If you know the TV series, Spenser: For Hire, or the TV movies featuring Spenser, you know of one of the most prolific and successful writers in the world, Robert B. Parker. Parker, winner of the Edgar, and a Grand Master for Lifetime Achievement Award (Mystery Writers of America), is one of the leanest writers you’ll read. Lean, as in fewer words, more white space. He’s so lean, he has to make every word pull quadruple its weight.
Most readers don’t know Robert B. Parker earned a Ph. D. in English. Parker often quips that the Ph. D. didn’t teach him how to write, but it “ . . . probably informed my imagination and maybe gave my writing what Chandler said Hammett lacked, ‘the sound of music from beyond the hill.’”
Robert B. Parker’s writing tickles the wit and gives the psychologist in every reader a chance to play analyst. Here’s an excerpt from SPARE CHANGE, the 2007 release in his Sunny Randall series.
This excerpt (page 111) could have been pulled from a romance novel. Sunny’s ex-husband just informed her he left his second wife -- implying he wanted Sunny back.
. I was conscious that my breathing had become shallow and quick. My throat felt tight. Around me the restaurant continued in real time. People were dining and drinking and chatting and being pleased and being annoyed. Time had slowed at my table. Everything had receded a little. We were alone in a slightly different time and place. Living at a different speed. I swallowed some wine so that my voice would work.
ANALYSIS: Note that the VISCERAL RESPONSE SET is first. Just like Dwight Swain recommends with his Motivational Reaction Units in TECHNIQUES OF A SELLING WRITER. Just like I recommend in my two editing courses. :-)))
How many times does Parker SHOW the reader that this moment in Sunny’s life is critical? He gives the reader TWO VISCERALLY-ANCHORED EMOTIONAL RESPONSES: breathing changes and a tight throat. He uses FIVE SENTENCES to contrast restaurant time to Sunny’s emotional time.
Remember – Parker is MR. LEAN. Yet – he AMPLIFIES his point five times. He wraps up the paragraph with an emotionally-anchored nonverbal communication, a vocal cue, and he shows it through action, not telling. He doesn’t say her mouth was so dry it was hard to speak. He SHOWS her taking a drink so she could speak.
Add the 2 visceral responses, the 5 sentences about the time distortion, and the vocal cue, and we have EIGHT EMOTIONAL HITS . . . from the leanest writer around.
I hope my DEEP EDITING graduates recognized his use of the rhetorical device, POLYSYNDETON. Here’s the line: “People were dining and drinking and chatting and being pleased and being annoyed.” His use of MULTIPLE CONJUNCTIONS (polysyndeton) is lulling and a powerful juxtaposition of setting and emotions.
