Techniques of the Selling Writer Quotes

“To be a writer, a creative person, you must retain your ability to react uniquely. Your feelings must remain your own. The day you mute yourself, or moderate yourself, or repress your proneness to get excited or ecstatic or angry or emotionally involved...that day, you die as a writer.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“But emotion, for most people, too often is like some sort of slumbering giant, lulled to sleep by preoccupation with the dead facts of that outer world we call objective. When we look at a painting, we see a price tag. A trip is logistics more than pleasure. Romance dies in household routine. Yet life without feeling is a sort of death.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“A story is the record of how somebody deals with danger.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“..feeling is the place every story starts.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“But as Mark Twain once observed, the difference between the right word and the almost right word is as the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. So do strive for that right word!”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“the writer is driven by his need to escape the limits of a too-small world, the World That Is. It’s in his blood to range farther than life can ever let him go.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“Writing is a lonely business.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“There is really no such thing as the novel,” observes novelist Vincent McHugh. “The novel is always a novel—the specific problem, the particular case, the concrete instance.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“If that somebody is our focal character, and if he lets go a scream of horror or a gurgle of delight at the sight of the crown jewels or tomorrow’s headlines or a hot-pastrami sandwich, then we have grounds for assuming that something about the item in question is uniquely significant to him. Therefore, until something happens to change our minds, we’ll deal with such fragments with the same degree of attention or consideration he shows . . . use them to measure and judge all the story’s dimensions. As a reader, thus, my attitude toward the rainstorm we cited earlier will be determined by whether the rain helps or handicaps the focal character.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“(It is always the writer’s world that we enter in art—never the objective world.)”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“Thus, to orient means to point somebody in the right direction. In story, that somebody is the reader.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“Things don’t have feelings. Events don’t. Places don’t. But people do. And things and events and places can create feelings in people . . . trigger an amazing range of individual reactions.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“Behavior, in turn, seldom stands neutral.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“Reaction” is convenient verbal shorthand for “I desire to behave in a particular way.”—I may not act, you understand. But the impulse is with me. If, magically, all my restraints and inhibitions were to vanish, I’d embrace the woman, soothe the dog, throw out the cereal, weep or laugh or throw a temper tantrum.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“The preceding chapter tells you how to communicate with your readers. With words. What should you as a fiction writer communicate? Feelings.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“A story is a succession of motivations and reactions.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“But for now, let’s assume that you’re properly impressed with words’ significance, and therefore stand ready to move on to a related but somewhat more involved aspect of the subject . . . the application of language to the manipulation of reader feelings. Is that important? I won’t kid you. It’s the foundation stone on which you as a writer stand or fall.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“And so it goes with words and language. They’re tools. All your writing life, you work with them . . . using them to tie your reader to your story.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“What about the occasions when you want repetition, in order to achieve a particular effect? Three’s the charm, as the old folk-saying has it. If the same word appears twice, it looks like an accident. But the third time (and after, if you don’t carry the device to absurdity) your reader assumes it’s intentional and for a reason: “It was a day for color. Not just one color, but many. The color of Sandra’s lips. The color of Ed’s worn blazer. The color of sea and sand and sky.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“To get maximum effect, put adverbs at the beginning or end of the sentence: “Angrily, he walked away.” Or, “He walked away angrily.” Though special cases may justify “He walked angrily away,” or the like, most often the effect of the modifier upon the reader is lost.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“The lesson here is, don’t try to cram too much into one sentence; and the issue lies less in length than it does in content. Any time you feel the need to explain some aspect of your basic sentence, take pause. Odds are that what’s bothering you really calls for an additional sentence or two or three, so that you can keep your developing line of thought straight and clear and simple.