Writing: Technique: Deep Perspective

Finally got around to this podcast on deep perspective. Okay, it never hurts to keep learning. That is why this blog has its name. Also, it does present its lessons clearly and there is nothing I disagree with it as far as technique goes. I want to remember the suggestion to use Word's track changes when making edits as a way to check on overusing words.

But I wonder if anyone having done much reading does not know by intuition that details draw in a reader, improve the writing. 

I also had an insight on "show, don't tell." One of the participants mentions passive voice. As in the passive voice tells rather than shows. I got attached to Strunk and White during my legal writing courses - particularly the point about passive voice. The admonition still rattles around what remains of my brains even though I am aware of comments like the following:

Nonetheless, legions of English-teacher Javerts have hounded multitudes of student Valjeans to cure them of their passive voice sentences. The active voice was sung to me once on a sleepy afternoon, as it was among her cloudy trophies hung. Active voice usually works, but sometimes a little tactical vagueness sometimes comes in handy. Keats didn’t tell us who hung those melancholy trophies. The Washington Post saved itself the trouble of seeing human agency in “the Waukesha tragedy caused by an SUV.” Alec Baldwin knows something about the gun that was fired on the set of Rust. The cookies were eaten. The bank was robbed. That’s all I’m saying. But in the opening paragraph of White’s introduction to The Elements of Style, three of the four sentences are in passive voice.

 Down with Strunk and White.  

As that writer points out, passive voice has its uses. Perhaps reading Proust along with Strunk and White might give a balance. Or the writers I had as a counterbalance:  William Somerset Maugham and Winston Churchill.

Lastly, there is the issue of bias in "show, don't tell" I described here. Can one use deep description and active voice while avoiding these biases?

sch

12/10/21