Guiding Metaphor

A few points from Steven Pinker's book: Sense of Style: the thinking person's guide to writing in the 21st century.

 

"In classic prose the writer is directing the gaze of the reader to something in the world she can see for herself. Classic style minimizes abstractions, which cannot be seen with the naked eye. This doesn’t mean that it avoids abstract subject matter, only that it shows the events making up that subject matter transparently, by narrating an unfolding plot with real characters doing things, rather than by naming an abstract concept that encapsulates those events in a single word."

Me: Show it, don’t word it.

"The guiding metaphor of classic style: a writer, in conversation with a reader, directs the reader’s gaze to something in the world."

"Classic style makes the unnatural act of writing seem like two of our most natural acts: talking and seeing."

So let's try it out:

Plot: technology erodes feeling and emotion, instantaneous technology 

She swiped, then she swiped some more, almost walked into a street sign which almost interrupted her swiping, almost. When she wasn’t swiping, she was checking and when she wasn’t checking she was thinking about checking. She knew how and where to get information by swiping. She could find the best site to help you learn about elm trees but she had no interest in touching, smelling, sitting under an elm tree, embracing its shade, maybe with a friend talking about boys or maybe even with that boy she talked about, maybe even sneaking a kiss under that elm tree. She had no interests in sensing things outside pixilation. Her attention span mirrored the time between swipes. Seconds from swipe, look, swipe, tap, expand, look, swipe, tap tap, both thumbs, open video, swipe, check, swipe... for hours upon hours. For fourteen years she swiped and checked, checked and swiped as the world outside her was ignored. She didn’t take in a sunset though she lived near the water, she had her eyes glued to the phone; she didn’t really remember important events because she had her eyes glued to the phone; parties and the memories of them were usurped by selfies and real-time posting. Nostalgia became a thing of the present.