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“Why do subject and verb become separated? My guess is that occasionally we all tend to get tangled up in the maze of our own thinking. How else can you account for some of the monstrosities you see in print? Here’s an example from a student manuscript: “The girl, in spite of her confusion and the hazard offered by the razor-edged shards of glass from the shattered window, somehow broke free.” Girl is the subject in the above sentence; broke the verb. Yet they’re separated by twenty words of modification, and the separation renders the sentence distracting and confusing. Is the separation needed? Or could our reader perhaps survive a different version: “Confusion seemed to overwhelm her in that moment. The razor-edged shards of glass from the shattered window offered an added hazard. Yet somehow, the girl broke free.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“Denotation means the word’s “actual” or “dictionary” meaning. When, in addition to this “actual” meaning, a word implies or suggests something further, the things it implies or suggests are its connotations. These connotative or implied or associated meanings frequently hold overtones of approval or disapproval; and too often, the overtones outweigh the word’s “actual” meaning. Take a word like propaganda. In simplest terms, it denotes information, put forth in a systematic effort to spread opinions or beliefs. Thus, whether it’s classed as good or bad should depend on whether you agree or disagree with the opinions or beliefs in question.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“Same way, blonde is a rather general category. You narrow it when you make the gal a brassy blonde, or a raucous blonde, or a hard-faced blonde, or a blowsy blonde. How about a brassy, raucous, hard-faced, blowsy blonde? Yes, you can run anything into the ground if you really try! So much for adjectives. Adverbs? They modify verbs . . . describe the manner in which an act is performed: angrily, wearily, animatedly, gloomily, delightedly, smilingly. It does get a little tiresome, doesn’t it? Remedy: Wherever practical, substitute action for the adverb. “Angrily, she turned on him”? Or, “Her face stiffened, and her hands clenched to small, white-knuckled fists”? “Wearily, he sat down”? Or, “With a heavy sigh, he slumped into the chair and let his head loll back, eyes closed”? Vividness outranks brevity. At least, sometimes. So much for adverbs. To live through your story, experience it, your reader must capture it with his own senses.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“This time, the girl asked Jane to loan her a dollar for lunch. Sighing, she gave it to her.” Like who gave what to whom? Or, are you becoming as confused as I am?”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“To that end, translate recollection into action, or link the two tightly together. If your heroine once had loved your hero, make that fact an issue in the here-and-now: “He held her shoulders rigid. ‘Do you love me?’ ‘You’re being ridiculous!’ ’You used to. At least, you said you did.’ ” Or perhaps: “Her eyes were still the same, Ed decided. Her eyes, and her mouth. “Thoughtfully, he wondered how she might react if he tried to kiss her, the way he did that long-gone night there by the river.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“In general, the trick is to bring the past forward into the present, so that you describe what happens in past tense instead of past perfect.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“And when you get down to a really passive approach, such as “The table was pounded upon by the trooper”—well! Worst of all to be’s forms is the past perfect tense. You can recognize it by the word had—a red flag of danger in your story every time. For had describes not just a static state, but a static state in the past: “He had traveled far that day.” “I never had realized how much I loved her.” Each had makes your story jerk, because it jars your reader out of present action and throws him back into past history.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“Sam sat in the chair.” Incorporate a bit of action into the picture, and impact sharpens: “Sam slumped in the chair,” or “Sam twisted in the chair,” or “Sam rose from the chair,” or “Sam shoved back the chair.” To repeat: Active verbs are what you need . . . verbs that show something happening, and thus draw your reader’s mental image more sharply into focus. For a vivid, vital, forward-moving story, cut the to be forms out of your copy every time you possibly can. “The trooper was pounding” is never as strong as “The trooper pounded.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer

“One further observation: The singular of a noun is almost always stronger than the plural. Cattle (plural, please note) may create an image of sorts as they mill restlessly. But for vivid impression, nail your picture down to some individual animal, at least in part—the bellow of a mossy-horned old steer, the pawing of a bull, a wall-eyed cow’s panicked lunge. The reason for this, of course, lies in the fact that every group is made up of individuals, and we really falsify the picture when we state that “the crowd roared,” or “the mob surged forward,” or even “the two women chattered on and on.” And while such summary may constitute a valid and useful verbal shorthand, it doesn’t give a truly accurate portrait.”
― Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer