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1 Elements of effective writing

This chapter focuses on the many different factors that make writing effective—all writing, not just ‘creative’ writing. ‘Creative writing’ is a misleading term since all writing is creative, including every word in this obviously non-fiction book. We will be placing furious quotation marks around ‘creative’ as an indication of our irritation.

Another reason for distrusting the term ‘creative’ is its negative connotations. ‘Creative writing’ sets up an erroneous picture of wishy-washy writers waiting for the muse to inspire them, wafting without reflection from one self-indulgent paragraph to the next, writing pieces that drip with sickly purple prose. We will be using the term ‘creative’ from time to time but merely to differentiate two kinds of writing, each of which is as demanding and as difficult as the other. Truly creative writing is always well crafted and drafted.

In the rest of this chapter the repeated term ‘good’ writing means ‘effective’ writing. There are many aspects of writing that make it effective.

First, what is good writing not? Good writing is not showing off your vocabulary. Good writing is not being so clever that no one understands what you’re trying to say. Good writing is not writing a piece longer than anyone else’s; length often has less to do with being effective and more to do with not knowing when to stop. Good writing is not pleasing only yourself, unless you will be the only reader of what you write, as in a journal, for example. Good writing is not writing so you end up sounding a hundred years older than you really are.

We could go on. But let’s be positive rather than negative and look at what good writing is.

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Good writing keeps the reader in mindIf you were to be the only reader of your writing, life would be simple. As a writer, it’s easy for you to understand what you are trying to say. You know what you are talking about, no matter how you write it down. There are no confusions in your own mind, no questions needing answers, no lapses of interest in the subject, no details needing to be elaborated, no tedious sections needing to be cut. You would never have to redraft since you could rest assured that you had written essentially matchless prose. However, when you know that someone other than your own uncritical self will be reading your writing, your problems begin.

There’s no reason to assume that other readers will be uncritically interested in what you have to say. None of us is God’s gift to writing. This means you have to take many things into consideration, and one of the best ways of doing this is to ask yourself questions such as:

% Who are my readers? Some of the important aspects you need to bear in mind are age, education, social status, values, politics, ethnic background, gender and religion.

% How can I capture their attention and keep it?

% What do they already know?

% What might they not understand?

% How or where might they be confused?

% What effect am I trying to achieve?

Don’t believe the myth that writing to satisfy yourself is good enough. It isn’t, unless you’re the sole audience for that writing.

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Remember, your readers are pleading for attention with every word you write. It helps to imagine that they’re hard to please and cantankerous. Cajole them into paying attention to your message. Imagine them sitting beside you as you write, groaning with boredom, or moaning, ‘I don’t get it. Whaddya mean?’ If you listen to your readers as you write, and care about their imagined reactions, your writing will rapidly improve. We’ve imagined you sitting beside us and deliberately decided to use contractions (isn’t, don’t, we’ve). Although they’re seldom found in academic texts, they reduce the distance between the writer and the reader and help to create the feeling that we’re having a fireside chat with you.

Good writing has the lightness of speechThat’s not to say that good writing is merely speech written down. It isn’t. Written English is far more complex and clearly organised than spoken English. The two are very different indeed. However, good writing has the cadences, the rhythms and the lightness associated with speech. The tone of a piece of writing may force an alteration in the lightness; for example, a brave writer would say Before she went to bed …, whereas a timid writer, not daring to be light-handed, would prefer Before retiring to her nocturnal resting place …

Referring to the work of authors who have written regarding this topic …

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with ‘who have written on this topic’. It’s clear, it’s effective, and it has the lightness of speech.

Good writing is clear writingGood writing—effective writing—is first and foremost writing that makes its message clear. If you can’t understand something you’ve read in a novel, newspaper, letter, story, article, journal, government form, advertisement, essay, recipe book or instruction manual, don’t necessarily blame yourself. It might be the writer!

