Bringing writing tips and techniques designed for the performance horse industry to a computer near you.

All copy, ideas, music selections, horse tricks, gunplay, drunken rants and any purloined materials should be attributed to Mr. E. Quine.

This e-show is sponsored in part by Susan’s Horse Emporium. “If you can’t find it at Susan’s, you can probably get along without it.”

Welcome to the inaugural edition of The Amazing Mr. E. Quine and His Wandering Barnyard Show, a dubious endeavor to corner the performance horse writing market. At this show, you will be provided magic tips and techniques to help you become a better writer. Along the way, you will want to enter various tents and witness the sideshows that will enable you to become a professional writer who writes intriguing stories using fresh language. And if you are already a professional writer, don't despair, because your ringmaster will amaze you, too! I also believe it’s no use to keep private information that you can’t show off, hence the impetus of this publication. Please note that I value a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful competency.
                                        — E. Quine

On with the show!

Intro music and jugglers…
In the performance horse industry, horses are described in a variety of ways, such as vanilla and scorpion. A vanilla horse is rather dull and plain, while a scorpion is an athletic, agile and stylish-moving horse.

Writing can be described in the same terms. Do we wish to be vanilla, churning out dull copy filled with clichés and colorless adjectives that are only, at best, cursorily read? Or do we want to be scorpions, “stylish-moving” writers who tell intriguing stories, describe interesting characters and use fresh language?

Writing is an art. Treat your stories more than just info-dumps. Write compelling and unique pieces that move beyond “just the facts” and introduce readers to an individual, one who has a style and personality all his own.

The following is being funded by Fiona’s Frito Pies. “Spicing up the dull taste of failure through the generations.”

Some illusionists of the writing industry believe that the “voice of the reader,” or copy that sounds like the people who read it, attracts readers more than the “voice of the paper.” To a certain extent this is true. Many homespun storytellers, like Garrison Keillor, best known for his old-style radio program A Prairie Home Companion, do indeed attract a large following because they are perceived as “one of them,” and, as Keillor has done, incorporate material from their audience. The copy is clear and simple and easily digested. However, this technique runs the danger of all writers sounding alike. Readers are often engaged by people who DON’T sound like they do. They like hearing new voices and different styles. Consider the varying styles of journalists like Truman Capote, Thomas McGuane and Molly Ivins.

What writers do you find interesting, funny or compelling? What makes them so? When Ernest Hemingway was just beginning as a writer, he would copy word for word the writings of French novelist Honoré de Balzac in an attempt to understand his writing style.

We pause for this announcement from Mark’s Specialty Saddlery. “Buffing seats to a high sheen for a couple of years.”

Some writers make the mistake of thinking they need to use complex, Latinate terms to create style. Many times, the clear and simple does the trick. Yet this doesn’t mean one can’t expand his vocabulary. “Freshly minted words get more attention than tired coinage.”

And now, a magic trick…
Children often create new words as a form of play. My daughter often creates a portmanteau word, a coined word that is a combination of two other words in form and meaning (Smog, from smoke and fog). One portmanteau word that she came up with to describe the clouds one day, and that I found quite delightful, was pluffy, a combination of plush and fluffy. This sort of thing is done quite naturally, and if we think of writing as a form of play, then we could delightfully surprise ourselves and our readers.

Organ music…
All things worth doing take a measure of risk. Sometimes our experiments fail. But we should not be afraid of failure, for it is in our attempts at creating something truly exceptional that we discover what we are capable of.