I recently finished reading Word Wizard, a collection of essays by Richard Lederer. (If you’ve ever been forwarded the email that asks why if we say “tooth” and “teeth,” why don’t we pluralize “booth” as “beeth,” Lederer’s the guy who wrote those musings.) Two of the essays struck me as ironic, but it’s likely that I noticed the irony only because the two pieces were placed near each other in the book.

One is called “Cut the Verbal Fat,” and the other, “Add Wealth to your Vocabulary.”

They seem contradictory at first glance. But are they?

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I’ve put some thought lately into the idea of incorporating more narrative text in my documentation. I’m a fan of stories myself—aside from the fact that I enjoy adventure books. When I’m listening to a speaker or reading an article, I mentally perk up when what is apparently a narrative comes along. Narrative grabs my attention.

Why couldn’t I do the same thing in my technical writing? I have, to some extent. One manual I’ve written contains examples that are set apart in the text rather than being introduced with wording like “For instance.” I did it as a mechanism to show how a possibly real-world situation applies to the software I documented. I wasn’t really thinking about the narrative itself, though.

When I was a writing tutor in college (Look! There’s some narrative now…. Come to think of it, the previous paragraph had some, too….), I’d tell students that narrative is an effective writing tool because people identify closely with it. It’s a core part of our linguistic abilities. Whenever your colleague asks you what you did over the weekend and you tell him, you engage in narrative.

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I finished reading Elantris by Brandon Sanderson (published by Tor in 2005) last week, and overall it had a good plot and interesting characters. The villain has some real reason for what he does rather than seeking the world’s destruction because he’s just plain evil, as classic villains typically are, and he actually undergoes some character development.

The most interesting of the three main characters was Raoden, probably because he was pursuing the real mystery of why Elantris fell and why becoming an Elantrian turned into a curse rather than an empowerment. That is the plotline that kept me reading. (Don’t worry, I’m not spoiling anything. You learn that much in the first few pages.)

The story’s tension builds right until the very end of the last chapter. The end did have a couple of tidy little plot elements that seemed a little convenient, as if Sanderson wrote his characters into such a tight situation that they needed some help, but they weren’t deal breakers.

If you’re looking for something good to read, Elantris is worth a try.

Go to I’d Rather Be Writing to see a guest post about Michael Banks’ Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World’s Top Bloggers. Hope you enjoy.