Of course, when you’re grappling with ‘difficult’ novelists, poets or playwrights, or coming to grips with brand-new concepts in academic articles, you will be well aware that a cursory first reading isn’t sufficient for an educated appreciation of the material you’re reading. In those cases, don’t blame the writers for being obtuse:

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they’re inviting you to take part in a game and you have to work out the rules before you can play. However, most of us are neither writers of

difficult literary works, nor creators of ground-breaking knowledge (who should, anyway, be writing as clearly as possible), so we have no excuse not be clear.

Frequently, the opposite of good writing is final-year-at-school writing. In the panic to impress,

students begin to develop an amazing style, full of long words, pompous sentence structures and fatuous padding. It isn’t necessary to use long words like ‘fatuous’ instead of short ones, nor is it necessary to write complex sentences instead of snappy ones. Aim first and always to express, not impress. Inappropriately long words and convoluted sentence structures interfere with getting the meaning across. Avoid them. Be brave. Turn over a new page in your writing life. Short sentences scattered among long sentences come as a relief to any reader. It’s certainly acceptable to use long words or complex sentences whenever they’re appropriate, but bear in mind their length alone does not make them impressive. And pretending to be clever doesn’t fool anyone in the end. Really impressive writers are those who write simply and clearly, and get their meaning across without unnecessary clutter.

Good writing manages to capture hearts and minds early in a pieceThis is true of both fiction and non-fiction. There are many techniques used in writing to capture the reader’s attention. For example, effective

Aim first and always to express, not impress.

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non-fiction writing is carefully set out, with headings and perhaps dot points or diagrams, to help get the writer’s message across.

Let’s focus on a phenomenon that’s particularly important in winning readers’ hearts and minds. It’s called ‘the lead’. Because readers of any writing (fiction or non-fiction) have limited patience and attention spans, the first sentence—or sentences—has to act as bait to hook them in. As a general rule, therefore, long, complicated sentences are not a good idea; for example:

As she rounded the final corner, sweating slightly in the warmth of the late afternoon sun, her feet dragging, wondering how it would feel to return after all these years, fearing the worst about what the family would choose to remember, and noticing with deep disgust that the old house with the pepper tree had been replaced by a set of cheaply built apartments, Corrie slowed her pace, putting off the inevitable for yet another moment.

Leads are usually more effective if they are more easily understood, which is why shorter sentences are generally (but not always) preferable; for example, Corrie slowed her pace. (You wouldn’t have noticed at the time, but we deliberately started this non-fiction text with two very short sentences: Books like this are often boring. We hope this one isn’t.)

Of course, there’s no rule about leads having to be short. Many successful leads are long, but the risks in a long lead are that readers may lose interest and that confusion may occur. Regardless of length, the main goal of a lead is to make readers want to continue reading. So, in ‘creative’ writing don’t give away too much in your first sentence or two. Tease your readers into continuing to read your piece. Make them wonder what the lead is actually leading to. A lead such as My birthday had arrived at last! may have the effect of turning a reader away. ‘Who wants to know about a boring old birthday, anyway?’ the reader might ask. But if the lead tantalises readers into asking ‘What happens next?’ the bait has worked and they will be hooked.

Although the lead is obviously the first thing a reader will read, it may not be the first thing a writer writes. It’s quite possible to write the lead last. Start with a temporary lead that sets you in the right direction—a lead that serves its purpose, at a pinch. Then, when you’re redrafting and have the rest of your piece as you want it, go back and

Tease your readers into continuing to read your piece.

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rewrite the lead until you’re satisfied that it’s right for what follows.In non-fiction, the lead might state your premise, your reason for

writing; or you might set the focus by describing the scene of your field work, taking the reader to the place; or you might start with a snappy quote. Don’t fall into the easy trap of thinking that non-fiction has to mean ‘boring’. The best non-fiction is riveting and is brilliantly written.

