Content, Intermediate, I was the founder, publisher, and editor of several Twin Cities-based newspapers and magazines, including City Pages, The Rake, and Minnesota Parent. I also taught Magazine Writing and Editing at the University of Minnesota Journalism School. Our newspapers and magazines won hundreds of awards for editorial and reporting excellence.

2. Infuse your writing with emotion
“Alas! That journals so voluminously begun should come to so lame and
impotent a conclusion as most of them did.”
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

3. Write a killer opening (lede)
Invoke the senses
Touch:
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of
the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on
the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

4. Invoke the senses
Smell:
“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the
fate of unrequited love."
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love in the Time of Cholera

5. Invoke the senses
Sight:
"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of a fleshy balloon of a head."
John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)

6. Invoke the senses
Taste:
"Under certain circumstance there are few hours in life more agreeable
than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."
Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady

7. Or, just start the story
"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
or
"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone
eighty-four days now without taking a fish."
Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man And The Sea

8. Describe the scene. Show me, don’t tell me.
It sits in the lap of an amphitheater of hills which are three hundred to seven
hundred feet high, and carefully cultivated clear to their summits–not a foot of soil
left idle. Every farm and every acre is cut up into little square enclosures by stone
walls, whose duty it is to protect the growing products from the destructive gales
that blow there.
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

9. Describe the scene. Show me, don’t tell me.
In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs
for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn
day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet.
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

10. Describe the scene. Show me, don’t tell me.
He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced
straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-
under stare which made you think of a charging bull.
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

11. Describe the scene. Show me, don’t tell me.
By 7:30 it was beyond berserk with bikes, the air was like L.A. on short plumbing,
the subtle city war instead the war had renewed itself for another day, relatively
light on actual violence but intense with bad feeling.
Michael Herr, Dispatches

12. Use strong descriptors: Literary Devices
Sounds
Alliteration, successive words with the same first letter, e.g. “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
peppers.”
Assonance, repetition of vowel sounds, e.g. “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.”
Etymological figures, i.e. puns on different words with the same root, e.g. “Our heart is restless until
it rests with you.”
Crescendo, building climax through increasing number of syllables, e.g. “Friends, Romans,
countrymen, lend me your ears.”
Onomatopoeia, verbal imitation of the sound of something, e.g. jingle, whisper.

13. Use strong descriptors: Literary Devices
Word Order
Similar structure, e.g. “Roses are red, violets are blue.”
Opposite structure, e.g. “Ask not what your country can do for you.”
Tricolon, group of three words, e.g. “Friends, Romans, countrymen” or “Life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness,” or “of the people, by the people, for the people.” (Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson,
Abraham Lincoln) Snap, crackle, pop.
Epanalepsis, repetition of a word from the beginning of the sentence at the end, e.g. The King is
dead. Long live the King.” or “Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!”
In particular, these have the effect of embedding a thought in memory.

14. Use strong descriptors: Literary Devices
Images and Modes of Expression
Simile, comparison with “like” or “as,” e.g. Your lips are like wine.
Metaphor, comparison without “like” or “as,” e.g. “I drink the wine of your lips.”
Personification, “The sky smiled upon us.”
Metonymy, word substitution, e.g. The White House; The prow coursed the waves;
Nice wheels!

15. Use strong descriptors: Literary Devices
Images and Modes of Expression
Transferred epithet, adjective on the wrong noun, e.g. restless night, happy morning, “Fitting
the clumsy helmets just in time” (Wilfred Owen)
Litotes (double negative) e.g. not unexpectedly, not without tears.
Antithesis, balanced opposites, e.g. “kindly to my friends, deadly to my enemies.”
Polyptoton, use of same word in different cases, e.g. Art for art’s sake.
Irony, saying the opposite of what is meant, e.g. Donald Trump is one of the greatest thinkers
in American politics.

16. Editing yourself
Use active verbs. Passive construction dilutes your power.
Eliminate unnecessary words.
Avoid qualifiers. (Pretty, little, very.)
Write with nouns and verbs. Make them carry the weight. Make adjectives and adverbs
scarce.
Do not overwrite. (Don’t search for the big word. Use the vernacular.)
Do not explain too much. (Show, don’t tell.)

17. Character
There is not a modern plow in the islands, or a threshing machine. All attempts to
introduce them have failed. The good Catholic Portuguese crossed himself and prayed
God to shield him from all blasphemous desire to know more than his father did before
him.
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

18. Character traits you can reveal that give your story punch
Positive emotions: calm, friendship, favor, pity, pride.
Negative emotions: anger, fear, shame, indignation, envy, jealousy.
What is the proximate cause of the fear?
What is the source of the pride?
Favor and gratitude: who is pleasing whom, and why?
Pity and indignation. Pity is a reaction to misfortune of those not deserving it.
Indignation is a reaction to the good fortune of the undeserving.

19. Other elements that define character
Youth vs. old age
Wealth vs. poverty
Power vs. weakness
Spirituality vs. materialism
Others?

20. The object of writing is judgment.
Emotion accompanies judgment.

21. A very brief suggested reading list
On Writing
Elements of Style, Strunk and White
On Writing Well, William Zinnser
On Writing, Stephen King
The Observation Deck, Naomi Epel
Travel books or books about journeys
The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
Dispatches, Michael Herr

22. Conclusion
If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a
young person, pledge him to keep a journal for a year.
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (again)