写作圣经—如何写好不同类型文章？
图片发自PEXELS
Chapter 3 Forms
本章原书内容很多，我前后删除了不少。关于不同类型文章如何写作，作者举了很多例子，但仍然遵循Clarity、Humanity、Clear Thinking 等基本原则。
11.Nonfiction as literature
Motivation is at the heart of writing...The only important distinction is between good writing and bad writing. Good writing is good writing, whatever forms it takes and whatever we call it.
写作源于动机。其实写作并不分非虚构类与文学类，唯一区分的只有好与坏，好作品就是好作品，而无论它采取什么样的形式或者我们怎么称呼它。
12.Writing about people(The interview)
Nothing animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does -in his own words...As soon as a writer steps in, everyone else's experience becomes secondhand.
对于采访，没有什么比用采访者自己的话去表达他的所思所想，更让人感到鲜活，一旦掺和了作者的想法，别人的谈论就成为了二手货。
Take heart. You'll find the solution if you look for the human element.
（如果你发现自己对于某件事或物的描写干瘪无力）振作点，尝试去挖掘事物背后人的因素，你也就找到了出路。(比如关于图书馆40周年纪念的专访、拍卖行的故事)。
If you find on page 5 of your notes a comment that perfectly amplifies a point on page 2 ---a point made earlier in the interview---you will do everyone a favor if you link the two thoughts, letting the second sentence follow and illustrate the first.
如果你发现采访稿中，有个观点前后几次都有提到，那么你就应该把前后的想法缝合起来，放在一起说明，而不是生搬硬套采访中的时间顺序。
Don’t become the prisoner of your quotes---so lulled by how wonderful they sound that you don’t stop to analyze them. Never let anything go out into the world that you don’t understand.
不要成为引言的奴隶，觉得他们听起来如此优美就忘了去分析它什么意思、是否合适。如果你没理解一句话，就永远不要让它从你口中说出来，进入这个世界。
13.Writing about places（The Travel Article）
He enjoyed his trip so much that he wants to tell us all about it---and “all” is what we don’t want to hear. We only want to hear some.
（关于游记）一个人很享受他的旅程，所以就想把所有故事都告诉别人，但我们并不想听“所有的”，只想听一部分。
First, choose your words with unusual care. If a phrase comes to you easily, look at it with deep suspicion…Strive for fresh words and images.
（你如何描述好一个地方而不是老生常谈？）要谨慎选词。不要用头脑中第一个想起来的词语。寻求些更有画面感、新鲜感的词语。（而不是这个地方“很有魅力”）
Eliminate every such fact that is a known attribute: don’t tell us that the sea had waves and the sand was white. Find details that are significant…Make sure they do useful work.
删除那些众所周知的事实：不要告诉我沙滩旁边有波浪而且沙子是白的。寻找那些重要的细节，不管怎样，要确保每个词语都有作用。
But whatever place you write about, go there often enough to isolate the qualities that make it distinctive. Usually this will be some combination of the place and the people who inhabit it.
无论你写什么地方，你只有经常去那儿才能剥离出它的与众不同。这种不同的特质往往在于当地人们和这片土地的融合。
If travel is broadening, it should broaden more than just our knowledge of how a Gothic cathedral looks or how the French make wine. It should generate a whole constellation of ideas about how men and women work and play, raise their children, worship their gods, live and die.
如果说旅行是在拓宽眼界，那么它拓宽的应该不仅仅只是关于哥特式大教堂看起来怎么样或者法国人怎么酿酒这样的知识。旅行应该让我们产生联想与迷思：那儿的男人女人如何劳作与娱乐，如何抚养孩子，如何敬畏神灵，如何生存与死去。
Finally, however, what brings a place alive is human activity people doing the things that give a locale its character.
一个地方之所以生生不息，是因为那儿劳作的人们给了它以脾性。
14.Writing About Yourself（The Memoir）
What we’re all looking for ---what we want to see pop out of your papers--- is individuality. We’re looking for whatever it is that makes you unique. Write about what you know and what you think.
（关于自传）我们想要看见的是——你的个性。我们在寻找的是一切能使你独一无二的东西，写你所知所想。（你不需要别人批准哪些可以写，哪些不可以写，你自己的生活才是第一手资料来源）
Think narrow, then, when you try the form. Memoir isn’t the summary of a life,; it’s a window into a life.
想窄一点，然后，再去写。回忆录不是一生的总结，它只是生命的一扇窗户。（一个人的历史往事体现了一个时代的政治、经济、思潮的变迁）
One secret of the art is detail. Any kind of detail will work---a sound or a smell or song title---as long as it played a shaping role in the portion of your life you have chosen to distill.
重要的是细节。任何细节只要扮演了塑造你生活的角色都可以写，比如儿时母亲回来的开门铃声、父亲身上熟悉的味道、小时候哼的一首歌。
The best gift you have to offer when you write personal history is the gift of yourself. Give yourself permission to write about yourself, and have a good time doing it.
