# How to write well Modern society requires writing. - Most technological channels are limited and require writing more than talking: - Writing emails and text messages - Giving summaries and reports - Social media - Most remote feedback and commentary People read at about 200 words per minute but only talk at about 110-150, so writing permits more information with less time and space. Since [you'll lose the idea](mind-creativity-how.md) if you don't finish what you start, publish with a deadline. ## How is writing different from speaking? Writing has more weight than speaking: - Writers can research and take their time, so everyone expects more intelligent writing than speaking. - Text doesn't have articulation or cadence, so implications are more pronounced. - Speech uses more [perception](awareness.md) and [feeling](mind-feelings.md) through the ears and mouth, text uses [imagination](imagination.md) and [logic](logic.md) through the eyes and hands. - By writing what you understand, it forces you to more clearly indicate information than simply speaking it. One of the key benefits of writing is that readers can both reread to understand ideas better or skip text entirely: - [Listeners](language-speaking.md), on the other hand, must chronologically focus on body language and hearing, and can't easily skip content. Compared to speaking, writing converts and transmits more easily across a medium and across languages. ## Write passionately Writing requires understanding the basics of language (vocabulary, grammar, elements of style), then learning ways to express your [feelings](mind-feelings.md) and [observations](understanding.md): - Read great writing to learn what to do, then suffer through bad writing to learn what to *not* do. - To build great writing skills, [write frequently](success-5_persevering.md) and [develop a creative mindset](mind-creativity-how.md). Writing captures feelings simply, so your word choice shows your passion for the subject: - If you feel strongly about something, you'll have a *lot* to say. - When motivated, we focus on getting the words out instead of analyzing our intentions. - If you're out of ideas, find a topic that makes you furious. - Once you've learned to write clearly, your speaking and writing style will harmonize, which will make your thoughts come more clearly as well. Writing is communicating information to someone where they forget they're [imagining](imagination.md) something simply from a collection of words. When writing, you gain a more thorough [understanding](understanding.md) of what you're trying to communicate. Your best writing is the best version of *your* [creative](mind-creativity-how.md) style, not how well you imitate another writer. Sometimes, though, you might have to write about something that doesn't interest you: - If possible, try to change the topic to something that *does* interest or provoke your opinion. - If you can't find anything, find a reliable source and use *their* references for your creative work. Avoid writer's block by fostering [healthy creative habits](mind-creativity-how.md). ## Edit for simplicity We [understand](understanding.md) things proportional to how few words we need to say them: - Aim for brief, simple sentences. - Strong, long sentences are simply many short sentences strung together. - Use commas sparingly, and split up sentences frequently. - Write like you talk. - If your writing is particularly awful, try to explain what you wrote to a friend, then throw out what you wrote and write what you said to them. - Some [academic circles](understanding.md) find it offensive, but simple writing with a clear point demonstrates expertise. Edit to simplify, not add: - Good writing is removing useless information much more than adding. - We add more information because we fear being misunderstood, which ironically makes our writing unclear. - The reader should always feel like you know more content than what you're writing. - Your clarity will convince, *not* your [logic](logic.md). - Your clear expression demonstrates [truth](reality.md), and people can see the truth for themselves without persuasion. - Cross out *every* sentence you don't need, and merge sentences together whenever possible. - Good sentences often hide inside bad ones, so trust your instincts and rewrite as needed. If you think others might misread you, they will: - The longer and more sentences, the more readers misunderstand. - If you can and the style permits it, write only one sentence per line. - Only use words you know the *exact* meaning of. Good writing sounds excellent when read out loud: - Read out loud as you write, then remove awkward language you'd never actually say. - Unless you're trying to be vague or artistic, poetic styling is inappropriate. - Formalized language gives extra work for the reader, so use easy-to-understand words. - Harder subjects generally call for simple words. - Which of the two is better to read? 1. Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compacted comprehensibleness, coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement, and asinine affectations. Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and veracious vivacity, without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, setaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity, and vaniloquent vapidity. Shun double-entendres, prurient jocosity and pestiferous profanity, obscurant or apparent. 