A great writer, Norman Corwin, turned 100 today, creating the perfect occasion to celebrate the beauty of words beautifully used.

If you don’t know Corwin, it’s my pleasure to introduce a living American treasure. I’m extremely proud to know him and to have spent time with him. And to have spent this past weekend celebrating his birthday.

Norman Corwin with Westways Editor John Lehrer

Corwin was a pioneer of radio theater, and its undisputed master. He’s been called the Poet Laureate of Radio. I would submit he should also be celebrated as the Radio Laureate of Poetry. Because Corwin not only entertains, informs, and enthralls listeners, he gives readers and audiences the pleasure of beautiful language—language rendered with all the power and nuance of the most beautiful music.

His ear is uncanny—the euphony of his sentences would be the envy of Walt Whitman and Thomas Wolfe, two great writers he has acknowledged as influences. He writes bombast and beauty, poetry and power, like no other writer. He challenges tyrants, celebrates the little guy, extols the promise of America, and unsparingly savages anyone who would compromise the standards of anything he feels worth upholding, such as American democracy and the English language. But like a lilting aria following a fortissimo passage, he also soothes, enchants, and inspires the sweetest of reveries.

The volume and range of his body of work is breathtaking. His radio dramas were performed by the likes of Orson Welles, James Stewart, Frank Sinatra, Lionel Barrymore, and Walter Huston. His more recent plays have been performed by William Shatner, Samantha Eggar, Michael York, and Walter Cronkite. His screenplay of Lust for Life was nominated for an Academy Award. He’s written erudite books, brilliant magazine pieces, a collection of letters (you’ll love the tirades against capricious and idiotic changes to his words), astounding poetry, and ribald limericks.

My intent here is not to write a biography of Norman Corwin, but to pique your interest in his work…and to suggest a few things we freelance writers can learn from this man’s bold, high standards.

Develop an Ear for Words. This is the work of a lifetime, but it’s possible to achieve some degree musicality in everything you write. Vary the length of your sentences. Use words that sound pleasing or severe to suit the tone of what you’re writing. Read your work aloud; you’ll hear the clunky phrases. Fix them. As Corwin says, “The ear is the realist. It is the organ through which we perceive the subtlest of the arts, which is music.”

Look for the Story. And the Storyline. At one of the Corwin celebrations in Los Angeles this weekend, I watched a troupe of radio players perform his play Our Lady of Freedoms, which honored the Statue of Liberty’s 1986 centennial. Naturally I was moved by the beauty of the language. But I also marveled at how he wove threads of the story together—the sculptor and his patron, the campaign to finance its delivery by way of thousands of small donations, even the way the colossus was shipped. We as feature writers and journalists aren’t writing radio drama, but we can find and illuminate compelling storylines in anything we write. Don’t take the easiest route, the face-value, encyclopedic way. Look for ways to frame your stories and develop threads that bring storytelling into your stories.

Flesh Out the Details. The Statue of Liberty play was saturated with dazzling details—how much the statue weighed, how many crates it took to ship it, that it rained on the day of its dedication, that the average donation to fund it was 82 cents. By the way, those details were always in service of the story, never merely listed or bullet-pointed.

Flesh Out the Details Part 2. Yesterday, at a screening of Lust for Life, Corwin shared a bit of revelatory news. The screenplay has always been thought to have been based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Irving Stone. But Corwin admitted he hadn’t even read Stone’s novelized life of Vincent Van Gogh when he accepted the screenplay assignment, and that he relied on the letters of Vincent and Theo Van Gogh as his primary source for the screenplay. He was interested in truth, not its fictionalized facsimile. Compare that with the lazy “surf the Web” school of research so common these days.