Good writing flows smoothly from paragraph to paragraphWhen you have written a (temporary) lead, the next problem is ensuring smoothness in the rest of your piece. Huge bunches of text without breaks are daunting for any reader, so it’s visually and psychologically important to divide your thoughts into clearly defined sections. This can be done in two ways: either by an indentation at the start of each new thought—the method we are using in this book—or by having no indentation and instead leaving a line between each chunk of text.

The chunk of text known as the paragraph is a series of sentences, all of which relate to a single point you want to make. This means that some paragraphs might be longer than usual and others shorter. Paragraphs are roughly a hundred words, but that’s an average only and no word counting should occur unless you find you have written a paragraph that’s a page long. A short, one-sentence (or even one-word) paragraph can be electrifying, but paragraphs are more often three or four sentences bunched together around one idea.

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It’s considered courteous for the writer to try to vary the length of those sentences to assist understanding and prevent reader fatigue. In non-fiction it is critical that the most important idea you want to convey is in the first sentence of the paragraph, not the last. Less experienced writers sometimes write several points about the main idea before finally revealing it in the final sentence of the paragraph. Wrong! Help your idea by putting it up front before you flesh it out.

Regardless of whether you are writing ‘creative writing’ or non-fiction, you need to carefully connect one paragraph to the next so that readers don’t become fatigued and confused. It isn’t wildly difficult to connect paragraphs if you think of them as pieces in a game of dominoes whose endings and beginnings have to match, or as individual pieces in a jigsaw, all of which have to fit together to complete the large puzzle that is your piece. The first sentence in any paragraph is like a jigsaw piece that has to ease snugly—it mustn’t be forced—out of the final sentence in the previous paragraph. The two sentences can’t be completely unconnected, for the sake of the flow of your writing.

‘Flow’ is important as an aid to the reader. It’s not something that ‘someone out there’ has recommended for no good reason. In trying to achieve a smooth flow between paragraphs it might help to regard your readers as being a little bit fragile and therefore needing to be gently helped across the bumpy roads of your thoughts, without being jarred in the process.

Sometimes you will need to indicate that it’s not a bump but rather a change of direction. Especially in non-fiction you will need to use a ‘signal’ (an adverbial conjunction) that you are going to change tack. ‘However’, ‘nevertheless’, ‘on the other hand’, and ‘despite this’ are just some of the signals used at the beginning of a paragraph to indicate to the reader that there is ‘flow’ (or cohesion) in your work, but that for the moment you are going against the flow, so to speak, by putting an alternative point of view.

We have tried in this section to practise precisely what we’ve been preaching by writing model paragraphs that connect to one another without jarring. If you need to consolidate your understanding of paragraphing, read this whole section again, noting with a writer’s critical eye the way in which it was written.

It isn’t wildly difficult to connect paragraphs if you think of them as pieces in a game of dominoes.

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Good writing has well-crafted endingsWhen the agony of connecting paragraphs is over, there’s still the problem of coming up with an ending. It’s a toss-up as to which is more important: riveting leads or superb endings. Both are vital. The ending is the last thing taken away by the reader. It’s the last sentence of the magical final paragraph that will have reconnected itself, in a circular fashion, to the first paragraph. It sums up the essence of the entire piece. It has to be right, no matter what you’re writing.

What is a right ending? It’s hard to explain. In fiction, it’s a sensation in the marrow of your bones that says to you: ‘Mmm, mmm! This sentence feels

good.’ It needs to belong, in its content, to everything that has preceded it, but its rightness will depend largely on its rhythm. One syllable too few and it won’t feel right. One word too many and it will feel as maddening as having an itch you can’t reach.

A bad ending feels as weird and as annoying as singing ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’ and stopping after the second-last line. Of all your writing, the last line will benefit most from being read aloud and redrafted over and over again, until all its components fall perfectly and obediently into place.

In non-fiction, the rhythm of the final sentence still has to be satisfyingly ‘right’. The final remarks and the final sentence should sum up and refer to the rest of the piece, particularly the introduction. They act as the knot that neatly ties up the ideas.

