What writers & others say
“Dot the dragon’s eye, and it comes to life.”
— A phrase used in traditional Chinese painting
“A story should be a roller coaster, not a train track.”
— Anonymous
“The soul never thinks without an image.”
— Aristotle, Greek philosopher
“In any kind of persuasive writing, a critical question to ask is whether your copy brags or whether it proves. And one of the best ways to demonstrate proof is to be specific. Don’t brag that your product comes in a multitude of colors. Tell me it comes in 23 of them. Don’t brag that you can save me money. Tell me how much. Don’t brag that your customers love your service. Have a customer tell me. Specificity reduces the gush factor and gives your writing more credibility — in the process supporting sales/marketing/image messages better than a thousand self-promoting superlatives.”
— BeABetterWriter.com
“To generalize is to be an idiot.”
— William Blake, English poet and artist
“The language of journalism is concrete and specific. A saying at the St. Petersburg Times requires reporters to ‘get the name of the dog, the brand of the beer, the color and make of the sports car.’”
— Roy Peter Clark, Poynter Institute senior scholar
“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader — not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
— E.L. Doctorow, author of Ragtime and other critically acclaimed novels
“If we want to share our big ideas without boring our readers to tears, we have to mix abstract advice with concrete imagery.”
— Henneke Duistermaat, founder, Enchanted Marketing
“Make the important interesting.”
— James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly
“Use concrete terms and your readers will have a clearer idea of your meaning. You enhance your words when you allow readers to visualize what you say.”
— Bryan A. Garner, author, The Elements of Legal Style
“The more particular, the more specific you are, the more universal you are.”
— Nancy Hale, 19th-century journalist and author
“Whatever you do, don’t get stuck on the boring middle rungs of the abstraction ladder. Every day, writers churn out millions of words that describe mind-numbing bureaucratic processes without mention of individual human beings or larger meaning. They are stuck somewhere between heaven and earth, and their readers never get to sample the joys of either.”
— Jack Hart, editor at large, the Oregonian, in A Writer’s Coach
“A few vivid details might be more persuasive than a barrage of statistics.”
— Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
“If you really want to shake people out of their reverie and motivate them to sit up and take notice, say those two simple words, for example.”
— Sam Horn, author of POP! Stand Out In Any Crowd
“Without great reporting, a story is like one big comb-over. You can see it from the third paragraph.”
— Ann Hull, reporter for The Washington Post
“We tend to have a better memory for things that excite our senses or appeal to our emotions than for straight facts and dry statistics. This means that you might overestimate the number of times your colleague wore a red tie, or underestimate how often he wore a gray one, simply because red is a brighter color.”
— Sheena Iyengar, professor at Columbia Business School, in The Art of Choosing
“Concreteness transports us into a story like nothing else. It’s the key that unlocks the door of the reader’s imagination.”
— Kim Kautzer, CEO, WriteShop, Inc.
“The easiest thing for the reader to do is to quit reading.”
— Bernard Kilgore, legendary managing editor of The Wall Street Journal
“Language that is more concrete and specific creates pictures in the mind of [your] listener, pictures that should come as close as possible to the pictures in your mind.”
— William Lutz, author, The New Doublespeak: Why No One Knows What Anyone’s Saying Anymore
“Good writing moves up and down the ‘abstraction ladder,’ and great writing moves way up and way down.”
— Dr. Carolyn Matalene, professor of English, University of South Carolina
“It is no great exaggeration to say that dolphin-safe tuna flows directly from the barrel of a Canon, that without Kodak there’d be no Endangered Species Act.”
— Bill McKibben, author, Hope, Human and Wild, in “The Problem with Wildlife Photography” for DoubleTake
“We put quotes, votes and anecdotes together, and we build a case. When we’re ready to release it, we go out and hit the opponent, hit him hard. It has to be relentless. … There is almost never that silver bullet. It’s death by a thousand cuts.”
— Jason Miner, Democratic opposition researcher
“Make the reader believe by giving the reader evidence at each point in the story,”
writes Donald M. Murray, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, in Writing to Deadline: The Journalist at Work
“Example isn’t the main thing influencing others. It’s the only thing.”
— Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Prize-winning theologian, philosopher and medical missionary to Africa
“Show, don’t tell.”
— Mark Twain, American author and wit
“Don’t say that the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.”
— Mark Twain, American author and wit
“If you want to be credible, be specific. … Heinz doesn’t have a ‘multitude’ of varieties; it has 57. Bressler’s doesn’t have a ‘whole lot’ of flavors; it has 33. There aren’t ‘many’ deadly sins; there are seven. Well, eight, if you count vague writing.”
— Doug Williams, a principal in Tomasini-W2K, a marketing, public relations, public affairs and training company
“Information is absorbed in direct proportion to its vividness.”
— Diane West and Jennifer Dreyer, principals, Tamayo Consulting Inc.
“No ideas but in things.”
— William Carlos Williams, poet
“Show AND tell.”
— Ann Wylie, writing coach
How can you tell better business stories?
Stories are so effective that Og Mandino, the late author of the bestselling The Greatest Salesman in the World, says, “If you have a point, find a story.”
Learn to find, develop and write stories that engage readers’ hearts and minds at Master the Art of Storytelling, our content-writing training workshop.
There, you’ll learn how to find the aha! moment that’s the gateway to every anecdote. How to start an anecdote with a bang — instead of a whimper. And how to use “the most powerful form of human communication” to grab attention, boost credibility, make messages more memorable and communicate better.