Pay Attention. Great Attention. I was fortunate enough to travel to Hearst Castle about 10 years ago with Norman Corwin and an editorial crew from Westways magazine. Norman was on assignment; I was along for the ride. The man was 90 years old, but sharp as an eagle. He paid attention to everything. He took nothing for granted. He let nothing of interest slide by. He asked our host countless questions, drawing out stories that otherwise would have gone untold. Face value, I must say, was pretty fascinating—the story of Hearst and how all his treasures arrived in San Simeon, all his celebrated guests of the era. But Norman dug deeper. He got stories behind stories. Needless to say, his feature was brilliant.

The delight of being saturated in the words and energy of Norman Corwin this past weekend renewed my own resolve to always reach for excellence in everything I write, whether a 200-word service piece or a 3,000-word narrative feature. Listen to and read some Norman Corwin. Slosh around a bit in this man’s brilliance. Be proud to be a member of the same honorable profession. Uphold our honor.

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To learn more about Norman Corwin:

Visit his homepage, normancorwin.com.

Find written and audio work at Amazon.com, including the 2006 Academy Award–winning documentary, A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin.

Watch a 1996 documentary on Corwin here.

Listen to his best-known work, On a Note of Triumph, as heard by one of every two Americans when it aired in 1945.

Details, details.

I know a good lead when I see one. So do you.

How do we know a lede is good?

We keep reading.

(“Lede,” by the way, is journalismspeak so you don’t confuse the opening of a story with the stuff of sinkers and bullets. Either is fine, but I’ll stick with the lingo here.)

Sometimes I plow past a sucky lede. I’m curious (or stuck on an airplane having finished reading a novel)—will this thing get any better? Almost always, my first impression is proven right. Hence this credo:

Bad lede = bad story

Even if the story improves, bad lede = bad story because if no one reads it, it’s a bad story. (That goes for sales letters, ads, blog posts, and novels, too.)

Does this lede grab you?

Bill “Buddy” Menendez parks his big pickup truck on a narrow, winding road in western Jamaica. A short cloudburst greets us as we step out of the vehicle. A little rain is good, Buddy says. It’ll keep us cool today. We  scramble over a high mound to a broad overlook. There, the Blue Mountain Canyon spreads out before us. My heart leaps.

I’ve changed words and the setting so as not to publicly embarrass the writer. Or the editor who allowed this to see the light of print in a national magazine. It’s a paraphrase.

So what’s wrong with it?

Mainly it’s boring. Nothing about it intrigues me. No sense of mystery. Nothing happens, and there’s no suggestion that anything will happen. Nothing portentous. Nothing unusual. Nothing seems out of place.

All it does is set the scene. The editor should have informed the writer that the scene will be nicely set by way of a headline and photo, thanks very much. Give me something to care about in this lede.

It’s also muddled. Is it a travel story about a natural wonder? A profile of a local guide? A focus on one or the other could easily sharpen the observations and action. If it’s both, yoke them together somehow.

By the way, muddled focus proved to be a problem throughout the story. The writer never developed the guide as a cool character, and never gave the terrain more than vague, clichéd nods like, “beautiful, lush valley…all of it impressive.”

Proving once again:

Bad lede = bad story

What else is bad about this lede?

Absence of details.

We’re obliged as writers to be sharp observers. And reporters. What we don’t understand, we have to find out. Simply specifying the truck as something more than “big” could have said a lot about the guide and the setting. Maybe it’s a ’63 Willys with rusting fenders. Maybe it’s a cherry-red Dodge Ram with ArmorAll’d tires. Either one would suggest something intriguing.

Or forget the truck, since it proves to be a red herring anyway. Maybe drop in a detail about something Buddy’s wearing. We learn later that the story is really about a hike into the canyon, that Buddy hikes in flip-flops, and that the writer is nervous about hiking the trail. His heart leaps from nervousness, not awe, but we don’t know that. Why not introduce the flip-flops, the wariness, and some initial observations about the precipitous trail right up front?

Maybe it could read something like this:

The Blue Mountain Canyon Trail makes 237 hairpin turns in the course of its 12-mile plummet to the Blue River, 4,436 feet below the canyon rim. I see most of them from my dizzying trailhead vantage point. Gulp. To me, cinching the laces on a pair of four-pound Vasque hiking boots with deep Vibram tread makes perfect sense. My guide, Buddy Menendez, kicks into a pair of Walmart flip-flops.

