Writing lessons to ignore if you want readers

By James Dunworth

“Speak to Clarissa if you want better grades,” the lecturer told Mark.

Mark was struggling to understand why his marks were so terrible. As part of his course he had been writing summaries of academic work – summaries that were clear, succinct and easy to understand.

Clarissa was top of the class, and was getting top marks for every summary she handed in. She explained to Mark how she did it.

“I just take sentences with really long words from the work, and mix all the words up. I have no idea what the sentences mean.”

I had to laugh when Mark told me this story. I had had similar experiences.

But it also reminded me of everything that we have to unlearn before we can write things which people actually want to read.

Complexity

Complexity is one of them.

In school and university, in arts subjects, our teachers teach us that the more complex an essay is the better it is.

In one study, experts took a study and rewrote it twice. The first rewriting made it clear and simple to understand, the second difficult and complex. They then presented the writing to academics.

All rated the second piece of writing more highly.

We bloggers, however, know that people don’t want to spend hours trying to distill meaning from a complex mass of words. People’s time is valuable. If they can’t get the point of what you are saying in seconds, they will move on.

Structure

“Tell them what you are going to say. Say it. Then tell them what you have said.”

You’ve heard that before. But you know it’s boring. Instead, try starting at the most interesting part of your story/post/idea. Grab the readers’ attention. Then, when you have got that, fill in the back story.

If you are clever, finish off the article with a twist.

Paragraphs

Each paragraph, your teachers told you, should be several sentences long. The first line should be the topic sentence, giving us the main idea, and this should be followed up by supporting sentences.

Boring!

Short paragraphs are easier to digest – take a look at newspapers, who typically deliver one line paragraphs. Millions of people read newspapers. Not because they have to pass an exam, but because they want to. Newspapers produce writing in the way people want – easily digestible.

Not every paragraph has to be very short, of course. The last one wasn’t. (On the other hand, the one before was very short!) But it is perfectly okay to use short paragraphs. They have emphasis. They stand out. They wake the reader up.

Planning

I wrote bits of this article as the ideas came to me, leaving blanks to fill in, and then went to sleep on it, came back, worked on it, took bits out, added bits in, did a little research…

It evolved.

It’s a very different process from the one you were taught at school. You researched, you wrote a plan, you wrote your essay. It’s logical, but it doesn’t work for me. Does it work for you?

You and I

I winced in pain recently as I read through a friend’s dissertation recently.

In each paragraph there were several ones.

“One feels that… one has to accept that… one realises that…”

But when you are writing to connect with people rather than to demonstrate how clever you are, you should use you and I. Personalise your writing, talk directly to your readers, and your readers will reward you by reading.

In particular, use you. Your reader may be interested in you, the writer, but they are certainly interested in themselves, the reader.

Flowery writing

I used to think I was an unappreciative reader.

Flowery paragraphs full of adjectives and adverbs and strange metaphors could never hold my attention.

“You could write an essay about getting into a car,” one teacher told us.

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t want to read it,” I thought.

Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. Earnest Hemmingway, Stephen King and George Orwell are all on my side. They liked bare writing, writing with every unnecessary word stripped out.

It gets you to the point. Fast. And you won’t hemorrhage readers while you do so.

Never start a sentence with and or but

But why not?

I suspect that, some time in the 19th century, a grammarian was sitting down in his office, writing by candlelight, stroking his beard and cackling away to himself as he invented rules that would distort the English language for centuries to come.

It reminds me of the rule that you shall not finish a sentence with a preposition. Churchill killed that rule by angrily scribbling:

“This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.”

In fairness, you have to know what you are doing to successfully start a sentence with but.

Done badly, it jars.

Done well, it is a powerful and forceful way to announce total contrast with the previous sentence.

Still in school?

If you are still in education, ignore all this advice. Instead, you might follow Mark’s example. Mark adapted Clarissa’s advice. He wrote very long summaries, filled with long sentences with longer words, and wrote it in such bad handwriting that even he struggled to understand it.

And he got great grades.

Author Information

James Dunworth is the co-author of “Electronic Cigarettes (E Cigarettes) as a potential harm reduction product” and the IT director of ECigaretteDirect.co.uk, the UK distributor of the NJOY electronic cigarette. For more information about the device see his free e-book The Electronic Cigarette.