✍️ How (VAROOM! VAROOM!) Writing to One Person Can (BRUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM…) Help Make Your Writing More Interesting

or, How a Trick from a New Journalist Writer Can Help Make Writing Easier

Apr 09, 2024

Original (?) image that ran with Tom Wolfe’s “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby” in Esquire Magazine. No copyright found, but I assume Esquire magazine owns it.

Have I ever talked about my love for New Journalism here?

Officially, New Journalism is described as using literary techniques to tell a non-fiction story. The style was “invented” in New York by writers such as Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, and Joan Didion, among several others. It’s no coincidence that some of these writers are among my favourites. I feel that today’s Creative Non-fiction is directly related to New Journalism (though I’ve had arguments over this point).

If New Journalism had a ring leader, it was probably Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff and The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test. One of the things I like most about the style is that it seems like the writer is writing directly to you. There’s an immediacy and an intimacy that’s so compelling. It’s an intimacy that Wolfe stumbled upon by accident with a magazine article he was trying to file:

“Esquire magazine sent me out to California to take a look at the custom car world. At first, I couldn't even write the story. I came back to New York and just sat around worrying over the thing. I told the managing editor that I couldn't pull the thing together. Okay, he tells me, just type out some notes and send them over. So about 8 o'clock that night I started typing the notes out in the form of a memorandum that began, ‘Dear Byron’...” (Edited quote.)

In other words, Wolfe told the story to one person: Byron. As legend tells it, the editor removed the salutation and sign-off and printed Wolfe’s “notes” as-is. The long title of that article: “There Goes (VAROOM! VAROOM!) That Kandy Kolored (THPHHHHHH!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (RAHGHHHH!) Around The Bend (BRUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM…)”

It would be trite and incomplete and wrong to say New Journalism was born that day. But Wolfe’s approach solved another particular problem most of us writers face: What’s the story? And where do I start telling it?

Tell Your Story to One Reader

Full props to long-time reader Tom Pendergast (Out Over My Skis) for prompting this post. He emailed me a link to a Substack article called “The #1 Lesson to Becoming a Brilliant Writer Revealed” by Thom Hartmann that he thought I might be interested in.

I was.

In short, Hartmann talks about a writing lesson he got along the way from a famous ad man. Don’t write to an audience – an “audience” doesn’t exist. Write to one person. The reason this works is that when you write to that one person, suddenly you are consciously trying to put the story into words that will resonant with them personally, not just words that sound good together. Instead of a bullet list of facts pulled together into a paragraph, you are relaying how those facts affected you, imagining what that person would like to know about those facts, and revealing them in a playful, conversational way. (Tom also wrote some words on Hartmann in his post, “Reciprocity”.)

The magical thing is, every reader – in Wolfe’s case, the millions of readers who have read that article – latches onto your writing and feels that immediacy and playfulness, too...

Here’s why writing to Aunt Jenny (or whomever you choose) works:

It creates an almost-conspiratorial intimacy – it’s just you and me talking here.
It’s way less formal and way more conversational. You don’t need to impress Aunt Jenny!
You trick your mind into explaining it in a way that Aunt Jenny will understand. (Funny thing is, if Aunt Jenny can understand it, anyone can…)
You can also trick your mind into finding out what you really want to write about. Sort of like how Tom Wolfe above didn’t know. Or Karen Connelly’s philosophy that we talked about in “How to Start EFFing Writing”.
Hartmann says it helps him from getting overwhelmed before he even starts writing. If you know your piece will be read by 2 million people, you’re much, much more likely to get stage fright than if you’re just writing another letter to Aunt Jenny. I suspect it would also suppress feelings of imposter syndrome, comparisons to GOAT writers, and other writer fears.
It helps your personality shine through because you trade in your stiff, formal writing for a looser, more casual tone where you can really let ‘er rip.

How To in Two Easy Steps (or Four Drawn Out Ones)

At this point, I’d add a whole how-to section. But this approach is so damned easy to understand, I don’t really feel I need to. It’s just:

Picture someone.
Anyone.
Aunt Jenny.
Tell your story to them like you’re writing them a letter or email.

This is really basically two steps, but I wanted to draw it out to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth...

Key Takeaway: To create intimacy and immediacy in your writing, imagine you’re writing to just one person and tell them the story. This technique works especially well if you don’t know what to say or how to say it.

Over to You: Who Do You Write To?

Do you already have someone in my when you write? How does that help you? Are you willing to give it a try? Let us know in the comments below!

In the meantime, I leave you with a CBC report on Wolfe’s death almost six years ago, which talks a lot about New Journalism and Wolfe’s role in it.

Until next time, keep writing with wild abandon!

~Graham

“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” So talk about me! If you liked this post, please consider sharing with your writing friends.