Okay, not brilliant. But see how dropping in details serves as shorthand? Details also suggest that you’re in the hands of an observant writer. They build confidence.

We need to see in details, not in generalities. We owe that to the reader. Details give us credibility, and they give us storytelling fodder—in our ledes and throughout our pieces. The craft of writing is a whole lot easier when we have details at our disposal.

I recall many times as an editor kicking a story back to a writer because he didn’t name his trees. “Madrones” are always better than “trees.” Even better than “oaks.” Give me Sitka spruce or Douglas fir over pine trees anyway. If the trees droop with moss, if they’re speckled with epiphytes, if their trunks are twisted, so much the better. Details serve and portend.

Back to ledes. I’ll close with one I loved in a recent Men’s Journal story by Bucky McMahon. It too is about an adventure on an island. But notice how the details service the whole. Notice the playfulness even as he admits to fear, and the way he intrigues us with observations of some pretty bizarre stuff. Bucky the Brave! Great lede.

The first time I saw Orongo, the archaeological site of the Easter Island Birdman cult, the hair on the back of my neck bristled with acrophobia and awe. It had taken our tour group all afternoon to hike to the top of Rano Kau volcano, hoofing it single file along the knife-edge rim trail to where it broadened and flattened at the cliffs of Orongo. Orongo the Bizarro! Stonehenge for the Unhinged! The grassy plateau, studded with obsessively etched boulders, seemed precariously perched between the interior crater and a thousand-foot drop to the crashing Polynesian surf. In the fading light we admired the hundreds of petroglyphs carved by the Rapa Nui (as Easter Islanders call themselves and their island), picking out the depictions of gods and heroes and oversize vaginas.

You want to continue, right? Good lede = good story: Click here.

Who loves a grammar zealot? Holier-than-thou, self-appointed guardians of the High Church of English can be pretty obnoxious. I’m much too kind and tolerant to be one myself. But I have this alter ego—we’ll call him Grammar Ranter—who contends that our language needs some sacred conventions. Yeah, yeah, he buys into all that stuff about our language’s being fluid and constantly evolving. But at the same time, he just properly employed the possessive with the gerund “being” in the previous sentence, didn’t he? He also believes that “anything goes” weakens the language, hinders the art of communication, and can make writers look stupid.

Actually, Grammar Ranter is a pretty good guy to have on our side. (Actually, Grammar Ranter probably would not tolerate the use of “actually” in that sentence. It’s almost always a useless bit of fill. “But hey, Mr. Ranter—if it’s used to contradict a point of view, that’s cool, right?” He’ll grudgingly assent in this instance.

Grammar Ranter is a good guy to have on our side simply because good grammar—along with awareness of publishing style and conventions, and maniac obsessiveness about proofreading—all serve us well as freelance writers. We want our prose to be wearing its best suit and a nicely pressed shirt when we turn it in. It makes an impression.

By the way, Grammar Ranter doesn’t aim for low-hanging fruit. If you don’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re,” you’re on your own. Grammar Ranter prefers to point out blunders that even smart people (like writers and editors) make. He likes to afflict the comfortable.

Hence GR’s first rant. A simple one. It’s for Americans only. You Commonwealth denizens are off the hook for now. You can say and write “towards” and “amongst” to your highfalutin hearts’ content. But wake up, Americans. We’re not Brits, and we should not emulate their archaisms. They do not make us seem learned. We’re Americans, and we say “toward” and “among.” Did Lincoln say “With malice towards none, with charity for all”? Did he urge  the nation to achieve a “lasting peace amongst ourselves and with all nations”? (Sacrilege italicized.) Darn right he didn’t.

What he said in that thrilling Second Inaugural was this:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

With malice toward none, including the Crown, Grammar Ranter, in awe of that soaring American oratory, rests his case.

