The function of generalizations - Compelling craft - You, the writer

Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014

The function of generalizations
Compelling craft
You, the writer

You might think of generalizations as siblings or cousins to abstractions. Like abstractions, generalizations tend to ignore detail in favor of broad ideas. Moreover, they apply to many examples. For instance, the statement, “Creative writers spend many hours working with words” lends itself to a host of ways in which writers conduct their craft. In other words, a generalization is formed from a number of examples or facts and what they have in common.

DEFINITION

Generalizations are broad statements that apply to many examples.

Readers recognize and evaluate generalizations made by an author; they make and support their own generalizations based on reading a particular selection. Certain clue words support instruction for generalizations: all, none, most, many, always, everyone, never, sometimes, some, usually, seldom, few, generally, in general, and overall. Attentive readers are able to evaluate if a generalization is adequately supported by specific facts.

Here’s an example from the opening of a short story titled “The Succubus and I”:

It has been noted that supernatural events are not so much uncommon as irregular in their incidence. There may be, for instance, not one marvel to speak of in a century, and then there arrives a plentiful crop of them: monsters of all sorts swarm suddenly upon the earth, comets of curious color and trajectory blaze in the night sky, while shadowy mermaids and sirens beguile, shapeless sea creatures engulf passing ships, and terrible cataclysms beset humanity as a whole. The event I am about to recount, however, was not one in a great host, nor was it apocalyptic in its implications. Yet the very fact that it arrived in a most quiet time of enlightened scientific assurance and affected but one man may prove what makes its telling worthwhile.

Although no clue words appear in this passage, a phrase that performs a similar function—a plentiful crop of them—does. It’s followed by a gathering of assertions designed to sway the reader to accept the generalization that strange occurrences often arrive in waves. Yet the reader must decide if the author’s assertions are convincing enough to justify the generalization.