Summary

People and places are the two pillars on which most nomfiction is build.

今天这章是如何进行游记写作。在写作中，作者往往大而化之，泛泛地写。这样，虽然看起来什么都写了，地点却没有自己的特色。We only want to hear some. The detail must be significant.作者给出两个建议——on of style, the other of substance.                    First, choose your words with unusual care.

As for substance, be intensely selective.

Find details that are significant. But make sure they do useful work.

Whatever place you write about, go there often enough to isolate the qualities that make it distinctive.

When you write about a place, try to draw the best out of it.

Finally, however, what brings a place alive is human activity.

Never be afraid to write about a place that you think has had every last word written about it.

Enter into the intention of each place: to find out what it was trying to be, not what I might have expected or wanted it to be.

Vocabulary

1.Nowhere else in nonfiction do writers use such syrupy words and groaning platitudes

syrupy:

adj 1)Liquid that is syrupy is sweet or thick like syrup.

2)If you describe something as syrupy, you dislike it because it is too sentimental.

syrup:

n 1)Syrup is a sweet liquid made by cooking sugar with water, and sometimes with fruit juice as well.

2)Syrup is a very sweet thick liquid made from sugar.

3)Syrup is a medicine in the form of a thick, sweet liquid.

groan:

v 1)If you groan, you make a long, low sound because you are in pain, or because you are upset or unhappy about something.

2)If you groan something, you say it in a low, unhappy voice.

3)If you groan about something, you complain about it.

4)If wood or something made of wood groans, it makes a loud sound when it moves.

5)If you say that something such as a table groans under the weight of food, you are emphasizing that there is a lot of food on it.

6)If you say that someone or something is groaning under the weight of something, you think there is too much of that thing.

idioms

groan under the weight of sth:used to say that there is too much of sth

groan with sth:to be full of sth

2.Adjectives you would squirm to use in conversation.

squirm:

v 1)If you squirm, you move your body from side to side, usually because you are nervous or uncomfortable.

2)If you squirm, you are very embarrassed or ashamed.

3.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.

a whole constellation of:

A constellation is a group of stars which form a pattern and have a name.

A constellation of similar things is a group of them.

这里意思是一系列的，一连串的