Know Jack #479 The Write Way

There’s an old adage in writing that tells writers to “Show, don’t tell”. I want to start a new one that goes, “Write, don’t talk”. Admittedly, I am from a bygone era where propriety mattered. A demonstration of knowledge and proper procedure said more about a person’s character than the victim tags they chose.

If you think I’m about to go on a rant about the good old days, you’re right. There’s a reason they were “good”. We were taught there were many ways to do things that resulted in achieving the goal. However, there was only one proper way, and every effort should go into doing things properly. Proper conduct reflected upon one’s character and upbringing.

Went I left home, I quickly learned two other ways of doing things, the wrong way, and the Air Force way. I found the Air Force way could also be translated as the name of any employer. Of course, those ways existed before I was introduced to them. To get along in the world, I had to learn when to use each way.

This hit home with me the other day when I saw a cartoon of an elementary classroom. A girl, dressed in the same early 60s style as my school days, was standing by her seat

“Can I have a new pencil?” she asked the teacher.

“I don’t know, can you?’ the teacher replied, correcting the child’s grammar.

Ordinarily, this would be funny. But I this case, a rant about how correcting speech patterns was oppressive and stifled full and free expression was written over the cartoon.

One of my complaints about writing programs is their inability to allow for the differences encountered in written dialogue. I have no problem with substituting “can” for “may” or “got” for “have” in written dialogue. People speak that way, and characters are people. The writer crafting a story is not only charged with knowing the difference, but the duty to employ words properly and effectively.

Writers break the rules of writing all the time. Those who do it successfully first know the rules. They break them intentionally for effect. Effect is quickly lost when it’s overdone.

I once had a young crew member assigned to my aircraft who somehow got hold of the test that he was about to take to certify him to run jet engines. I made him throw it away. If he was going to sit in the cockpit with me and run jet engines, he had to know how to do it properly, not how to memorize the answers to the test.

The writer is a craftsman. He gathers his own set of tools and learns how to use them. Though he knows better, there will still be times when he must know how to use a dime for a flathead screwdriver.