2. Talk plainly, briefly, naturally, sensibly, truthfully and purely. Keep from slang, don't put on airs, say what you mean, mean what you say, and don't use big words. - Catch errors by converting the text to speech: - Copy the text into a text-to-speech system to see how it sounds. - Read your work aloud to nearby family members. Write unapologetically: if you feel you must concede something or use a quote for an expression, don't use it. Constantly edit and re-edit: - Most of the writing process is editing, not drafting. - Since everyone uses a [computer](computers.md), typographical and simple grammatical errors in any published work are rarely acceptable. If you *must* pad out printed pages: - Increase the font size or character/paragraph spacing. - State obvious observations and clarify easy-to-understand concepts to broaden the word count and elaborate the ideas. - The quality of the writing *will* suffer, so only do it if you don't care. - If you *do* care, consider changing your novel to a novella or your book to an essay. ### Avoid an amateur writing style If you're writing publicly, focus on facts more than experiences or feelings. Show the audience; don't tell or give an editorial. Change the length of your sentences to stay interesting, even if you're writing [technical documentation](language-writing-documentation.md). Avoid fanciful or empty statements: - A simple idea requires few words. - Every sentence and word should either advance the action or add relevant information. - Never use common metaphors, similes, or figures of speech. - Replace long trade-specific, scientific, slang and foreign words with simple ones. - Cut out excessive adverbs and details that don't add to the central ideas. Frequently shift focus by varying sentence structure, type, style, and jumping around inside the story. Don't clutter your tone: - You're trying to float the reader through the ideas you're presenting, *not* fully inform or convince them. - [Influencing](power-influence.md) them requires that they conclude it themselves, so you'll either appear desperate or wordy. - Adjectives (e.g., "gentle") and adverbs (e.g., "gently") often add useless detail, so drop them whenever you feel your writing is bogged-down. - Match your pronouns across the body of the entire work. - Use figures of speech that match the style you're aiming for. If you use cliché terms, you're simply borrowing someone else's phrases, and it's not your authentic voice. Keep your punctuation interesting, but accurate: - Surprise people with varied transitions like colons, dashes, and block quotations. - Use commas to clearly separate the pacing of a sentence, but don't cram two sentences together. - Use apostrophes to indicate ownership, but avoid using them for plural nouns. Even while writing, maintain a flow: - Use 2-syllable words whenever you can, and offset 3-syllable words afterward with 1-syllable words. - Your ideal goal is iambic pentameter, which is 5 sets of 2-syllable words. Use the active voice: - The passive voice rearranges nouns to avoid a proper noun, but dilutes words' impact. - Passive voice comes across as (EffectNoun) was (Verbed) by (CauseNoun). - Many iterations of the word "it" capture the passive voice (e.g., "it was nice..."). - For plural nouns, use "they" or "all" instead of "everybody" (e.g., "everybody was..."). - The active voice is framed as (CauseNoun)(Verbed)(EffectNoun). - Active voice gives power from its clarity and simplicity: "John ate cake." versus "The cake was eaten by John". - Writers usually speak in the passive voice from poor understanding or to avoid offending, but it frequently creates confusion. - To find the passive voice, watch for any awkward pronouns or many small words in the sentence. Don't misuse words: - "Less" describes intangible concepts, "fewer" describes numbers. - "Then" refers to time, "than" shows an alternative. - "Impact" is a noun, "affect" is to change, "effect" is a consequence. - "It's" is the contraction of "it is", "its" is the possessive of "it". - "Alot" is not a word, "a lot" is a large amount, "allot" is to give something. - "Whom" is only used when the statement can refer to "him". - "Into" refers to inside, "in to" has no connection to a location. - When using "...and me" or "...and I", pick the one that makes sense without the other one in it (e.g., "John and [I went to the store]"). - Only use a trade-related word if you fully *know* what that word means. Don't overuse the same words: - Emphasizing a point with "really" or "very". - Using "you" when not referring to the reader. - Saying "feel" instead of the word that describes the feeling. - Saying "think" to indicate an opinion (the reader knows it's an opinion). - "As", "just", "a lot", and "used to" in most contexts. - "Sort of" and "kind of". - "Like" to show an analogy. - Using a verb sounds far more fluid than analogies. Avoid "filler" words: - Examine every word, since many are surprisingly useless: - Many make an appearance with appear with is capable of being can be is dedicated to providing provides in the event that if it is imperative that we we must brought about the organization of organized significantly expedite the process of speed up on a daily basis daily for the purpose of to in the matter of about in view of the fact that since owing to the fact that because relating to the subject of regarding with... - A bit or also a little because it's sort of kind of rather quite pretty much too very... - Don't use vague language, even if you're afraid of what people may think: 1. The reader will misunderstand you, and will probably be offended through their misunderstood idea. 2. The reader will decipher what you're getting at, and then be offended you didn't state it in simpler terms. 