Cut to Bleed
January 8, 2018 § 48 Comments
by Jan Priddy
Find the sentence where the essay turns glorious or cruel. Make that the beginning. Imagine running a race, that instant the starting gun cracks, the moment later when you reach full speed. Start your essay there, at a full sprint.
Sometimes the best line arrives at the end. Maybe start there. Maybe rearrange the furniture. Pick that powerful last paragraph up and move it to the start. You do not have to kill all your darlings. Sometimes they just need to be shifted to move us.
Find the word that says everything you mean. Mean it.
By the end, everything might be moving so fast, you fear you will fall. Take that. Fall. Collapse right into the reader.
If, at the end of your walk, you picked up a shell before turning for home, end with the shell, not the walk off the beach. Instead of ending on an idea, choose concrete. Give them the sky visible through the window of my mother’s hospital room. The way your father’s last breaths came so far apart that you looked up from rereading the same paragraph about Restoration ceilings and had to tell him it was okay to leave. The smell of wet wool. Pussy willows. The way your nose dripped until it ran into your open mouth.
Almost always what needs to be chopped from a personal essay is the abstract. The idea. What people warned us against: the telling. What you want is to plant a mote into the eye of your reader, something that will stick and nag. The iridescent nacre wafer held in your palm while the ocean clears her throat. The splinter of a scene.
Beautiful language can do that too. Metaphor wraps it up in concrete. The fact of tears is far less important than the impulse on the part of the reader to cry. Telling about emotion does not touch. What you do makes others feel. Make your reader gasp.
I like to call it “hack’n’slash.” For brevity’s sake, shorten each paragraph by a line; cut the weakest sentence in each paragraph; make a single sentence from two; annotate each paragraph & do a word search for repetition (that you can cut); cut all the abstract and focus on the concrete (yes, I said that before); cut the introduction, the conclusion, cut the weakest paragraph in your paper; cut them all.
Often the ending is mere summing up, because that is what we have learned to do in conclusion. Yes, that is correct, but also weak outside an academic essay. Since you must leave, leave readers something. The last line, the very end, should contain a sensory detail—the telling visual. As if you could rip readers’ hearts, or slap them, or kiss the corner of their mouth.
Cut all the words that do not make you bleed as a writer. Carve so close your hands shake holding the knife. Then make it shorter. Do that again. Do it. Cut.
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Jan Priddy’s work has earned awards and publications, including three essays and four poems published in 2017. She always hopes to do better.
Lovely, vivid, timely for me, A great post. Thank you.
Thank you for your note!
Well said, Jan. Chop and slash indeed.
Thank you, Paula! Hack’n’slash is pure adrenalin!
Wow…gorgeous
Thank you!
Thank you. That’s my task this morning.
Oh, mine too!
Reblogged this on and commented:
Funny how you know exactly where your writing “turns glorious or cruel”…
I appreciate this!
So well said. Thank you!
Thank you, Danielle.
Such great advice. I could not stop reading. Even though this seems obvious, I forget it too often. Thank you for the reminder.Great job.
Don’t we all need reminders? Every time I butcher a text, I want to go back to everything I have written and clean away . . .
YES!
Yes. Yes. Sit by me once a week.
Thank you, Dinty. Your timing is impeccable. I will share the post with my students this morning. We are editing essays in class today. jan
___________________ Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune and misfortune at their own private pace like a clock during thunderstorm.—Robert Louis Stevenson
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hi
mckenzee
On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 5:14 AM, BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog wrote:
> Dinty W. Moore posted: “by Jan Priddy Find the sentence where the essay > turns glorious or cruel. Make that the beginning. Imagine running a race, > that instant the starting gun cracks, the moment later when you reach full > speed. Start your essay there, at a full sprint. Sometim” >
Hi back at you!
Beautifully put!
Thank you, Allison. It means a lot coming from my favorite blogger!
Simply wonderful! Loved it.
Thank you! I tried to follow my own advice—something I often fail to manage.
[…] via Cut to Bleed — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog […]
Thank you for this.
Saving this one in my “inspiration” folder.
That is inspirational to me!
[…] via Cut to Bleed — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog […]
Thank you.
Beautiful and exactly relevant to what I’m writing now. Thank you.
I love it when that happens and I find a post that is about exactly what I need.
Saving this posting it in sections one day at a time. Precisely spoken. An accumulations of wisdom in fun meaningful snippets.
I am honored.
SHEESH! incredible. gorgeous. THANK YOU.
Thank you!
Thank you! I’ve taught writing for years and never heard this advice expressed so well. Every sentence teaches.
Butchery is an adrenaline rush! I routinely have students butcher their lengthy research paper (8-12 pages) from the previous term to about 3 pages. They hate anticipating the cuts, but most also recognize that the essay is better.
“Butchery is an adrenaline rush!” is one of those quotes that has to go on the classroom wall. Thanks again!
Fabulous essay.
Thank you!
wow. whew. thanks. yikes. okay. 😉
Oh, thank you so much! If only, if only I always acted on my own best advice.
Yes, if only. The masochist in me would love to see the slashed and blood-spattered drafts that birthed this amazing piece.
I went looking to see if I had the earliest draft—I always, always, always keep my drafts. Alas, I did not.
I understand. . . and of course you showed it beautifully. But I do enjoy seeing hard evidence of the blood sweat and tears that Good Writers invest in their work. It’s somehow comforting and reassuring. Thanks again!
My goal here was to show what I was telling. Dirty cut one line from what I sent, even so. He was right.
Gosh, darn it! “DINTY cut one line”. When will I learn to check the auto-correct? I have it turned off on my word processing. My typing and spelling are bad enough without help!
My “reply” above was intended for this comment. Don’t know how to cut & paste here. . .