Writing Advice

The Elements of Style

• 13. Make the para­graph the unit of com­po­si­tion (one topic)
• 14. Use ac­tive voice, but use pas­sive for em­pha­sis (“Pumpkins are not eaten in spring” vs “People don’t eat pump­kins in spring”)
• 17. Use def­i­nite, spe­cific, con­crete lan­guage
• 18. Avoid a suc­ces­sion of loose sen­tences (two clauses with a con­junc­tion or rel­a­tive like who or which)
• 20. Keep re­lated words to­gether
• 21. In sum­maries, keep to one tense
  • Summarize sto­ries in pre­sent or past tense
  • Don’t just sum­ma­rize when re­view­ing lit­er­a­ture. Write “an or­derly dis­cus­sion sup­ported by ev­i­dence, not a sum­mary with oc­ca­sional com­ment”.
  • Don’t re­peat “the au­thor thinks”, etc. State you are sum­ma­riz­ing once.
• 22. Place the em­phatic words of a sen­tence at the end
  • Or at the be­gin­ning, but a sub­ject at the be­gin­ning is not au­to­mat­i­cally em­pha­sized
  • Same for sen­tences in a para­graph and para­graphs in a com­po­si­tion
• A Few Matters of Form
  • Exclamation marks for ex­cla­ma­tions, not sim­ple state­ments
• Words and Expressions Commonly Misused
  • Aggravate: make a vex­ing thing more vex­ing (vex = ir­ri­tate)
  • And/or: in­stead, “x or y or both”
  • As to whether → whether
  • As yet → yet
  • As be­ing → be­ing
  • Case: ex­cise “in many cases” et. al.
  • Certainly: re­duce use
  • Character: acts of a hos­tile char­ac­ter → hos­tile acts
  • Claim: “lay claim to”, not de­clare, men­tion, or charge
  • Clever horse: good-na­tured, not in­ge­nious
  • Compare to: re­sem­blance out­side a cat­e­gory
  • Compare with: dif­fer­ence within a cat­e­gory
  • Comprise: em­brace; a zoo com­prises an­i­mals, an­i­mals con­sti­tute a zoo
  • Contact: don’t “contact” peo­ple; phone them, meet with them, etc.
  • Currently: usu­ally re­dun­dant; can use pre­cise lan­guage for em­pha­sis (“at this mo­ment”)

  • Enormity: mon­strous wicked­ness

  • Etc: don’t use af­ter “for ex­am­ple” be­cause it means “and the rest”
  • Facility: hack­neyed
  • Factor: hack­neyed
  • Feature: hack­neyed
  • Finalize: am­bigu­ous
  • Flammable: use “inflammable” for “combustible”
  • Fortuitous: hap­pen­ing by chance, not lucky or for­tu­nate
  • He is a man who → he
  • However: can start a sen­tence if it means “in any way”, should not start when mean­ing “nevertheless”
  • Importantly → im­por­tant (or rewrite)
  • “In re­gard to” (no S) but “as re­gards”
  • Insightful → per­cep­tive
  • In terms of: avoid
  • “Like” gov­erns nouns and pro­nouns; “As” in­tro­duces phrases and clauses
  • Meaningful: avoid
  • Nature: vague
  • Nice: use only for “precise” or “delicate”
  • Offputting: avoid (instead: ob­jec­tion­able, up­set­ting, dis­con­cert­ing, dis­taste­ful)
  • Ongoing: avoid (instead: con­tin­u­ing, ac­tive)
  • One of the most: avoid
  • Partly vs Partially: phys­i­cal amount vs de­gree (like far­ther and fur­ther)
  • People vs Public: the peo­ple vote, the pub­lic buys (people is po­lit­i­cal)
  • Personalize: pre­ten­tious
  • Personally: un­nec­es­sary
  • Presently: use to mean “soon” not “currently” to avoid con­fu­sion
  • So: avoid as in­ten­si­fier

  • State: ex­press fully or clearly

  • Student body → stu­dents
  • “That” is defin­ing (tells which one). “Which” is un­defin­ing (add a fact).
  • The forsee­able fu­ture: avoid
  • Thrust: use spar­ingly
  • Transpire: not “happen”, but “became known”
  • Very: use spar­ingly
  • While: don’t use in place of “and”, “but”, and “although”. Use for “during the time that”.
• Style
  • Place your­self in the back­ground. Affect no style, keep­ing your mood and tem­per out. Style will emerge with com­pe­tency.
  • Don’t im­i­tate con­sciously, but don’t worry about con­sciously im­i­tat­ing.
  • Write with a plan. Form di­rects con­tent.
  • Write with nouns and verbs. Adjectives and ad­verbs are as­sis­tants.
  • Don’t over­write.
  • Don’t over­state: hype di­min­ishes trust.
  • Avoid qual­i­fiers: rather, very, lit­tle, pretty
  • Use ex­plana­tory verbs and ad­verbs spar­ingly in di­a­log. “They do this, ap­par­ently, in the be­lief that the word said is al­ways in need of sup­port, or be­cause they have been told to do it by ex­perts in the art of bad writ­ing.”
  • Don’t share opin­ion if not re­quested.
  • Use sim­i­les and metaphors spar­ingly.

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

• Write 1000-2000 words every day. Quantity pre­cedes qual­ity.
• Write with zest.
• Write about what you love or hate. Find a char­ac­ter and fol­low as fast as you can.
• Editing will be work, so en­joy the first draft.
• Make a list of evoca­tive nouns for story prompts.
• Feed your muse with every­thing. Poetry that makes your arm hair stand up. Essays about every­thing from every time. Writing about the senses.
• Read au­thors who think like you and write the way you want to; read au­thors that don’t.
• You learn from bad as well as good. Good qual­ity can be mys­te­ri­ous; it’s easy to pin­point what not to do from bad.
• “The artist learns what to leave out.”
• Don’t plot ahead. Let your char­ac­ters do.

Other

“Every char­ac­ter should want some­thing, even if it’s only a glass of wa­ter.” — Kurt Vonnegut

Writing with short words is harder but bet­ter than writ­ing with big words.