You have to write. You may not like it, but it’s a fact of life – somewhere in your professional or personal life, you’re going to have to string a few sentences together in the hope of creating a coherent thought. For most of us, this occasion occurs almost every day (hello EMAIL!), and at the very least rears its head on select occasions (greeting cards, resumes, those our-family-year-in-review things people send out around Christmastime for some reason). Somewhere, you’re going to have to write (unless you’re a solitary mountain man living purely off the land, in which case welcome to Lodge and where did you find a computer?).
With this is mind, I’m compiling an ongoing list of simple tips to improve your writing, and make writing easier. None of these are original ideas – because I don’t have many of those – but aggregated knowledge I’ve found useful. They aim to help with both that unfinished sci fi epic on your desktop (i.e. fiction) and your resignation letter due to repeated HR violations (nonfiction).
The Tip: Less is More
This is perhaps the most common piece of writing advice I see, but also the most valuable. Nothing will take writing from average to good as quickly as getting rid of the fluff, just as nothing will derail a story as easily as adding some in.
This is somewhat counterintuitive, because we’ve been forced to meet arbitrary page numbers on school writing projects since the dawn of time. The paper has to be 8 pages? I only have 6. I guess I’ll add in some unnecessary information to get it there.
FIRST OF ALL, widen those margins and slightly increase the line spacing and font size, idiot. Second, no. Forget what your teacher told you. Your teacher was wrong. The mark of a good writer is one who can do more with less, and make every word count, not one that can make more words than others. I can throw together a 100,000-word novel by tomorrow and slap a guarantee on it – I do have spare time – and it will be terrible. Give me 50 good words, not 500 average words.
I’ll admit that preference plays a role here; some people like flowery, descriptive text, while others may prefer bare-bones prose. But in most cases, you lose nothing by being concise. Consider:
Fiction
The full moon peeked behind the clouds for an instant, its silvery glow temporarily obscured in the night sky. Seeing the moment she had been waiting for, she pulled out her trusty .38 revolver from her purse, the same gun her grandfather had given her all those years ago. “Party’s over,” she said, her words echoing through the canyon like a boomerang. She slowly raised the gun and pulled the trigger twice, and the bullets tore through him like speeding daggers.
vs.
The moon peeked behind the clouds and she pulled out the .38 revolver. This was the moment. “Party’s over,” she said, and shot him in the face.
Sensationalized example? Totally. But I can’t count the time I’ve read real, published (or self-published) passages like the first one, and had to leave what I was doing to find somewhere to violently vomit. The point here is most readers aren’t stupid – they don’t need all the extra, over-the-top wordiness in the first example. The second example tells the same story in 1/3 of the time. The point of writing stories is to lead the reader to the place you want with necessary information, and then let them fill in the blanks. Trust they’re equipped to do so.
Nonfiction
Hey Marge, it’s JT over in accounting. How’s everything go with things in your personal life? That kid of yours finally get out of his hitting slump in tee ball?!? Jeez, that stuff can be so FRUSTRATING! I totally get it. Anywho the reason why I’m emailing is because I need your W-2 form. We don’t currently have one on file because our bookkeeping changed over and the new system only honors those submitted after 2012 I think. So if you could send that over, that would be awesome.
Thanks again!
vs.
Hey Marge, when you get a chance could you send me an updated W-2? Sorry for the hassle, but our new system is requiring them. Hope all is well!
JT
Accounting
Most people don’t like reading emails, so why make them read extra? Get in, tell them what you need, add one polite turn of phrase if you want, and get out.
The end. Hopefully that made sense. I’ll be back with more of these whenever I feel like it.