3. You'll bore the reader, and they'll do something more interesting than your writing. To magnify the dramatic effect of your language, use a florid or uncommon word in the midst of simpler and smaller words. Use parallel syntax in each sentence to express patterns: - e.g., "He reads, eating, and cleaning" versus "He's reading, eating, and cleaning". - e.g., "They went to the park: it was fun. They went to the factory: it wasn't." - e.g., "Stop existing, start living." Use concrete imagery more than abstract: - Generally, vague speaking (such as with [philosophy](philosophy.md)) will tire out the reader because they must hunt to connect that idea to something practical. - Even intelligent readers who enjoy philosophy are simply using it as a prompt for their [imagination](imagination.md). - By speaking in plain terms and with clear connections, you do most of the work for the reader and motivate them to keep reading through to the end. - If you're not sure if you're being clear enough, liberally use metaphor and simile to bring make ideas tangible. Great writers think in paragraphs, not sentences: - Focus on clearly communicating ideas more than sentence size, paragraph length, or page count. - Size doesn't matter: one-sentence ideas have brought down entire [institutions](mgmt-badsystems.md). - From paragraph to paragraph, your tone is *far* more important than size. - Some sentences don't need many words, while others are highly elaborate. - A paragraph is simply a pause for the reader to understand the idea before continuing, and may only need one sentence. - However, most ideas are small enough that paragraphs should rarely travel past about 5 full sentences. - The last sentence should end with an entertaining or surprising idea that points to the first sentence of the next paragraph. - If you can make the reader smile, they'll read one more paragraph. - Each new paragraph should amplify the ideas from the last. - Don't be afraid to use transitioning words at the beginning: But, Yet, However, Nevertheless, Still, Instead, And, Therefore, Thus. - If your paragraphs start expanding across too large a set of ideas, break them into multiple paragraphs or remove transitioning sentences. - When you start adding a digression or side detail to a paragraph, make a new paragraph. - If you're expanding on a seemingly unrelated concept, explicitly explain why you're going there. - If your idea seems complete, but you have another one that follows, break into another chapter or topic. ## Have your audience in mind Write about things other people *want* to read: - If people aren't interested in what you're writing about, they'll get bored. - You may think your writing carries authority, but the reader has more authority because they can stop reading whenever they want. - Ask who you are to the audience, not who the audience is. - *Anything* can be interesting with a sufficiently motivated and talented writer, so your ability to [influence](power-influence.md) and [entertain](humor.md) is critical. - If you don't understand your audience, you'll add too much detail and useless information. Writing should both entertain and [educate](understanding.md): - The reader must learn something, or they will feel the story was a waste of time. - The reader must be amused or will find the information boring. - In [modern society](information.md), the quantity of your information isn't as valuable as *how* you convey it. Write to please yourself, firstly: - You'll never be [happy](mind-feelings-happiness.md) with the results if you're not writing to your standards. - Somehow, readers can tell when you're writing and not enjoying it. - You [know yourself](awareness.md) more than anyone else, and there are thousands of people who have your taste in writing style. - You may be anxious and uneasy, but your desire to [create](mind-creativity-how.md) the best possible form of an idea will chip away useless information. Write for one person you know personally: - If you aim for everyone, nobody will like it, but you can often add [humor](humor.md) into your style when it's someone you know. - That person, when reading your text, should feel like you're treating them as an equal. Pay close attention to the reader's perception throughout the work: - Readers are only reading for information or experience. - For information, focus only on the information they want to learn. - For an experience, focus only on what they'll find most interesting. - Find the healthy middle ground between giving the bare minimum information and burying them in endless specifics. 1. Focus on all the necessary details that imply many other details. 2. Add just enough details to give [emotional emphasis](mind-feelings.md). 