THE SECOND RULE OF GOOD WRITING: BE CONCRETE.

    In my post of January 17, 2011, I discussed the First Rule of Good Writing: Be specific.

   Today I’ll discuss the Second Rule of Good Writing: Be concrete.

   Consider these two sentences:

           1) “The admiral conveyed to John an air of experience and aggressive authority.”

           2) “The white-haired admiral, deep creases in his cheeks, stood mast-straight and stared at John with blue eyes that burned a hole through the wall of his defenses.”

    Which sentence is more vivid? More memorable? I believe any reader would say the second. Why? Not because it has more words, but because it has more effective words. It replaces three vague abstractions (experience, aggressive, authority) with many concrete images (white hair, creased cheeks, straight mast, blue eyes, a hole in a wall).

[Note: An argument could certainly be made that, in certain contexts, the second sentence lays it on a bit too thick—it “overwrites.” But it serves our purposes here. More on overwriting in future posts.]

    In writer-speak, a “concrete” word or phrase is one which causes readers to see, taste, hear, smell, or feel something in their minds. In other words, it is language that appeals directly to the physical senses. Writers call such words or phrases “images.” That’s why the part of the mind where such physical sensations seem to occur is called—what else?—the “image-ination” or “imagination.” You’ll sometimes hear the phrase “concrete image.” That’s technically redundant even though I used it in the previous paragraph. Oops.

    The opposite of “concrete” is “abstract.” Unlike specific/general, the concrete/abstract divide is not so much a continuum; a word or phrase is either concrete or it’s abstract. Examine the following list of words and phrases. Which ones are abstract? Which ones concrete?

professional     bacon     bicycle     hope     resentful                     

tennis shoe     litter box     anticipation     skilled     angel

turnip      wind chimes     psychology     logical     cockroach

chocolate     earmuffs      wool     dream    love     green

Here’s the same list with the concrete words highlighted in red:

professional      bacon     bicycle    hope    resentful                     

tennis shoe      litter box     anticipation     skilled    angel

turnip      wind chimes     psychology    logical     cockroach

chocolate      earmuffs       wool     dream      love     green

    “But wait!” you might cry. “I certainly can feel love. Why isn’t love concrete?” Well, yes, you can feel love emotionally, but you can’t literally taste, smell, see, feel, or hear it, so it’s not concrete. What you can sense physically are the concrete manifestations of love. The following sentence relies on abstractions:

“Whenever Jack walked into class, it was clear Jill was in love. She filled with emotion and grew all confused. ”

      Can you imagine how a good writer might convey this abstract idea with concrete images? (Before reading on, take out a piece of paper and try it. I’ll wait. . . . . . . . . .)

  

      Okay, here’s a passage full of “love” images my students have come up with over the years:

            “Whenever Jack walked into class, Jill’s heart began to pound. Her eyes grew bright, her cheeks flushed, and the fingers of her right hand fluttered against her thigh out of sight under her desk. Her left hand, meanwhile, drew hearts on the cover of American History Today. Inside the hearts she scribbled ‘J&J.’”

      A rather more memorable way to show love, no? All without ever even mentioning the abstraction.

      Nearly all great writing relies heavily on concretes. When creative-writing students are told, “Show, don’t tell,” they’re really being told to replace abstractions with concretes. Those of us who love Shakespeare love him in part because he was a master of the concrete. Remember the scene in Macbeth when, late at night, having engineered several murders, Lady Macbeth is seen sleepwalking through the castle? She is violently rubbing her hand and mutters the famous line, “Out, damned spot!” In the speech that follows, she tries to clean her hand of dripping blood that she alone can see. She even smells the blood. Then she hears a foreboding knocking outside the castle and runs off.

      What has Shakespeare done here? He has taken a vague abstraction (guilt, obviously) and made it concrete, in memorable language, full of vision, scent, and sound. Imagine how unmemorable the scene would have been if Lady Macbeth had simply walked in, put the back of her hand to her forehead, and said, “Oh, I feel so guilty.”

      Why are concretes so much more memorable than abstractions? That’s complicated. I believe it is in part because we experience the world through our senses, and the best writers give us a chance, through sensory images, to experience a new world, of near-equal vividness, on the page.

      Having said all this, I should add that there is a place for the abstract in good writing. Abstractions, like generalities, often prepare the way for what’s to come or summarize the concretes that precede them. (One kind of intelligence is the ability to move easily from concrete to abstract, specific to general, and back again.)

      So feel perfectly free to use abstractions. But when you do, consider the following advice: Whenever you use an abstraction, follow it with at least one, and preferably three concrete illustrations.
      Here are two examples:

            Abstraction: “Julia was expert in the kitchen.”

            Follow-up concretes: “She could rice potatoes, chop onions, and braise a pork chop before you could count to sixty.”

            Abstraction: “Mr. Forbes demonstrates excellent interaction on first meeting customers.”

            Follow-up concretes: “He shakes each customer’s hand, gives them the choice of sitting in the plush chair in front of his desk or on the sofa by his office window, and offers them hot tea or coffee.”

    

           Poets and other creative writers often take pleasure in hitching abstractions directly to concretes. Perhaps the most famous example of this is “Happiness is a warm puppy," from Charles Schulz, of "Peanuts" fame. 

There are also other ways to connect abstractions to concretes. For example:

            “The conformist broccoli sits, chilly, next to the rebellious stalks of asparagus.”

            “Poverty, brown and gaunt, squints at you through broken windows.” 

            “In New Orleans, disappointment smells like mold and tastes like flat beer.”

            “An airplane is just aluminum with an education.”

     One final word about specifics and concretes: You will find whole books written in almost nothing but abstractions and generalities. Some of these books are written by people who are considered great thinkers—philosophers, literary critics, even educators. I won't name names, but I will say this: I don’t like these books. I think they are badly written and would be improved by the addition of specifics and concretes. So there.