Learning from Good Writing: Using Visual Images

Sometimes it’s easier to learn by looking at examples of jobs well done. Here are a few sentences that illustrate a principle we teach in the Worktalk writing trainings: Create visual images. Abstractions do not move people the way images do. The more you can engage your reader’s senses — sight, sound, smell, taste and touch — the more impact your words will have

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But for most public opinion in Europe the war in Iraq was always a stretch too far, and a decade of body bags has blunted the European appetite for expeditionary warfare at America’s side.

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The Economist ,9/3-9/9/11

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The image of body bags brings home the reality of war much more than a word like fatality or casualty.

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In the contiguous 48 states, the best weather isn’t in June, July and August. Spring is glorious in the South. Fall is splendid in the North. And winter is swell in Florida and the part of California where the four seasons are Smog, Mudslide, Brush Fire and Oscar.

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Our summer weather in 2011 consisted of tornadoes, heat waves, an earthquake and a hurricane. For everyone this side of Nome, summer vacation in the summer is like having a coffee break at 2 a.m.

P.J. O’Rourke, “The Case Against Summer”, Wall Street Journal 9/3-4/11

O’Rourke introduces the seasons with general terms but follows up with specific visual images that give life to his point.

At last they came. After a week of hesitation in the wake of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s flight, the people of Tripoli climbed off the fence and poured into the capital’s central square for an all-night celebration capped by morning prayers. …

The Economist, 9/3-9/9/11

“Climbed off the fence”, “poured”, and “morning prayers” give vitality to this description.

Winston Churchill was an undisputed master of visual imagery. He combined powerful images with parallel structure to create sentences that galvanized an island nation’s will to fight a devastating enemy. Here is just one excerpt from a speech Churchill gave in Manchester in 1940:

Come then, let us to the task, to the battle, to the toil — each to our part, each to our station. Fill the armies, rule the air, pour out the munitions, strangle the U-boats, sweep the mines, plow the land, build the ships, guard the streets, succor the wounded, uplift the downcast, and honor the brave.

Resist the urge to dwell in abstractions. Give your readers something to see, hear and feel; they will repay you by paying greater attention and understanding you more clearly.

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