The writing that interests readers in poems or prose is usually low on the scale of abstraction. It is writing that presents concrete details and avoids abstract generalities or commentary. Abstractions are necessary in some cases, but more often interesting writing avoids them. When the details are presented so that they remind readers of their senses and perceptions, they are more engaging. When the details are presented so that they evoke the memory of senses and perceptions and the importance of those details are obvious to a character or persona, they are even more engaging and interesting for readers.

Consider the following from Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry: “Instead of the abstraction nutriment, one might use such an image as ‘juicy cheeseburger on dark rye with dill pickle.’ What concrete images can you think of that might be used to stand for the following abstractions: exercise, amusement, wretchedness, locality, velocity, attraction, dryness, spiciness, agitation, deception, insufficiency, authority, success?”

Think about the following quotations as you work:

Elias Canetti . . . had declared that “Among the most sinister phenomena in intellectual history is the avoidance of the concrete.” He means that in ignoring what is the “closest and most concrete” of realities, we are endangering the future of humanity. When generals and politicians refer to the deaths of innocent civilians in wartime as “collateral damage,” they avoid concrete images of mangled bodies, obscuring the truth with abstraction. –John Fredrick Nims and David Mason

We think in generalities, but we live in detail. –Alfred North Whitehead

The artist seeks out the luminous detail and presents it. He does not comment. –Ezra Pound

Here is one example of moving down a scale of abstraction:

Clothing

Men’s clothing

Formal men’s clothing

Suits

Suits that I’ve seen

Suits that I’ve worn

The suits I’ve worn that my father paid for

The suit that my father gave me that he bought when he was my age

The suit my father gave me that he wore to church and that I wore to clubs

The pale blue suit, almost white, that he gave me

The pale blue suit with one low button on the long tight jacket, fat linebacker shoulders, and thick cuffs on baggy trousers

The suit lined with smooth silk but mostly made of cheap, tough as burlap, cotton

The suit that smelled a little like worry, like smoke, like apple pollen

The suit she liked so much that she danced with me

The suit I wore while we kissed behind the building

The suit with Isaiah 74:3 handwritten in sharp letters on a card in the breast pocket

Write a similar example of your own.

These are the first sentences of Little, Big by John Crowley:

On a certain day in June, 19–, a young man was making his way on foot northward from the great City to a town or place called Edgewood, that he had been told of but had never visited. His name was Smokey Barnable, and he was going to Edgewood to get married; the fact that he walked and didn’t ride was one the conditions placed on his coming there at all.

And this is the last:

Even the weather isn’t as we remember it clearly once being; never lately does there come a day such as we remember, never clouds as white as that, never grass as odorous or shade as deep and full of promise as we remember they can be, as once upon a time they were.

Here are some thoughts on strategies I noticed in the first sentences:

• The first phrase both promises a “certain day” and ignores that promise by including only the month and century. The first seven words contain a degree of tension between the abstract and the specific, maybe between the certain dates of history and a more general nostalgia. Tension between what is objectively before us and what might be imagined in the past and the present and the consequences of moving back and forth are probably themes of the novel.
  • This tension continues with the unnamed and abstract, but capitalized, City
  • and the “town or place” called, more specifically, “Edgewood.”
• The main character immediately has a task, something they are doing, and that character is moving forward into an unknown area bit by bit, like the reader. If I’m remembering well, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino begins similarly but much more explicitly.
• In the second of the first sentences, the character is named. Readers might have read on just to discover the character’s name. It is a slightly odd name. Odd names raise implicit questions: “What kind of person has that name?” “What kind of person names their child this and how has this name shaped him?” Characters beyond the named character are suggested.
• The second of the first sentences also suggests the reason for the task, for the process, the character is involved in: a marriage. And, interestingly, conditions have been placed upon the successful completion of the task. More implicit questions follow: “Who would expect this? Why?” “What will happen along the way?” “Will he be tempted to ride and how will he respond to the temptation?” “How did they meet?”

The last sentence is interesting because it makes a traditional, nostalgic beginning part of the end of the book. At the same time, it warns against nostalgia with three “nevers” and calls for it with three “remembers.” With “once upon a time,” it evokes fairy tales and the possibilities imagination suggests.

Consider trying some of these strategies in what you write next.

This sentence is from “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin: “For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.”

An awesome pair of sentences from an awesome story. What might we learn from them as writers?

1. Don’t be afraid, or not too afraid, to address big questions. The rest of the story, at least in one reading of it, leads to this assertion about why we make art. The rest of the story provides the personal context for a character to make this statement. I don’t say that to minimize the other big questions in the story: race, relationships, ethics and others, but these sentences address aesthetics directly.
2. The sentences also appear very organically as a part of the story, as a comment on a blues performance. They are in the middle of the paragraph in which they appear and it is possible to miss them. This possibility, it seems to me, makes them more valuable when found.
3. The sentences are also in the language of a specific character, who comes to think this in a specific situation that is part of a larger specific relationship. I don’t think Baldwin started with these sentences, but the story seems almost build around them. Perhaps this third point is just a way of restating the first two.
4. To get even more focused, one elements (a tale), which contains others (suffering, delight, conditional/optional triumph), is described (never new) in ways Pound, for example, might be critical of, and its necessity is also stated (it always must be heard). The second sentence, fused with a third, justifies the first sentence and its assertion.

Here is an interesting sentence: “Surprise is the drug of editors.” It’s from The Artful Edit by Susan Bell, an excellent book about sentence-level editing.

If I’m reading like a writer, this sentence can teach me several things. For example, it’s an example of surprise because of the interesting comparisons it makes. Most readers probably won’t have thought of surprise as a drug. Whether its user is an addict or in need of healing, drugs are desired. Surprise is part of what editors–and readers–want and Bell provides that insight. It’s presented so directly and gracefully, it makes me smile.

Finally, the sentence demonstrates the power of brevity. Not to go on too long, but part of the appeal of the sentence is how memorable it is. It’s memorable because it is both short and good advice.

For writers then: make your comparisons interesting and be concise.