New Year resolutions are sewn with the seeds of their own demise. Why bother? Yes, goals are important, and we should articulate them. (I intend to do that any day now!)

But right now I’m feeling focused on…right now. Hence these better-than-resolutions that we freelance writers can accomplish today. Well, Monday, if you’re reading this on New Year’s Eve or on January 1. These are kick starts that just might engender some new work habits or bring us some killer jobs. But you don’t have to obligate to all-out personal revolution. Just try each of these once. See what happens. And let me know.

Let your idea brain go wild. Without editing yourself, write down a zillion article ideas. Stuck? Just dial in to your passion, whatever it is. The one thing you most love to do, to think about, to pontificate about. Decide you’re the world’s greatest authority on that subject (you are!), and start spewing ideas. Don’t think at all about crafting them into pitches. Yet. Spew. Go crazy. This isn’t homework you have to turn in.

Spend two consecutive hours focused on your work. Just try it once. Set a timer. No checking e-mail, no cruising by Facebook or Twitter. Two full hours focused on a goal, whether it’s spewing ideas, writing a query, researching a story, researching a pitch… Experience unbroken focus. If it feels good, do it again.

Thumb through a good book about writing. Glean a single tidbit and apply it. I just grabbed Roy Peter Clark’s Writing Tools off my shelf and read a chapter called “Save String.” An excerpt:

“…save string, gather piles of research, be attentive to when it’s time to write, write earlier than you think you can, let those early drafts drive you to additional research and organization.”

Great stuff, huh? We should always be gathering bits and pieces—saving string—for the project at hand, for future projects, for who-knows-what. But if we have an assignment to do, how do we know when we have enough information? Brilliant: Start writing! That’s how we find out.

Get up and stretch. I’m a reformed self–slave driver. I thought I had to muscle my way through work, and think constantly about it. Now I’m a stretcher.  Sometimes I need a timer to remind me to do it, but when I do, I do it. I focus only on the stretch, not the work I’m doing. It’ll still be there when I get back. Try it once, but make it total: Stretch. And don’t think about anything but the stretch.

Read some poetry. Good poetry. We may be nonfiction writers, but we have everything to learn from poets. Off the top of my head (okay, I’m looking at my bookshelf) I’d suggest Robinson Jeffers, e.e. cummings, and Emily Dickinson.

In Jeffers, see how his nouns and verbs sing, and how he deftly slips in an adjective only for rapier effect, truly like a weapon. So solid, so real, detailed, such endlessly interesting words—and not a whiff of triteness.

In cummings, admire the passion, the gush, the unbridled flow. And the musicality of his language. Here’s a man out of his head and into the rhythm of words—it almost seems like rhythm for its own sake. But the poet knows what he’s doing and what he’s saying. He employs rhythm. It does his bidding.

In Emily, read the last two lines of a bunch of her poems. Wow. Talk about kickers. See how she leaves us finished—yet lingering.

Obviously, if we wedged any of their poetics directly into our nonfiction writing, we’d get major “HUH?” responses from our editors. The point is, we need to get out of our narrow stylistic ruts and realize that deft use of language can make anything we write more interesting, more readable.

Pitch your dream story. And pitch it to a new publication or website. One you’ve long thought of pitching, one you’d sell your soul to get published in. Why wait? Do it now. Give it your all. Do all the stealth research I recommend in my book. Do it with gusto and confidence, unapologetically—you deserve to be in it. They’re lucky to have you. PS: You just might find the perfect idea to pitch in your list from the first nonresolution above.

Or in that box of string you’ve been saving.

EzineArticles.com is not exactly a forum for fine writing. No one goes to Ezine like they might the New Yorker—for entertainment, enlightenment, a fine read.

Still, article directories serve a purpose, which I discuss in my book Write Where the Money Is. Freelance writers might well end up submitting articles to Ezine or other article directories—if not for pay (there is none on Ezine), then to promote their business or expertise—or (and this would pay) someone else’s business or expertise.