当你要写个人往事的时候，最好的礼物就是自己，剖白自己，并好好享受这个过程。
15. Science and Technology
Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all.
写作是纸面上的思考，任何事只要你想清楚了就都能写清楚。（科学，只不过是另外一个非虚构类写作主题而已）
Describing how a process works is valuable for two reasons. It forces you to make sure you know how it works. Then it forces you to take the reader through the same sequence of ideas and deductions that made the process clear to you.
描述一个过程如何运作有两个好处。首先，你得确保自己知道它怎么运作。其次，它也会逼着你去思考如何描述、精简语言来让读者明白它如何运作。
Imagine science writing as an upside-down pyramid. Start at the bottom with the one fact a reader must know before he can learn any more.
将科普想象成一个倒置的金字塔。底部基石是读者知道的少量事实，你只有让他明白前一个事实，才能往下一个事实进发。（用一个小事作引导）
Another way to help your readers understand unfamiliar facts is to relate them to sights they are familiar with.
另一种方式就是用一些熟悉的场景或图片来帮助读者了解那些不熟悉的概念。（减少抽象词语从而让读者能在脑海中可视化，用自己生活中、自然中事物类比。）
Another way of making science accessible is to write like a person and not like a scientist.
另一个使科学平易近人的方法，就是要说人话而不是像个科学家一样甩专业名。
16.Business Writing（Writing in your job）
After I had read various good and bad examples, the principals began to hear the difference between their true selves and their educator selves…I recited my four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
（教育行业）我看过很多案例，其实好坏的差别在于是否能区分自己的教育者身份和真实的一个人的身份（如何发公告、公开信）。我重申自己的写作信念：简洁、人情味。
Managers at every level are prisoners of the notion that a simple style reflects a simple mind. Actually a simple style is the result of hard work and hard thinking.
每个管理者都认为，简单的风格反映了简单的思考，错了，其实简单的风格是努力工作、辛苦思考的结果。（混乱的风格反映的是一个混论的思考者，或者他太过自大、太呆板、太懒去组织他的想法）
If you work for an institution , whatever your job, whatever your level, be yourself when you write. You will stand out as a real person among the robots.
如果你为一个机构工作，无论什么工作，什么级别，当你写作时一定要做自己。这样你才能在那些文字冰冷、毫无人情味儿就像机器 的人群中脱颖而出。
17.Sports
One new role for the sportswriter is to let us know what it feels like to actually perform a sport: to be a marathon runner or a soccer goalie, a skier or a golfer or a gymnast.
对于体育专栏作家来说要能让人们知道参加一个运动是什么感觉，所以他们新的角色：要成为一个马拉松跑者、一个足球运动员、滑冰运动员。
Those are the values to look for when you write about sport, people and places, time and transition.
这些才是你关于体育写作需要寻找的价值，那些曾经挣扎的人和地方，那些流逝的时间和转变。
18.Writing About the Arts（Critics and Columnists）
This is criticism at its best: stylish, allusive, disturbing.
最好的批评就是能联系现实，针砭时弊，要不停地耳提面命让人们重新审视他们自己所相信的东西。
Critics should be among the first to notify us when the truths we hold to be self-evident cease to be true.
当我们曾坚持的东西被证明并非真相时，批评家应该第一个告诉我们。
What is crucial for you as the writer is to express your opinion firmly. Don’t cancel its strength with last minute evasions and escapes.
对批评家来说，重要的就是要强烈地表达你的观点。不要在最后关头犹豫，逃避从而削弱了观点的力量。
19. Humor
The writer must find some comic device----satire, parody, irony, lampoon, nonsense--- that he can use to disguise his serious point.
写作者必须要找到一些喜剧工具---讽刺，嘲笑，无理取闹，他可以用这些来伪装自己严肃的观点。
This heightening of some crazy truth--- to a level where it will be seen as crazy--- is the essence of what serious humorists are trying to do.
对于事实真相的夸张与放大，放大到被人们认为疯狂的地步，这才是严肃幽默的精华。
Don’t make the same kind of joke two or three times--- readers will enjoy themselves more if you make it only once.
同样的笑话不要讲两三次，你只说一遍的话读者会更喜欢。
They aren’t writing about life that’s essentially ludicrous; they are writing about life that’s essentially serious, but their eye falls on areas where serious hopes are mocked by some ironic turn of fate.
（幽默并不是一个孤立 的存在，它是基于社会的迭代而不停地与时俱进，它是基于一种生活的真实。）那些伟大的幽默家并不是要描写那荒诞滑稽的生活，而是要描写那些真正严肃的东西，他们的目光着落于那些被命运玩弄、嘲笑、逆转但又无比严肃、认真的希望之所在。
Humorists operate on a deeper current than most people suspect. They must be willing to go against the grain, to say what the populace and the President may not want to hear.
幽默作家其实比大众认为的要更深沉，他们必须要迎头面对生活，说一些大众和官方想听的话。
To be continued...
未完待续...
