Less Is More

Sometimes in our zeal to be effective writers, we load up our prose with descriptive language. The idea is that if a little description is good, then a lot of description is even better. But actually the opposite is true. Writing that is glutted with adjectives and adverbs becomes busy and distracting for readers. This kind of cluttered language is challenging to read because it trips up the tongue. It becomes confusing and readers give up. Lean, clean prose with minimal descriptors is the best way to communicate. This forces you to carefully select descriptive language, using the most powerful options to get your message across. Lean description is easier for readers to read and easier for them to visualize. Providing a skeletal framework of descriptive detail gives readers the opportunity to fill in the rest for themselves. And this is what readers want. They don't want writers to describe everything for them. They want to imagine for themselves because that's what makes reading exciting. Using descriptive language sparingly brings power to your writing and creates a more meaningful experience for your readers. When you feel the urge to go all out with description, rein it in and remember: less is more.

Listening to Writing

Good writing is much like music. It flows and has rhythm and cadence. There is a musicality to the structure of its sentences. This is achieved by varying sentence length and form. Short sentences convey emphasis and urgency whereas long sentences convey a slower, more thoughtful pace. Interspersing the two creates a rhythm to writing. Varying sentence form also contributes to the rhythmic quality of writing. The tongue and ear should flow over words as easily as water over river rocks. This can be achieved by varying sentence arrangement, beginning some sentences with nouns and others with adverbs and phrases. It can be achieved by reversing the normal pattern of subject/verb and placing the verb before the subject. It can be achieved by varying the combination of independent and dependent clauses in a sentence. But mostly it can be achieved by listening. There is an aural quality to language that is as clear and rousing as any concerto. Listening closely to the way words are put together, the way ideas are strung along the clothesline of human thought, the way the sounds of words reverberate in the heart will teach us everything we need to know about the power of language and the passion it burns in readers. Listen to your writing. It has something to say.

Revising From the Outside In

Revision is hard for writers to do. It involves tearing into their work and undoing something they've spent considerable time and energy creating. It may be why many writers procrastinate or avoid revision altogether. There are ways to make this sometimes painful process easier. One of the biggest mistakes writers make when revising is to focus on the minutae before taking care of the larger structural issues. For example, they may be absorbed in getting the punctuation right when their plot is wandering all over the place. It's important to take care of the big things first. If there are larger issues in the framework that are problematic such as confusing content, poor organization or inconsistent point of view, for instance, it doesn't matter if the punctuation is correct because the whole piece is flailing. It would be like focusing on fixing a nail hole in the wall when the roof is caving in and the walls are crumbling. So revision becomes a matter of recognizing priorities and acknowledging when a work is in trouble and why it is in trouble. The revision process becomes so much easier when the general is attended to before the specific. In fact, attending to the general issues that need fixing often fixes the smaller issues as well. Revision doesn't have to be hard. It just needs to be done in a way that makes sense. Revising from the outside in is the smart way to begin.

Using Guidelines

My writing students sometimes turn in perfectly good essays, but they fail the assignment. Why? They fail because they ignored the guidelines of the assignment. They ignored the word limit, style, purpose or format guidelines or all four. Should this matter if the writing is good? Absolutely, it should matter. The world is about guidelines, especially the writing world. Try sending to an editor an article that doesn't meet the publication's guidelines. It will be soundly rejected. So will college writing assignments, job writing assignments and a myriad of other daily living writing tasks. Ignore the guidelines and you get turned down. That's the way life is. Writing is as much about following the guidelines as it is about the mechanics of writing. If you want to write mysteries, then study mysteries. Learn the guidelines of that genre and know what editors and publishers expect from mystery writers. Then follow those guidelines to a T. This may sound like the death of creativity, having to follow guidelines. And you may ask whatever happened to creative license? But what good is creativity if you can't get it published? Your challenge is to be as creative as you can within the parameters you have to work with. Maybe your wonderful 5,000 word short story is 2,000 words over the limit for a literary magazine you really want to be published in. Work on that story to make it tighter, cleaner, stronger. Make it lean and mean until it fits within the word limit. You're not limiting your creativity by doing this. You're strengthening it by plying the tools of your trade and becoming a master at revising your work. And most importantly, you're giving your work a fighting chance to be seriously considered for publication. Use guidelines to your advantage and success will follow.

Filling the Gaps

Anais Nin once wrote that "a writer's role is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." Writers hold a special place in the world. To many readers, they are the bearers of truth, enlightenment and inspiration. Readers count on writers to fill the gaps, to help them explain the unexplainable, to say the unsayable, to think the unthinkable. This is an incredible power that writers have and they need to be careful not to squander the opportunity. Look at your own writing and ask yourself if it fills any gaps for readers. Have you dared to go where others haven't? Are you tackling the tough questions life presents and are you giving readers something that completes their knowledge or experience in some meaningful way? No matter what topic you're writing about, no matter whether it's fiction, nonfiction or poetry, your mission should be to find the truth. Get to the heart of the matter, dig beneath the surface, and give readers something that can change how they experience the world. This is what Anais Nin is directing writers to do. Those of us who write carry a special burden, but when we get it right, it's a burden worth bearing because we have the privilege of impacting the world.

Step Your Writing

Writers sometimes stumble because they try to run before they can walk. In other words, they seek success immediately without having to put in the hard work to get there. Often, this focusing on the end product first instead of the process leads to abject failure. No other craft allows perfection without practice. Neither does writing. To become a good writer, you have to start with the basics. Be good at grammar. Be good at sentence construction. Know how to write a tightly woven, unified paragraph. Learn to write in the active voice. Shine at word selection. Do all these basic things well and then move on to the next step of composing that essay or story or novel. But don't graduate yourself into the next level when you haven't mastered the previous one. It's just counterintuitive to do so and you're only setting yourself up for failure and frustration. No one wants to read a writer who hasn't first mastered the language. You may tell a compelling story, but if it's full of grammatical errors and poor construction, readers won't care about your story. They'll only see the mistakes. Poor writing signals poor habits - inattention to detail, laziness in learning the fundamentals, rushing for the praise not yet earned. And readers will remember bad writing just as clearly as they remember good writing. To keep them coming back, do your apprenticeship before you seek to publish. Take your writing in steps and you will step into a successful career.

Tone Your Writing

The old adage that it's not what you say but how you say it that matters is especially true for writers. Tone is everything because that's what readers listen to and that's what they'll remember. So if your purpose is to influence readers, your tone must be persuasive. If it's merely informative, you've not achieved the tone necessary to prompt readers to think or act in a certain way. You achieve a persuasive tone by careful selection of words that carry an emotional impact, that are heavily laden with meaning and symbolism, and that are a part of the collective consciousness. If your purpose is to deal with a difficult situation delicately, your tone must be diplomatic. You achieve a diplomatic tone by careful selection of words that are emotionally neutral. Just the opposite of persuasion, diplomacy strives to dial down the emotional reaction in readers, not rev it up. Being clear about the tone you want to convey means being clear about your purpose. The two go hand in hand, and by being clearly focused on both, you can achieve your writing goals more effectively. Content is certainly important, but content is conveyed through tone and your careful attention to tone will have a lasting impact on readers.