano Concerto.

Prefer rugby to table tennis? Fine. Go with that.

If I’m your college admissions officer, forget “touching.” Give me honest and accurate, instead. Give me “tough” before “touching.” Give me clear observations—in your own words, please, not stock phrases. Give me concrete images: a chocolate milk stain on a white hospital gown, a quilting needle stuck in your index finger, a cracked ping-pong ball behind the basement furnace, a scratchy old recording coming out of a friend’s iPod. Give me wit, if you’ve got it, but don’t strain for something that doesn’t come naturally. Give me honest feeling, not prepackaged, Hallmark-card, tell-’em-what-they-want-to hear mush. If you now hate quilting and prefer rugby to table tennis, fine, write that.

If I’m your college admissions officer, think hard about chocolate milk or Bonnie Sue or table tennis or Schumann, and answer me this question, as accurately and honestly as you can: Why is this important to you? If you think you know the answer to that question before you start writing, then you don’t know what writing is. Writing—through thinking and brainstorming and free-writing and revising and revising—is a way of searching for the answers to such a question and then writing down those answers as accurately as you can. A good essay would surprise the you you were before you began to write it.

I’m not a college admissions officer, but if I were, I’d say this: The subject of your essay doesn’t matter. It simply needs to be well written and about something you—you, not everybody else, and certainly not some imaginary admissions officer—honestly do care about. Think of this not as an exercise designed to impress colleges, but as a piece of writing as sincere as a love letter. Even if it’s about chocolate milk.

Like lap blankets? A fine subject for an essay.

Hmmm. All this sounds very solemn. Your college application essay does not need to be solemn. It does not need to be profound. It does not need to be heart-warming or tragic or full of marvels. It can be funny or quirky. It can be plain and simple. (I often prefer plain and simple.) It can be about something or someone you like, not necessarily something or someone you love. In other words, it can be about lap blankets or Roger Federer, not necessarily about environmental awareness or your grandfather. I once was paid good money for a little essay about the contents of my wallet. I believe that essay would have got me admitted to Harvard.

All this means your college application essay can be written only by you. Your mother can’t write it. Your guidance counselor can’t write it. That friend of the family who’s a writing teacher can’t write it. When my son applied to college, I refused to help him with his essay. I’m a professional writer and college writing teacher; I knew I could make his essay better. But I couldn’t make it his. If colleges wanted to know what he had to say and how he said it, then the work had to be his. Otherwise, he was applying under false pretenses. (Who knows, you may want to write something you don’t want to show your mother or your guidance counselor. Do you really want them to know about your crush on Bonnie Sue or your fear of white milk?)

I know that many college applicants get help—some of them get lots of help—on their application essays. Maybe I shouldn’t judge them. But I do. I think they’re cheating just a bit. Your essay needs to be your essay.

And of course it needs to be no more than 500 words. Why? Because that’s the rule, and even if it’s a narrow and arbitrary rule, you need to prove you can color inside the lines. In my next post to this site,I give you some advice about how to write concisely and make the most of those, or any other, 500 words.

This essay first appeared on the website smartcollegevisit.com .

Only five-hundred words? Yes, you've got to color inside the lines.

 

HOW TO WRITE A LETTER TO STEVEN SPIELBERG

Steven Spielberg (above) and Mark Twain (below) would make a good team.

 

I just wrote a letter to Steven Spielberg, the movie director. This process raised some interesting questions about writing. Here’s the final version of my letter.

Ed Weathers

0000 XXXXXXXX Street

XXXXburg, VA 00000

Tel.: 000-000-0000

January 2, 2012

Steven Spielberg

DreamWorks SKG

100 Universal City Plaza, Bldg 10

Universal City, CA 91608, USA

Dear Mr. Spielberg:

I’m writing to suggest, if you haven’t already suggested it to yourself, that you consider making a movie of Huckleberry Finn that does justice to the novel—the definitive film version of a great American story.

Ernest Hemingway said, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” Strangely, there has never been a movie version of Huckleberry Finn that comes anywhere near capturing the richness of the novel. Most have simply approached it as a “boy’s book,” emphasizing its humor. In saying what he said, Hemingway recognized that Huckleberry Finn deals with profound themes in American culture: love, death, self-reliance, racism, Puritanism, the tyranny of the majority, the failure of the past, the confusion of the present, and the appalling American demand that each person invent himself in The New World.

