How to Write Like John Steinbeck: Techniques for Powerful Prose

This summer, I read Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck. In this fascinating travelogue, Steinbeck blends truth with a touch of fiction as he recounts a 1960 road trip he took across the United States accompanied by his faithful poodle, Charley.

Steinbeck is a masterful writer. It was interesting to read his musings on the different states and see how he turns ordinary moments into memorable stories (though his description of the school protest in New Orleans was saddening). 

While reading, I wrote down any passages that particularly struck me with their eloquence. That helped me study them on an even deeper level and fully appreciate Steinbeck’s techniques for structure and style.

In today’s post, I’m sharing three passages where Steinbeck recounts his travels in New England during the fall. I thought they would be particularly fitting as I am returning to blogging here in September after taking a break from the blog over the summer. Tomorrow is the first official day of fall in the Northern Hemisphere!

Let’s see what techniques Steinbeck uses that we can steal to make our own writing more powerful.

First, here is a passage where Steinbeck describes the autumn colors:

My route went north in Vermont and then east in New Hampshire in the White Mountains. The roadside stands were piled with golden pumpkins and russet squashes and baskets of red apples so crisp and sweet that they seemed to explode with juice when I bit into them…The villages are the prettiest, I guess, in the whole nation, neat and white-painted, and—not counting the motels and tourist courts—unchanged for a hundred years except for traffic and paved streets.

The climate changed quickly to cold and the trees burst into color, the reds and yellows you can’t believe. It isn’t only color but a glowing, as though the leaves gobbled the light of the autumn sun and then released it slowly. There’s a quality of fire in these colors. 

This passage beautifully transports the reader to New England. We can see the fall foliage and feel the brisk air, just as if we were there with Steinbeck. Here are three techniques Steinbeck employs to bring the scene to life.

First, Steinbeck uses sensory words: the descriptive words that apply to the five senses (sight, touch, taste, smell, and sound). Steinbeck incorporates three of the five senses in this quoted passage:

• Words related to sight or appearance (these can also include words related to motion) — for example, “golden pumpkins… red apples….”

• Words related to touch — “…the climate changed quickly to cold…”

• Words related to taste — “…so crisp and sweet that they seemed to explode with juice when I bit into them…”

If you’re attempting to make a passage of writing vivid for your readers, try including more sensory words that appeal to all five senses.

Second, Steinbeck uses personification to describe the leaves “gobbling” up the light. Personification is the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman. With personification, Steinbeck creates a striking image that makes me think about autumn colors in an entirely different way. When the leaves start to change to gold this autumn, I know I’m going to think of them as gobbling up the light and glowing.

Finally, Steinbeck zooms-in on his descriptions with a list of details. He could have just told us blandly that the roadside stands were piled with fresh fruits and vegetables. Instead, he zoomed in and described each one: golden pumpkins, russet squashes, and red apples. I call this “the detailed list.”

In my article about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s descriptive techniques, I showed how Fitzgerald utilized many of these same techniques in The Great Gatsby and how they can also be used effectively in copywriting to make product descriptions and marketing materials a delight to read.

Second, let’s look at another passage where Steinbeck comments about the Northeasterners’ tendency to move south later in life.

I’d like to see how long an Aroostook County man can stand Florida. The trouble is that with his savings moved and invested there, he can’t very well go back. His dice are rolled and can’t be picked again. But I do wonder if a down-Easter, sitting on a nylon-and-aluminum chair out on a changelessly green lawn slapping mosquitoes in the evening of a Florida October–I do wonder if the stab of memory doesn’t strike him high in the stomach just below the ribs where it hurts. And in the humid ever-summer I dare his picturing mind not to go back to the shout of color, to the clean rasp of frosty air, to the smell of pine wood burning and the caressing warmth of kitchens. For how can one know color in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?

This passage is a fantastic example of how to make an argument more persuasive with a fictional story. While scholars debate how much of Steinbeck’s travelogue is fictionalized, the book is in the style of nonfiction so his narrative often drifts into philosophizing. This could become boring, but Steinbeck makes sure to keep it engaging by anchoring his paragraphs with stories, sometimes fictional, sometimes anecdotal.

