Today we’re talking about the Good Stuff, not in poetry or fiction, but in everyday prose. All of us know the Good Stuff when we see it – the compact simile, the apt turn of phrase, the single line that ignites a page. How do the good writers bring it off?

One answer comes to mind. Good writers learn to look intently at the world around them. Into the attic of memory they put aside a magpie’s hoard of images. When the right time comes, the right word will be there waiting to be retrieved. Let me offer examples.

Tina Brown of The Washington Post was writing in February about Prince Charles and his “devoted old bag,” as she calls herself. As the happy couple headed off to church, “Camilla’s hedgerow hair and bulky tweed coat were as much a declaration of intent as her platinum diamond ring.”

Her hedgerow hair! The image was in Brown’s attic. She had looked at English hedgerows – looked at them intently – and she had stored the memory. In February she looked at Camilla Parker Bowles, and there was the adjective waiting to be put to lovely use.

David Carr of The New York Times interviewed Joe McGinniss last summer about the author’s novel, “The Big Horse.” Carr found his subject at the Saratoga Springs training track: “He looked like a lot of guys found on the edges of horse racing. He had an old cap set against the Sunday morning sun, a handsome Irish face that could have been carved out of potatoes, and a glint of tragedy in his eyes.” Good writers rely on familiar terms. Has everyone seen a potato?

Good writers hone the fine knife of brevity. Columnist Molly Ivins has a way of making every word count. During the presidential campaign of 2004, she found candidate John Kerry too staid for her taste: “He could take all the excitement out of a soccer riot.”

It is an old trick of the writing art to put fresh makeup on a phrase that is showing its age. Thus, Mark Krantz of USA Today began a story on market advisers who were involved two years ago in conflicts of interest: “Analysts are learning to straighten up and buy right.”

In The Wall Street Journal several years ago, Daniel Golden wrote about college professors who prepare a commencement speech just in case a celebrity speaker doesn’t show up. Usually speakers arrive on time, and “their pearls of wisdom stay forever oystered.”

At a dark time in the Iraqi war, columnist David Ignatius remarked upon Democratic efforts to brand the invasion a failed policy. President Bush did not relieve the gloom: “His somber speech on Sunday night was all tunnel and no light.”

Mary Schulken, an associate editor of The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, wrote an article in March lamenting the fact that the city’s local campus of the University of North Carolina is located on the edge of the city. The site is “three degrees removed from Charlotte’s web.” The university “needs to weave itself into the fabric of Charlotte as neatly as a tucked stitch.”

In the Canton (Ohio) Repository in February, reporter Charita Goshay was writing about voting machines. “No doubt a few counties were spooked by preliminary reports that electronic voting machines were about as secure as a cookie jar at a day care center.”

Three years ago, Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated watched in awe at Wimbledon. The Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, “cover more grass than fairway mowers,” and “they get to more balls than the duchess of Kent.” That may not be “great” writing, but Reilly’s stuff is as good as the Good Stuff gets.

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.