It’s also the simple story of a very brave boy. When Huck decides at last to help Jim escape to freedom, he says, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell!” It is one of the great moments of courage in the history of literature, because Huck believes, literally and vividly, that the fires of eternal damnation await him for his act of conscience.

People die in Huckleberry Finn—people Huck loves—and his best friend (Tom Sawyer) lacks the character to follow where Huck’s conscience leads him. Despite its “happy” ending, it’s also rather sad: in the end, Huck must “light out for the Territory,” alone.

And, of course, amazingly, it’s a terrifically funny book, too, with plenty of action sequences. No wonder Hemingway felt about it the way he did.

I admire your movies, especially Empire of the Sun, which deals with some of the same themes as Huckleberry Finn and wasn’t afraid to take a boy’s story seriously. I have no personal stake in your doing this movie except that I happen to love good movies, and I happen to love this book. (Heaven help me, I also have a bunch of degrees in American literature.)

Please make a movie of Huckleberry Finn. And thanks for reading my longwinded suggestion.

Sincerely,

Ed Weathers

Here are some of the writing questions that any letter like this raises, and how I answered them:

Would you address a fan letter "Dear Mr. Jeter"?

Q: How formal should the letter be?

A: This question comprises a lot of sub-questions. For example, how should I address Steven Spielberg? This is always a tricky question for letters to celebrities. Should I say “Dear Steven” or “Dear Mr. Spielberg”? “Dear Mr. Spielberg” seems rather formal, considering film fans feel we know him well. Would we write a fan letter to Tom Hanks that says “Dear Mr. Hanks”? Most fans I know would say “Dear Tom.” Likewise, most Yankee fans would write “Dear Derek,” not “Dear Mr. Jeter.” But, as a director, Spielberg is a bit more removed from his fans than an actor like Tom Hanks—slightly higher (or at least less visible) in the film hierarchy—so I chose “Dear Mr. Spielberg.” To have written “Dear Steven” would have seemed presumptuous, as if I were pretending to be his friend. When writing, you must take into account your relationship with your reader, and the salutation of a letter is the first step in defining that relationship.

      Another question of formality has to do with contractions: To have contractions or not to have contractions? A very formal letter would have no contractions. I could have started the letter: “I am writing to suggest, if you have not already suggested it to yourself . . .” This seemed a bit too formal for me. I wanted to come across as an ordinary person, not a fuddy duddy, so I used contractions (I'm, haven't). When writing, you must decide what kind of persona (image or impression) you want to establish. Try to establish that persona at the very beginning of a document.

      Finally, there was the general question of the formality of the vocabulary: Should the vocabulary be formal/serious/academic or informal/light/everyday? I have a history in academia, but I wanted first to come across as an ordinary film fan. I didn’t use academic terms like “personification” or “narrative arc” or even “cinema.” I didn’t use any words that an ordinary educated person wouldn’t know. On the other hand, I didn’t shy from using terms like “the tyranny of the majority” and “Puritanism,” which are better understood by American studies specialists than by the average person. Such phrases, while not difficult to comprehend, were useful in establishing that I’ve thought a lot about this book. They also help establish my credentials as someone who understands how to talk about the themes of books and movies. Again, I worked hard to have just the right balance of ordinary and a-little-more-erudite-than-ordinary language in the letter.

Should my letter start with Hemingway or not?

Q: How should the letter begin?

In the first draft of my letter, I began with the quote from Hemingway and spent the first paragraph making the claim that there had never been a film that took Huckleberry Finn as seriously as I think it deserves to be taken. The opening words of a document are hugely important. If they turn the reader off, the writer will have a devil of a time turning the reader on again. I thought the Hemingway quote made a strong statement, and Hemingway certainly has more credibility for Steven Spielberg than this unknown guy named Ed Weathers.