3. If you've forgotten to continue with your content, stop and remove some details. - Don't jump ahead presuming they already know something. - The easiest approach is to move through the experience chronologically or systematically. - You'll have a harder time moving slowly through the information, proportionally to your intelligence or knowledge. - Give extra attention to things people frequently overlook and presume they [understand](understanding.md). - Rearrange giant chunks to conform to the chronological order that's easiest for them to understand. ### All writing sends a message The entire work paints a portrait of ideas: - Everything you're writing is [solving a problem](purpose.md). - The first sentence, paragraph, word, and title will define the reader's expectations throughout the work. - Each sentence is adding information to the message, and the end will leave the reader with a lingering concept. - Without a message, a writer is just trying to draw attention to themselves. - One misplaced word can ruin the entire flow of the story, so build a story from back to front to maintain consistency. - In effect, aim to [write a story](stories-how.md) with every body of text you write. All great messages contain a WHAT and a WHY: - WHAT communicates the information and events you want to share. - Event details, date, time, location - Educational information, data, facts - WHY communicates the benefits from knowing the information or the cause for the WHAT. - It gives the [reason](purpose.md) you're writing at all. - It answers the "call to action" the reader must take. - The rest spins off from these two: - WHO is the character (or reader) that does WHAT. - WHERE is the setting for WHAT. - WHEN is the chronology of WHAT. - HOW is the detailed set of processes to explain the WHAT and WHY. Get to the point or start as close to the end as possible: - Give as much information as soon as possible. - Use non-knowing, not vagueness, to bring suspense. - Only give possibilities the reader was expecting and details the reader can identify with. All writing is either explaining or exploring: - Explanations are transmitting information and ideas: making things [clearly known](understanding.md). - Explorations are developing hard-to-grasp concepts: making [the unknown](unknown.md) partially known. Focus on the positive form of the idea: - Say "do" instead of "don't". - What something "isn't" is less informative than what something "is". When using examples and anecdotes, carefully consider your quantity: - 1 demonstrates raw power. - 2 is useful to compare or contrast. - 3 gives a sense of completeness, fullness, or wholeness. - 4 or more can list, inventory, compile, and expand. - In reality, 3 gives a stronger sense of completeness than 4. Understate the topic when it's the most serious, and overstate when it's not. End the work with the most powerful sentence you can make: - It should allude to the first sentence, and will linger when they leave your work. - Emphasize with 2-3-1: the most important emphasis at the end, the second-most at the beginning, and the rest in the middle. If you're writing a long body of work, write the introduction *last*: - To articulate it, you should fully understand what you're introducing. - If you're writing a robust work (e.g., large book, technical/scientific paper), a lengthy introduction can help give more context to what you're writing: - The history of the subject. - Giving credit to everyone who helped with it. - Outlining the content of the document and why you wrote it. - While you may want to express your most intimate feelings, don't get too carried away, and omit anything that might be boring. Don't neglect the title: - The title of your work is the first exposure to what you're building, so use it to draw attention from the people you expect to read it. - In some ways, the title is telling them there's more information without providing any details. ## Writing is an art Like any [art](art.md), writing has rules, exceptions to rules, specific cases for everything, and requires constant criticism. As the situation demands, you can (and will) break most writing rules, so don't obsess about honoring all of them: - The purpose of writing is to communicate a clear concept, so violating rules may be useful to prove a point or entertain. You may strive for originality, but [it's never completely possible](mind-creativity.md). If you keep improving, you'll likely find years later that you'll hate your old writing style. You'll always need at least a few drafts: - Most professional content goes through at least a dozen drafts. - The first draft will push the raw ideas out, likely with only spell-checking. - The second draft onward will work on grammar and tone, with many removals and rearranging. - The third draft onward is almost exclusively removing, splicing, and rearranging ideas. You'll only see major themes in your work forming *after* you're reviewing your first draft: - Themes portray your beliefs about human nature, and are reflected in how characters and elements interact with one another. - The connected nature of your theme determines the power of what you're trying to advance. - Themes tend to address 2 major questions: 1. What does it mean to be human? 2. How do humans react to circumstances beyond their control? - Your theme will dictate what the readers think about after they've stopped reading. - While nonfiction is easier because you're stating it explicitly, themes only work in stories from how characters change. - To make the heaviest impact, leave them with 1 theme, and no more. Whether it's a [website](language-writing-web.md) or a [text message](language-writing-messages.md), your most meaningful feedback comes from others' review of your work: - Writing itself is solitary, but your easiest success in editing comes from other people. - If you must self-edit, read your final draft after enough time has passed that the text is no longer familiar. - Find people willing to openly criticize your writing and nitpick your style. - Your [friends](people-4_friends.md), family, and [spouse](relationships-marriage.md) are great for reviewing, but don't ask them to review your content more than they want.