Editing has given me the unique opportunity and pleasure to work with many different styles of writing. However, there are particular writing deficiencies common to beginning writers that I encounter frequently.
This web page was created for the purpose of offering pertinent information on
what good writing is and how to make the transition from "just writing what comes" to writing
with purpose, clarity, and style.
Good writing is concise. Only enough information is given to inform, intrigue, and engage the mind. The writer lets his words speak for him, rather than pouring words needlessly onto the page.Good writing is relevant. . No matter how beautifully crafted a sentence or paragraph, if it is not relevant to the subject matter or of sufficient interest to its potential readers, it should be relegated to the cutting room floor. A great sentence in the wrong place or out of context will sour a paragraph just as much as a poorly constructed one. It will, in fact, be more obvious to the reader.Good writing is good grammar. "I'm not very good with grammar, but I like to write." Aspiring writers often speak this phrase. A proficient grasp of grammar usage is necessary for good writing. You have to know the rules in order to bend or break them intelligently. A sentence fragment could make all the difference in the world between a powerful and compelling paragraph or an adequately written but bland one. The better your knowledge of grammar, the better your writing will be. (Pssst. This last sentence is a good example of bending the rules a little.)
Good writing engages all of the
senses. When words are used effectively, you can compel readers to feel a warm and seductive breeze, taste a cold, biting wind, smell fear's pungent aroma, hear a fragile heart breaking, and see blindly through a veil of tears.Good writing has an active voice. Good writing puts the reader right into its action. It is not a narrative of what a character did, said, thought, or felt. Let the action of your words tell the story.Good writing is rich with tags and strong verbs. Good writing needs strong verbs and descriptive tags. Without them, it is flat and lifeless. (Ex. sentence: Scrubbing his hands over his face, Tom gaped in disbelief at the accident scene, his mind numb with shock and horror.) Breathe life into your writing with descriptive tags and well chosen verbs.The preceding list of writing elements is by no means an exhaustive one. It contains, however, some of the basic requirements needed in a manuscript in order for it to be successful. Ensuring that these are present in your manuscript will save a lot of time, money, and many rejection letters.
This portion of the page will be devoted to writing tips. Writers are often told
what to write. They are not often told how to write, however. The following is a partial checklist of effective
tools to aid aspiring writers. Implementing some of them will have an immediate effect on your writing.
More writing tips and suggestions will be featured in regular articles in my newsletter and at my Lynette's Lynes page.
Good luck with your writing!
Read your writing out loud. This is one of the most effective tools that you have at your disposal. Many a typo and sentence structure problem is revealed through the simple act of giving a voice to words.
There is also another benefit of your reading. It provides an indication of the clarity of what you have written. If your writing is unclear to you, it's a pretty good bet that it will be just as foggy to your readers.
Use your grammar and spell checker. A grammar check will not catch all of your grammar flaws. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of things not flagged by the program that would give editors heart palpitations.
The grammar check,however, is a good tool for pointing out paragraph and sentence structure irregularities. You can also make changes throughout your entire document quickly and easily.
Think of the spell checker as an editing assistant.
Research your facts. There is not a lot that will generate reader skepticism faster than unestablished facts in writing. Polar bears in Glacier Park might LOOK authentic on paper, but writing about such would get you sent to the editor's corner. There is no short cut for research.
Use your thesaraus! Make your dictionary your friend!
With the amount of information and resources available to writers, there is really no excuse for bland, weak, and limp words in writing. Use your thesaraus as a reference for good words and your dictionary to make sure that the words chosen mean what you intend. "Gape" is a good word, but not if you want to express sadness or anger. "Verbiage" is another interesting-sounding collection of letters, too. It just would not be appropriate to use when writing about a man of few words.
Write first. Edit later. Don't attempt to edit while you are writing. A good writing excercise is to sit down with a blank tablet and just start writing. It is a good way to stimulate the mind's creativity and capture good sentence clusters that you might not ordinarily have come up with if you were writing with a particular theme or subject in mind.
There will be plenty of time to pare down the material and put it into coherent and recognizable order. The purpose of this tool is to expand your writing world.
It works.
Don't marry your writing. Don't be so devoted to your writing that you cannot change or delete portions of, or even all of it, for the good of your work. Sometimes, cutting out a sentence or paragraph that has taken a lot of your time and sweat is painful. It is often necessary, though, and should be embraced as part of the writing territory. That acceptance will make those unpleasant times easier.
Experience different styles of writing. Read and learn from different genres and writing styles. There is much that can be incorporated into your own style.
Investigate how different authors express themselves. Make a note of what you like about what you read and what you think makes it effective.
The more that you expose yourself to good writing, the more tools that you will have in your own writing tool kit.
Expect revisions. Expect the virtual certainty of revisions. It is one of the most important, and dreaded, tools in the life of a writer. It is also a good writing friend. The more you revise, the better your work.
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