“You see what I’m saying?”
“No, I hear what you are saying. I cannot see it.”
Does that conversation sound familiar?
Have you been tempted to respond that way when someone asks if you can see what they are saying?
Has an author ever given you a plot that you could see?
Have you ever told a story and your listeners responded favorably?
Ever notice how good the story was when you had good listeners?
The story got even better when the listeners were better.
Was their response so favorable, that you decided to put that same story into writing?
How long did it take to reduce a two minute story to print?
Whether you were writing longhand or typing, it’s highly likely that it took much longer to write the same story that previously was available only verbally.
Ever wonder why?
Donald Davis has.
He wondered so much about it he did lots of research.
His research focused on teaching non-writers how to write.
Just as Betty Edwards has shown that willing students can learn to draw (and draw well), Davis asserts that non-writers can be taught to become accomplished authors.
Here’s another conversation you’ve probably had:
“Don’t ask Janice what time it is.”
“Why not?” is the reply.
“She’ll spend an hour telling you how the clock works and you’ll never find out the time.”
The trait of being a great storyteller doesn’t give you a free pass on becoming a great writer. In Writing as a Second Language, Davis details the five-step transition of the spoken word (stories) into print. He defines and reviews the development of language. In this case, to become better purveyors of the written word, practitioners are well-served by knowing how the clock works. It saves time.
Davis reveals the logic behind the title as he explains that writing, like learning a foreign language, is a skill the student learns. Few of us are born “natural” writers. For the rest of us, we can rely on Davis’s five-step (thank God it isn’t twelve steps) plan to become a better writer.
No doubt, some writers have been employing Davis’s recommendations for years unconsciously.
Now we can all become better writers, on purpose.
“You hear what I’m writing?”
August 21, 2013
FCEtier
FCEtier 
4 responses to “Writing — as a second language?”
Art Hoffman
August 21st, 2013 at 20:43
Another treatise on writing reminds me of the need to have a decent working vocabulary. And, while simple words and non flowery language are usually best to get the point across, sometimes a real zinger of a word – something esoteric – works wonders. Gee, wonder if there is any dictionary out there containing words like that?
FCEtier
August 21st, 2013 at 20:55
What a coincidence, Art.
I have just such a tome on my desk, near where I’m standing. The tag line claims it to be full of “unusual, obscure,a nd preposterous words.”
So far, I’ve found it to be full of lagniappe!
KathrynElizabeth Etier
August 21st, 2013 at 13:43
Que?
FCEtier
August 21st, 2013 at 12:50
Acclaimed story teller and friend, Jack Durish, sends this comment. (Due to a glitch, he was uanble to post it himself.)
Jack says,”My goal is to write stories the way I hear them. The attempt may be as futile as establishing a utopian society. Twain succeeded to a degree. None were better than Joel Chandler Harris, but I had to read Song of the South aloud to make sense of the stories that he transcribed from the slaves who told them in a dialect that blended illiterate English with multiple African dialects. (The reward is worth the effort.) The major problem is adding inflection, emphasis, and emotion that is usually conveyed by facial expression, body language, and vocalization in oral storytelling. It’s a challenge, a real challenge.”
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[…] you a good story teller? Be careful, it takes a lot more words to get that story into writing than it does to tell it […]