     But then I thought: Steven Spielberg is a busy man. In Hollywood, it is said, you should be able to summarize an entire film idea in one sentence, and in a movie pitch to studio heads, you’d better start with that sentence because that’s all they might listen to. So I decided to begin the letter with the point of the letter: that I wanted Spielberg to make a movie of Huckleberry Finn. In the United States, it is usually a good idea to start a business letter—which, in effect, this is—with your main point. (Note: In many other parts of the world, like Asia, South America, and the Middle East, you should take a more roundabout way to get to your point, lest you be thought discourteous or brusque. More on that in a future post.)

Should I mention the Mickey Rooney version of Huckleberry Finn?

Q: How much detail should I put in?

At one point in the composition of this letter, I decided that I should list all the movie versions of Huckleberry Finn that have been made in the past. This seemed useful because I knew that Spielberg wouldn’t make a decision about this until he had seen the previous versions of the story, and I wanted to make it easy for him to find them. Try to answer all your reader’s questions, and try to offer useful information, even if your reader may not think to ask for it. I thought one of Spielberg’s questions might be what other films had been made of Huck’s story. Besides, I know from reading about him that Steven Spielberg likes to watch movies, and a list of previous versions of the story would show him that I, too, am a movie buff. Try to learn as much about your readers as you can, so you can appeal to them as effectively as possible, with information they might want and arguments that might persuade them.

      I also know, for example, that Spielberg loves the movie Lawrence of Arabia, which happens to be my favorite movie of all time. I considered mentioning that in the letter, too, for obvious reasons.

     In the end, I didn’t put in any movie history or say anything about my love of Lawrence of Arabia. I didn't even mention that I wrote my Master’s thesis about Huckleberry Finn. Why not? Simply because it would have taken up too much space, and that information didn’t seem necessary to make my point. Like any busy businessman, Steven Spielberg isn’t going to give a letter like this much time. Most business letters should be no more than one page. No doubt you might see some things in the letter that you would have left out to make the letter even shorter.

     (The question of how long a document should be is not to be taken lightly. My blog posts, for example, like this one, are always longer than they should be. This is a result of my self-indulgence and shows, in a sense, a lack of consideration to my readers. I apologize.)

Should I mention that Lawrence of Arabia, one of Spielberg's favorite movies, is also my favorite?

Q: What arguments would be most persuasive?

At the heart of most writing is the need to be persuasive. You are trying to convince someone to do something or to change the way they think about something. What did I need to say to have the best chance of persuading Steven Spielberg that his making a film of Huckleberry Finn was a good idea? (Note: Being a realist, I will not judge the success of the letter by whether he actually makes the film. I could have made the best case in the world, and he might really want to make the movie I want him to make, but there are a thousand reasons he won’t or can’t. Sometimes, as a writer, you can be as persuasive as humanly possible and still not get what you want. Live with it.)

     In the end, I decided to keep the focus of my argument on the book itself. First, I had to show that the novel is worthy of being a film. This was easy: the Hemingway quote, the list of the novel’s themes, and the fact that it had been the subject of so many other film versions made that point sufficiently, I thought. I call this the “positive” argument—the argument that says why my position is correct.

     Second, I had to address Spielberg’s most likely objections to making a movie of the book. Those objections were, I believed, 1) it’s already been made into a movie and 2) it’s just a lightweight children’s book. The heart of the letter, then, including the Hemingway quote, is devoted to explaining that this is a book to be taken seriously—it is not just a humorous kids' book—and that the films that have been made previously have not captured the book’s true spirit. Always address your reader’s possible counterarguments. This is an indispensable part of powerful persuasion. I call this the “converse” argument: it explains why potential objections to my position are weak.

     Of course, knowing Spielberg’s movies, most of which include action and humor, I also needed to point out that Huckleberry Finn also has both of those characteristics, in addition to its serious side. It is also, as I mention, a book with a child as the protagonist—something that Spielberg has focused on in nearly all his movies. When you can, appeal to your reader’s values in your argument.

Q: Should I flatter Steven Spielberg or not?