Here Steinbeck is arguing that a man from Maine would eventually grow tired of living in the ever-summer of Florida. Look at how vivid of a picture he draws with such precise details! The man isn’t sitting on just any chair. It’s “nylon-and-aluminum.” He doesn’t just write that the man has a “stab of memory,” but also that it strikes “him high in the stomach just below the ribs where it hurts.”

And notice that this passage is overflowing with sensory words. Here Steinbeck has a word to appeal to each one of the five senses, even scent (“smell of pine wood burning”) and sound (“slapping mosquitoes”).

As a native New Yorker who moved to North Carolina (where we still experience the four seasons), this passage resonated with me. I know I’d miss the autumn if I ever moved farther south.

I also love how this kind of fictional story can be used in any type of writing. Steinbeck’s quick sketch of the Aroostook man could easily be slipped into marketing materials for a bed and breakfast in Maine.

Here’s a final eloquent passage with more of Steinbeck’s autumn musings.

Long ago at Easter I had a looking-egg. Peering in a little porthole at the end, I saw a lovely little farm, a kind of dream farm, and on the farmhouse chimney a stork sitting on a nest. I regarded this as a fairy-tale farm as surely imaged as gnomes sitting under toadstools. And in Denmark I saw that farm or its brother, and it was true, just as it had been in the looking-egg. And in Salinas, California, where I grew up, although we had some frost the climate was cool and foggy. When we saw colored pictures of a Vermont autumn forest it was another fairy thing and we frankly didn’t believe. In school we memorized “Snowbound” and little poems about Old Jack Frost and his paintbrush, but the only thing Jack Frost did for us was put a thin skin of ice on the watering trough, and that rarely. To find not only that this bedlam of color was true but that the pictures were pale and inaccurate translation, was to me startling. I can’t even imagine the forest colors when I am not seeing them. I wondered whether constant association could cause inattention, and asked a native New Hampshire woman about it. She said the autumn never failed to amaze her; to elate. “It is a glory,” she said, “and can’t be remembered, so that it always comes as a surprise.” 

What a fantastic passage! Once again Steinbeck immerses us in this wonderful vignette from his childhood with sensory words (cool and foggy) and specific details (a stork sitting on a nest, a thin skin of ice). He doesn’t just tell us that he’d always thought of Europe and the northeast as a fairy tale. He shows it to us with evocative imagery: for example, the comparison of the fairytale farm to gnomes sitting under toadstools.

Another excellent lesson from this paragraph is how Steinbeck uses an anecdote from his past to bring added meaning to his travelogue. We are able to better appreciate his perspective as a traveler when we understand his childhood. It is true that the New Hampshire woman says that the autumn always comes to her as a surprise. But it is probable that it is still much more surprising and impressive to Steinbeck who is seeing it for the first time.

The life experiences and background of the author influence the details he selects and what he highlights in his narrative. And it is fascinating to the reader to get a glimpse of how that background was formed.

The Takeaway

Take your writing to the next level with these techniques from Steinbeck!

As we see from each of the quotes that I’ve shared, Steinbeck interweaves three types of narratives throughout his travelogue: his current experiences and anecdotes (the first example I shared), fictional stories to prove a point (the second example), and memories or past experiences to further explain his point of view (the third example).

This is a fantastic reminder that when you’re writing nonfiction in any form (especially memoir, but also blog posts, social media posts, or marketing materials), you can draw on these three types of stories to make your writing more vivid and impactful to your reader.

In this brief blog post, I was only able to share several of the gems hiding in these passages. I’d love to hear about any additional techniques you spot or how you incorporate them into your current writing projects.

Also be sure to check out my video on close reading. You’ll discover how you can dive into a well-written passage of a book to identify techniques you can use in your own writing.

Another reason I enjoyed Steinbeck’s book was to get a peek into the mind of a famous writer and how he worked on his writing projects. Here are two bonus quotes from the book that give insight into his writing life.

Here’s one where he talks about his writing process:

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. One day’s work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of ever finishing.

And here’s one where he describes the anatomy of a journey, which I think can also apply to the journey to write a book (swap out tour masters and schedules with outlines and plots, haha).

Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip.

Happy writing! 

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Thank you! Wishing you much success with your writing projects this month! God bless.