'Tis the season to worry about whether your teen knows how to write first-rate SAT and college application essays.
What are the secrets to composing "wow"-inducing prose? To find out, I talked with my friend Helen Sword, author of The Writer's Diet and creator of the Writer's Diet test.
Cut the fat: Paste a 100- to 1,000-word sample into the WritersDiet test and learn your rating – "lean," "fit and trim," "needs toning," "flabby," or "heart attack territory." The online tool highlights wordy phrases.
Use "is" sparingly. The "to be" verb brings no energy to a sentence. If your teen is writing an essay about what running means to him, he should use "sprint" and "dash." "I am a runner"? Yawn.
Choose concrete nouns. "Table" is a winner since you can touch it, says Sword. A word ending in "-tion," such as "categorization," is a loser since it is abstract. The technical term: nominalization. "It's a noun that has been built from a verb or an adjective," says Sword. A reader can't picture it. Stylish writers illustrate abstract ideas using concrete language.
Let verbs do the work. Use "energetic verbs," says Sword. Which catches your attention – a line about a woman who "goes" to a counter or a line about a woman who "slinks" or "saunters" her way there?
Ditch the jargon. School principals like to tell graduates, "We strive for the achievement of excellence and empowerment," says Sword. Eyelids droop. But audience members perk up when they hear, "Let me tell you a story about a kid who graduated from this high school," she says. "Then they're talking about something real."
Be specific. Police love to use the word "altercation." Argh. Get your teen to describe specific details about the fight.
Dump the "-ize" words. Forget "utilize." Instead, choose "use."
Get out the red pen. Strike vague words, such as "is" and "this," and wordy phrases, such as "and a path for fruitfulness and for productivity." (Vanity Fair editors deleted them in their edit of Sarah Palin's resignation speech.)
Read "I Have a Dream." For inspiration, check out Martin Luther King's masterpiece. ("I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.") King told "real stories" with "real people" to illustrate abstract ideas, says Sword. Your young applicant should do the same. If he is writing about an abstract term such as "unfairness," he should illustrate it. For example, each year 7.6 million young kids in developing countries die from pneumonia, malaria, and diarrhea in the first month of life, according to the World Health Organization.
Don't choose a long word where a short one would do. "Many students develop a tendency to make their words longer and longer because they think it will make them sound smart," says Sword. Abraham Lincoln knew better. Scholars note that nine out of 10 words in his Gettysburg address were one syllable. ("Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.")
In the spirit of Lincoln, your child can bring forth upon college admissions officers a new essay, dedicated to lively verbs and strong nouns. Let the clear writing begin.
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