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Better English 101
Tips For Communicating Better
Vol I, No. 8
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In this issue
-- THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK APPROACH
-- THIS JUST IN

What Is Your Point?

THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK APPROACH
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 An author who will remain unamed in this issue called excitedly about his new book last week. He's completed the writing and wants feedback.

But he couldn't answer the question that so many writers seem to ignore, refuse to acknowledge, or are just too lazy to grapple with: what's your main idea, principal theme, or point?

You'd be amazed at how many authors have done a tango around that question. They can't describe the theme in fewer than several minutes or several pages. Or they use sweeping terms like "It deals with..."

Everything we write--an email, memo, postcard, letter, recommendation, proposal, article, essay, book, play, or film--has a main point, an organizing idea. And so do the parts within. Paragraphs, scenes, and chapters have main ideas.

And of course, the theme may be broken down into sub-themes.

I used film as the last example because I have always thought that Alfred Hitchcock's approach is so instructive. As a fresh college graduate (forget the pun) more than 100 years ago taking an evening course in film production at New York University, I saved this gem from one lecture.

Someone asks Hitchcock where he gets his ideas for a film and how does he know that he has developed it successfully.

Hitchcock says that he writes down the main idea of his film on a piece of paper, puts it away, and starts production.

One Friday, two college students think about what they will do that evening. One says that he will stay in the room and read. The other says that he will go see Hitchcock's new movie.

Later, the student returns. His roommate asks, "What was the movie about?"

Hitchcock maintains that he produced his film successfully if the student's response is the same statement that Hitchcock wrote on that piece of paper.

Do you have a main idea, and is it clear?


THIS JUST IN
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 In a well-reasoned May 20 NYTBR review of David Talbot's "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years," Columbia University provost Alan Brinkley moves along nicely until he hits this usage snag that I've mentioned before.

He writes, "None of them have been definitively proved." The singular noun "None" needs the verb "has."

Well I was delighted to see that the writer is a provost-- usually the second-in-command university officer after the president. Both the president and provost vote on faculty tenure decisions. A publication record is the most important of many criteria for tenure, or guarantee of permanent employment for faculty. So does it seem odd to you that the majority of university presidents and provosts have themselves not published a book?

Still, Provost Brinkley's review points out the importance of a readily identifiable theme or main idea. Predictably, a book of 478 pages like "Brothers" may have a central theme with supporting sub- themes. The reader, Hitchcock might argue, must be able to determine these themes and sub-themes readily.

Brinkley describes the themes and sub-themes of "Brothers" as if they are clearly defined. At one point, he states, "Talbot concludes his book with a powerful plea for a new effort to uncover the truth--a task that would, he says, be akin to the 'truth and reconciliation' efforts that have helped heal terrible wounds in countries like Chile, South Africa and Argentina."

Is this one of the points listed by Talbot when he, using the Hitchcock model, wrote them all down on that piece of paper?


Best wishes,
Barry Beckham


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