This is another difficult question when you write, especially when you write to people in positions of power and fame (including your boss). Be respectful, but don't come across as an obsequious sycophant. (“Obsequious sycophant” is more or less redundant, but it was a favorite phrase of my high-school English teacher Mr. Cates, who clearly understood its redundancy and who always said it with a sly grin while subtly accusing one of being just such a thing.) If your reader thinks you’re just flattering him to get your way, your motives will be called into question and you will lose all credibility. A writer who loses his credibility will also lose his reader.  In this letter, this question—how much to flatter Mr. Spielberg—was easy to answer: all I had to do was tell the truth. The truth was this: I like his movies, especially Empire of the Sun, and that’s why I want him to make the definitive movie version of Huckleberry Finn. This was absolutely sincere on my part. If you write sincerely, your credibility will rarely be called into question—nor should it be. I also think the mention of one specific film—Empire of the Sun—will help convince him of my sincerity here: it shows I know his films pretty well (this is not one of his best-known ones), and it has a subject—a young boy trying to make his way in difficult circumstances—that is apt to Huckleberry Finn. In any writing, relevant specifics are powerful additions to a strong argument.

Is it sucking up too much to mention that Empire of the Sun is one of my favorite movies?

Q: Should I mention my own credentials or not?

When they’re relevant, it’s perfectly legitimate for a writer to mention his credentials in a business letter. This is one more element that can add to his credibility. On the other hand, you don’t want to come across as bragging. I thought it worth mentioning that I have some expertise in American literature, so Spielberg knew this letter was from someone who has a fairly sophisticated understanding of the novel. I did this as light-heartedly as I could: “Heaven help me, I also have a bunch of degrees in American literature.” In this case, as usual, tone is everything. I also thought it was important for him to know that I had no personal stake in the enterprise—I wasn’t some screenwriter trying to get a gig, for example. He no doubt gets enough of that.

Q: Is the letter visually designed well?

Good writers design their documents so that their readers can read and navigate them easily. (In Professional Writing classes, the two key virtues of good writing are said to be “usability” and “persuasiveness.” Good design contributes to usability. Conversely, bad design can make your writing less persuasive by annoying your reader.) In this letter, I’ve tried to have a conventional block-letter look (no indents, spaces between paragraphs), standard margins, plenty of white space, and relatively short paragraphs, so the page doesn’t look intimidating to read. I chose paper with a simple border—nothing so showy that it would distract from the writing, but fancy enough to suggest that the idea deserves to be on something better than printer paper.

      Originally, the ideas in my second paragraph were divided into two paragraphs, but that seemed to result in too many small paragraphs. Too many small paragraphs suggest that the writer is unable to develop and sustain an idea. Too many long paragraphs, on the other hand, suggest that the writer either doesn’t care that he's burdening the reader with text-heavy pages or assumes he has the authority to force the reader to read on. If anything, I’d say the paragraphs in this letter are a bit too short.

Q: How should I end the letter?

I chose to end it by repeating the point of the document (Please make the movie, Mr. Spielberg) and with a brief self-deprecating comment acknowledging his courtesy in reading such a long letter. (I tend to be too self-deprecating in my writing. As in this very parenthetical comment.)

Q: Will anyone else besides Steven Spielberg read this letter?

Obviously, the answer to this is Yes. It will probably be read by one of his assistants first. In fact, when I sent him a similar letter ten years ago, I had a cover letter addressed directly to the assistant, asking the assistant to pass it along! This time that seemed to me a bit too coy. But I did try to write in such a way that an intelligent assistant (probably a film-loving college grad) would appreciate the letter. A good writer always considers secondary readers.

I didn't proofread carefully enough!

Q: Did I proofread the letter carefully before I sent it off?

I thought I did. I made sure I had the date on it (something I often forget in letters) and that I signed it legibly. (Some people are offended by a rushed, illegible signature.) I read it aloud twice. But you’ll notice that in the sentence that begins “People die in Huckleberry Finn . . .” I forgot to italicize the title of the book—and that, unfortunately, is how I sent the letter off. Good writers proofread, proofread, and proofread again. Then they set their document aside for a while and come back to it later, for one more proofreading.  If you have a good editor among your friends or family, it’s best to have that person proofread for you at the end. In my eagerness to send out the letter, I didn’t do that. I hate errors like this. I hope Mr. Spielberg doesn’t notice.

And I hope, someday, to see Huckleberry Finn on the big screen, directed by Steven Spielberg, faithfully adapted from a novel of the same name.

(Update: I sent this letter to Steven Spielberg in 2012. It's now 2021. I never got a response from Mr. Spielberg.)