{"id":13403,"date":"2016-01-19T12:35:37","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T16:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/?page_id=13403"},"modified":"2022-12-16T09:22:16","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T13:22:16","slug":"concrete-words-and-phrases","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/writing-tips\/how-to-write-creative-content\/concrete-details\/concrete-words-and-phrases\/","title":{"rendered":"Quotes on concrete words and phrases"},"content":{"rendered":"

What writers & others say<\/h2>\n

\"Concrete

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“Dot the dragon’s eye, and it comes to life.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 A phrase used in traditional Chinese painting<\/h6>\n
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“A story should be a roller coaster, not a train track.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Anonymous<\/h6>\n
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“The soul never thinks without an image.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Aristotle, Greek philosopher<\/h6>\n
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“In any kind of persuasive writing, a critical question to ask is whether your copy brags or whether it proves. And one of the best ways to demonstrate proof is to be specific. Don’t brag that your product comes in a multitude of colors. Tell me it comes in 23 of them. Don’t brag that you can save me money. Tell me how much. Don’t brag that your customers love your service. Have a customer tell me. Specificity reduces the gush factor and gives your writing more credibility \u2014 in the process supporting sales\/marketing\/image messages better than a thousand self-promoting superlatives.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 BeABetterWriter.com<\/h6>\n
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“To generalize is to be an idiot.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 William Blake, English poet and artist<\/h6>\n
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“The language of journalism is concrete and specific. A saying at the St. Petersburg Times<\/em> requires reporters to ‘get the name of the dog, the brand of the beer, the color and make of the sports car.’”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Roy Peter Clark, Poynter Institute senior scholar<\/h6>\n
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“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader \u2014 not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 E.L. Doctorow, author of Ragtime<\/em> and other critically acclaimed novels<\/h6>\n
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\u201cIf we want to share our big ideas without boring our readers to tears, we have to mix abstract advice with concrete imagery.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Henneke Duistermaat, founder, Enchanted Marketing<\/h6>\n
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“Make the important interesting.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Use concrete terms and your readers will have a clearer idea of your meaning. You enhance your words when you allow readers to visualize what you say.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Bryan A. Garner, author, The Elements of Legal Style<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“The more particular, the more specific you are, the more universal you are.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Nancy Hale, 19th-century journalist and author<\/h6>\n
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“Whatever you do, don’t get stuck on the boring middle rungs of the abstraction ladder. Every day, writers churn out millions of words that describe mind-numbing bureaucratic processes without mention of individual human beings or larger meaning. They are stuck somewhere between heaven and earth, and their readers never get to sample the joys of either.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Jack Hart, editor at large, the Oregonian<\/em>, in A Writer’s Coach<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“A few vivid details might be more persuasive than a barrage of statistics.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“If you really want to shake people out of their reverie and motivate them to sit up and take notice, say those two simple words, for example.”<\/em><\/h5>\n
\u2014 Sam Horn, author of POP! Stand Out In Any<\/em> Crowd<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Without great reporting, a story is like one big comb-over. You can see it from the third paragraph.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Ann Hull, reporter for The Washington Post<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“We tend to have a better memory for things that excite our senses or appeal to our emotions than for straight facts and dry statistics. This means that you might overestimate the number of times your colleague wore a red tie, or underestimate how often he wore a gray one, simply because red is a brighter color.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Sheena Iyengar, professor at Columbia Business School, in The Art of Choosing<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cConcreteness transports us into a story like nothing else. It\u2019s the key that unlocks the door of the reader\u2019s imagination.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Kim Kautzer, CEO, WriteShop, Inc.<\/h6>\n
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“The easiest thing for the reader to do is to quit reading.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Bernard Kilgore, legendary managing editor of The Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Language that is more concrete and specific creates pictures in the mind of [your] listener, pictures that should come as close as possible to the pictures in your mind.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 William Lutz, author, The New Doublespeak:<\/em> Why No One Knows What Anyone’s Saying Anymore<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Good writing moves up and down the ‘abstraction ladder,’ and great writing moves way up and way down.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Dr. Carolyn Matalene, professor of English, University of South Carolina<\/h6>\n
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“It is no great exaggeration to say that dolphin-safe tuna flows directly from the barrel of a Canon, that without Kodak there’d be no Endangered Species Act.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Bill McKibben, author, Hope, Human and Wild,<\/em> in “The Problem with Wildlife Photography” for DoubleTake<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“We put quotes, votes and anecdotes together, and we build a case. When we’re ready to release it, we go out and hit the opponent, hit him hard. It has to be relentless. \u2026 There is almost never that silver bullet. It’s death by a thousand cuts.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Jason Miner, Democratic opposition researcher<\/h6>\n
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\u201cMake the reader believe by giving the reader evidence at each point in the story,\u201d<\/h5>\n
writes Donald M. Murray, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, in Writing to Deadline: The Journalist at Work<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Example isn’t the main thing influencing others. It’s the only thing.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Prize-winning theologian, philosopher and medical missionary to Africa<\/h6>\n
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“Show, don’t tell.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Mark Twain, American author and wit<\/h6>\n
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“Don’t say that the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Mark Twain, American author and wit<\/h6>\n
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“If you want to be credible, be specific. … Heinz doesn’t have a ‘multitude’ of varieties; it has 57. Bressler’s doesn’t have a ‘whole lot’ of flavors; it has 33. There aren’t ‘many’ deadly sins; there are seven. Well, eight, if you count vague writing.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Doug Williams, a principal in Tomasini-W2K, a marketing, public relations, public affairs and training company<\/h6>\n
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“Information is absorbed in direct proportion to its vividness.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Diane West and Jennifer Dreyer, principals, Tamayo Consulting Inc.<\/h6>\n
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“No ideas but in things.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 William Carlos Williams, poet<\/h6>\n
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“Show AND tell.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Ann Wylie, writing coach<\/h6>\n
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