Book Blurbs » Revising Prose by Richard A. Lanham

The Paramedic Method of Revising Prose

admin — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:12:24 +0000

“Circle the prepositions.
“Circle the ‘is’ forms.
“Ask, ‘Who’s kicking who?’ ‘Where’s the action?’
“Put this ‘kicking action in a simple (not compund) active verb.
“Start fast–no slow windups.
“Write out each sentence on a blank sheet of paper and mark off its basic rhythmic units with a ‘/’.
“Read the passage aloud with emphasis and feeling [to make sure it can be done].
“Mark off sentence lengths in the passage with a ‘/’.” (p. 47)

Writing in Plain English

admin — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:08:52 +0000

“The Official Style comes in many dialects-government, military, social scientific, lab scientific, MBA flapdoodle-but all exhibit the same basic attributes. They all build on the same central imbalance, a dominance of nouns and an atrophy of verbs. They enshrine the triumph, worshipped in every bureaucracy, of stasis over action. This basic imbalance is easy to cure, if you want to cure itand this book’s Paramedic Method tells you how to do it. But when do you want to cure it? We all sometimes feel, whatever setting we write in, that we will be penalized for writing in plain English. It will sound too flip. Unserious. Even satirical. In my academic dialect, that of literary study, writing plain English nowadays is tantamount to walking down the hall naked as jaybird.” (p. 2)

Great Writing Is a Social Interaction with the Reader

admin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 04:08:11 +0000

“Writing prose involves for the writer an integrations of self, a deliberate act of balancing its two component parts. It represents an act of socialization, and it is by repeated acts of such socialization that we become sociable beings, that we grow up. Thus the act of writing models the presentation of self in society; prose reality rehearse us for social reality. It is not a question of a preexistent self making its message known to a preexistent society. It is not, initially, a question of message at all. Writing clarifies, strengthens, and energizes the self, renders individuality rich, full, and social…Only by taking the position of the reader toward one’s own prose, putting a reader’s pressure on it, can the self be made to grow into full sociability. Writing should enhance and expand the self, allow it to try out new possibilities, tentative selves.” (p. 98)