For the time being, let’s forget the underlying raison d’etre of article directories—search-engine optimization, self-promotion, keyword utilization, and all that good stuff—and simply talk about a strategy that will get your articles read and valued.

Headline: Grabby, to the Point

Headlines like: How to… The Six Best Strategies For… Ten Mistakes Not to Make When You… XX Techniques that Work… all work well. They set up exactly what you intend to do, and they intrigue readers. Here’s one I could use for this article: Four Powerful Ways to Write Better Articles.

Lede: Grabby, to the Point

Your lede (journalism lingo: “lede” in lieu of “lead” so as not to confuse the opening of an article with the stuff fishing sinkers are made of) should amplify the headline and set up exactly what is to follow. Your lede should be a laser-beam focused statement of opinion or fact that points directly to what follows. One or two sentences should be enough. Like: “Online articles are effective only when writers pay attention to these four (usually neglected) fundamentals.”

In other words, minimize your setup. Maximize your payoff.

Body Copy: Think Bullets or Numbers

You don’t have to write in bulleted or numbered paragraphs, but THINK in those terms. That’s how clear and organized you want your article to be. In this article, I’ve used subheads for the same purpose. I set up the fact that writers should pay attention to four fundamentals. Then I spelled out what those fundamentals are. Simple.

Kicker

Kickers for article-site articles are different from kickers in magazines, where you might employ a bit of wit while harking back to the lede. In an online article, your goal is to so enthrall and impress the reader that he will be compelled to continue to the resource box and click through to your website, or to the site of your client.

One clever approach is to construct your kicker to read directly through to your resource box, essentially setting up your resource box to be the final paragraph of your article.

Or just write such an effective article that readers won’t be able to help themselves; they’ll be dying to click through. That, of course, is your goal.

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“Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade,” writes Malcolm Gladwell in the preface to his book What the Dog Saw. Gladwell is the fine New Yorker writer and author of best sellers such as Outliers and The Tipping Point. He goes on to write in this preface:

“It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else’s head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else’s head is not a place you’d really like to be.”

Engage the reader. No matter what you write, it’s all-important. Even if your piece is pure reporting or pure service, you have to engage the reader. If he’s not engaged, he doesn’t read beyond the first sentence or two. The information you’ve gathered, or the persuasion you may or may not be attempting, will go for naught.

Once engaged, make the reader think. Once he’s engaged, he’s yours to titillate, elucidate, educate.

Fine, Bob, you may be thinking. That sounds great. But HOW do you engage?

A hint: Think about what your readers are most interested in. Start there. Let that dictate your lede, and saturate your story with details that feed your readers’ needs.

Have I done that in this brief piece?

I think so.

That’s it for now. We’ll delve into engaging techniques, strong ledes, making people think, and getting into someone else’s head as we move along.

Definitely Not Cambodia

“This is just like Cambodia,” one travel writer said to her photographer friend.

Really?

I was traveling with them and a few other writers on a press trip in Nicaragua. We were slowly boating up a narrow estuary lined with mangrove trees. Great egrets and tiger herons combed the banks. Whenever the trees parted, we could see silhouettes of the volcanoes that dominate any Nicaragua skyline.

We had just come upon a huddle of thatched-roof shelters, three tethered pangas, and some children playing in the brackish water when the writer spoke.

Just like Cambodia? No! This was absolutely Nicaragua.

Here’s a tip for you as a writer, whether you cover destinations or not: Be where you are—nowhere else. And be inquisitive. Discover what is definitive and particular to any place or situation. Because as soon as you decide that one place, person, or thing is just the same as another, you’ve stepped off the path of discovery. You’ve stopped asking questions. You think you know something. But all you’ve accomplished is a bit of place-dropping that speaks, “I’ve been somewhere you haven’t been.” Who cares?

It’s lazy writing to say any place reminds you of anywhere else. But worse, once you make that decision, you’ve shut off the flow of curiosity that is your lifeblood as a writer.

You owe it to your readers to dive deeper than “This is just like” anything else. It isn’t.