Blog: Everything Tells a Story

Words make sentences. Sentences make paragraphs. Paragraphs make stories. Everything you write is a story, from the business letter to your colleague to the essay for your English Lit class to the fiction you put down on paper. It’s a fact of life that your reader(s) are informed by the word choices you make, and form their own opinions around them.

This is why language is so important. Without context, we can’t make informed decisions about what we’re reading. We certainly can’t understand it, not the way the writer originally intended. The addition or subtraction of words can alter an entire sentence. Take, for example, this exchange on a forum (the posters are joking) and see the difference one word makes:

Poster1: How did you get a picture of my back yard?
Poster2: My lawyer says I’m not allowed to answer those questions.

verses

Poster1: How did you get a picture of my back yard?
Poster2: My lawyer says I’m not allowed to answer those questions anymore.

In the both examples, we can assume Poster2 is, or has been, in trouble. Poster2 has a lawyer, so obviously there’s something sinister is going on. The first example is much more immediate. It feels like a "no comment" situation. Whereas the second example is less immediate but tells so much more of a story. Not only does Poster2 have a lawyer, but apparently this subject has come up before. And in such a way that it seems answering the question causes more trouble than getting the picture.

This is also true of business communication. The example here is two people discussing a problem. An incident happened at work and people want to know what led to this incident. Person1 asks how the situation came about, but Person2 responds with information about the situation itself.

Person1 responds "I get that this happened. What I want to know is what led up to this situation."

verses

Person1 responds "Thank you for verifying the details of the incident. Do you have any information on why X was in the room at the time?"

Now, in vocal communication, the first response may be said in calm tones, but in written communication, it comes off as confrontational. Whereas the second response acknowledges the information imparted and redirects the conversation back to the essential question that needs answering.

When using the written word, everyone needs to be aware of the impact what they write may have. In addition to word choice, the structure of a sentence can have radically different meanings. If you want to get an image across, not only do you have to write the image in as much detail as you can, but then you have to decide which detail is important.

As an example of my own work, here’s a line from my novel synopsis:

A dire plague rapidly spreads through Stone Valley, the heart of a monotheistic empire.

As a beta reader pointed out to me, "’dire plague’ is a little redundant, isn’t it? Aren’t all plagues dire?"

Words should be treated like fragile, valuable things. They should be treasured and measured out with care and attention. Put together wrong, they can say things you never meant to say. Put together with TLC, and they can become immortal. (Gettysburg Address, anyone?). And yet, here I am, writing a blog post that could be ten pages long.

Next time you sit down to write, take a few words out of your sentence to see how it changes. Remove words between commas or ending in ‘ly.’ Or add a few words such as nouns and objects to sentences shorter than five words. Speak the sentence out loud to yourself, or a friend, and see how it sounds. You’ll be amazed at the difference. Of course, you could just play the "pants" game. That’s a good exercise for seeing how different words can make or break a sentence.

EDIT: Minutes after I posted this blog, a perfect example was tweeted. A picture of a letter from mystery writer Raymond Chandler about television shows. http://www.historyforsale.com/productimages/jpeg/283829.jpg I wonder how differently his life would have been if this letter hadn’t come off snarky and whiny.