Good writing avoids ‘Ponglish’There’s a language used by poor writers which we like to call ‘Ponglish’, meaning pompous English. It has a sort of smell about it, a pong. It doesn’t have the lightness of spoken English because people in their right minds never speak it. Once you’re aware of Ponglish you’ll be able to avoid it, but you need to develop a nose for it first, so here are some examples:

It was a really tough contest, I remember. Many marvellous competitors were in participation.

‘… in participation’? Why didn’t the writer have the courage to say what he meant instead of writing such a constipated sentence?

A bad ending feels as weird and as annoying as singing ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’ and stopping after the second-last line.

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What’s so naughty about saying Many marvellous competitors had a go? Alternatively, if the tone of the piece demands it, what’s wrong with Many marvellous competitors took part? Nothing at all! And if even further formality is required, why not say Many marvellous competitors participated?

When reflecting on my thought of when I was writing this …

Clearly, this writer is in deep trouble. It’s an easy-to-remove kind of trouble. She doesn’t dare say what she means because she believes she isn’t supposed to write simply. She has picked up the notion that writing has to be complex in order to be acceptable. All she means is this: When I thought about what I’d written …

The only thing threatening this bountiful career evolving in Tony is …

This writer was struggling to say The only thing threatening Tony’s burgeoning career is … She probably wrote ‘evolving in Tony’ because she was trying too hard to write impressively.

I practised a couple of times. Why does it always sound so awful when practising?

This writer, also, is too anxious to please. The phrase ‘when practising’ is clumsy. He could have written Why does it always sound so awful when you practise? But he was too nervous to be as clear as that, even though it would have been acceptable. If a more formal tone had been required, he could have written Why does it always sound so awful when one practices? But that might have sounded precious, rolling—as it did—off the pen of a league footballer.

When I was younger I used to crawl into the kennel with Ajax and Zebedee after having a fight with my parents.

There’s nothing wrong with ‘… after having a fight with my parents’. Grammatically it’s correct and could therefore remain unchanged. But the writer was probably too conditioned into using Ponglish to believe she could get away with writing … after I’d had a fight with my parents. She found the sheer simplicity of the construction too terrifying to use.

My sorrows were still inside me and often I would feel a warm droplet run down from my eyes.

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This doesn’t sound like the natural language of a student. It’s too gluey. There is nothing wrong with the simplicity of I still felt sad and I’d often feel a tear run down my face.

Anyhow, I persisted to battle on.

What she meant, of course, was simply I battled on!

Instantaneously …

‘Instantaneously’ is a word beloved by Ponglish users because it’s so long. They wouldn’t dream of considering the much shorter instantly, and would probably foolishly avoid immediately and straightaway as well. They seem to think that the more space a word uses on any given line, the better it must be. They have much to unlearn.

My heart rapidly palpitated.

Here again we have an example of two words that take up an unnecessary amount of space. To the deluded user of Ponglish they look great. What this writer, in his desire to impress, doesn’t realise is that ‘palpitated’ means ‘beat rapidly’ and this repetition of meaning grates on the reader. It would have sounded less pretentious to have written My heart beat fast or My heart palpitated.

Shopping had taken nearly two hours and fatigue had overcome my body.

‘Fatigue had overcome my body’ is a clear example of writing that doesn’t have the lovely lightness associated with speech. Why not write … and I was exhausted? The writer was too constricted by Ponglish to dare to say what she meant.

We picked up our balloons and readied them to be thrown.

This writer had probably been told for years to avoid the words get and got. They are perfectly good words and may be used whenever they’re appropriate: get used to the fact. The use of the mangled word ‘readied’ probably occurred because the writer felt too embarrassed to say We picked up our balloons and got them ready to throw. There’s nothing wrong with that sentence; using got wouldn’t have brought out a rash in the writer.

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