There will always be a discrepancy between the imagination and the page; writers face this issue no matter how talented or accomplished they may be. This discrepancy is closed through the help of the writer’s own efforts. You do not need to be born with the gift of a writer, but you definitely need to have perseverance and importantly, the willingness to master the tools of the trade. Writing guidelines are a dime a penny at one’s finger tips and the majority actually is valid. The tough part is not coming across the right one in the right place, but actually internalizing it and practicing it enough until you can call it yours. The ones that finally stick to your work possess another thing in common: they do not please your ego. On the contrary, it is your skills (or in this case, your abilities, not ego) get put to a test. First and foremost among the bits of wisdom that every professional writer has for another is ‘to read lots and read with your full mind.’
For a writer, reading is an activity that goes beyond the entertainment of the eyes; it becomes the training of the senses. Reading a book by a new author in your chosen area can show you the conventions of that genre: how a new scene begins, how an argument is developed, when a plot twist becomes clear, or how the character is revealed gradually. On top of being a good source of reference, you will also see the ways in which the author of the text has deviated from the established standards, because of this giving you a possibility of breaking them (but not breaking the reader and the genre) if at any time. Before you spend your energy on figuring out the best style of writing, you could think about the best times to write and where to do it, in fact.
Among the least celebrated but essential elements of a successful writing career is to maintain regularity and a fixed rhythm in one’s writing routine. One can, of course, think of this as just another boring piece of advice, but there is truth in what the finishers or those who complete their projects are the kind who sit down at the very same time, at exactly the same corner of their desk, or in the exact same seat, holding up the same cup of coffee day in, day out, and regard this as the one task they would never delay. In fact, it is only their job that can be postponed at will. A writer should be comfortable with the idea that even the greatest of all authors have produced really bad first drafts.
The most important point that novice writers should understand and even veteran writers keep reminding themselves about it is that you are supposed to write your first draft without worrying about the grammar and the vocabulary at all. You only need to get all your ideas to have the material. The moment it can get edited in detail comes in later. Yet, it is easy to think that if a draft is not well edited, it will look as though it is not good or perhaps even worse. The desire to rewrite while you write is an entirely human reaction. After all, you do not really want your masterpiece first impression to be seen as bad. But in doing so you run two parallel activities – building a house and wrecking the same house at the same time. You are in charge of the building but also of the dismantling. Your draft needs to allow your self-critic to be at the background. Give yourself time and space to improve your product later on. The chance will arrive.
The greatest structural issue that plague beginners’ first drafts is in reality they often begin at the wrong place rather than simply that which they don’t, but mainly that they have a lot of setup which gets us to the point too slowly. Writers who haven’t yet made themselves fully aware of their subject are prone to providing the reader with far too much background material, as if one must first be informed before they will be entrusted to read on. Practically every time, the manuscript will open up stronger and the piece will feel as if it was not just the author who had written it but a good deal of someone else too, if one cuts off a portion that starts from the very first page or just a paragraph.
A reader is capable of understanding much more than most writers allow so to assume otherwise. Be bold in not only what you tell them but how much detail you present right from the start. Clarity at sentence level is something craft books refer to most usually as an opening feature but it’s a topic which most beginners tackle least. It tends to happen that a person sees complexity as a symbol of wisdom and they think that the sentence gets serious or more literary when it is longer, contains many complex clauses, and it is also the case that the reader has to be familiar with such level of English.
This is still seldom the case. What is the purpose of a well-written sentence but to do a specific one thing in the most clear way possible and then do the second? The emphasis of a text is set and highlighted in a reader’s mind whenever short sentences are involved. The reader senses that what is in the sentence really is important when only a few words are used. The flow is a lot smoother, detail-rich sentences are longer but to earn that right they must limit their length to such a degree that the reader will not lose interest. Finally, the reader has to be certain that his mind understands your thoughts correctly after each new sentence and he must be capable of figuring out what you really wanted to say just from reading each line separately.
There is a misconception that active voice is merely imposed on writers via a certain form of style guide in a way to make the writing appear stiff and formal. But at its core, it’s simply indicating the direction in which the power moves within a writing line when such a sentence is written. Really, only in this case the words will go ahead and when the thing happens to be done to the subject instead of it being the subject doing the thing, the sentence is stuck. Although passive voice can also be used in several ways such as when the identity of the actor is not known, the focus is given to the action done rather than who did it, passive voice is still an option, but not the best or even most obvious one.
If one chooses to write that “the team submitted the report” in such a way as is a passive voice that is to say when “the report was submitted by the team”, then this is definitely an instance where one has written it in an indirect manner to avoid a straightforward explanation. One misses the chance of being direct. So, the main function of passive voice is to emphasize the object while the subject is left in the background or simply is omitted. One subtle skill of a writer which he/she should have is deciding what part of writing needs to be shown and which part should be told. The old command to ‘show, don’t tell’ was the right advice that was interpreted literally in the wrong way. Telling is the simplest and the fastest way to communicate.
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You can convey a lot through a single sentence if you decide to do it in the right way like using telling instead of showing. A line like “he had a difficult childhood” reveals that something was happened in the past to the boy through one sentence and in just six words. But, it would take a lot of pages in narrative form to convey the same idea through showing it. The issue is not whether showing is a bad practice or telling is not but whether the element being shown will be the one that makes the reader have a stronger emotional response and feel something that telling will simply not be able to do. If it is, then show it. If the detail only is intended to give background information and you cannot go into the description anyway, then tell it quickly and move to whatever is next to keep your reader going, since the more you explain by showing, the less the readers are going to appreciate.
If anyone tells you that great writing happens in just one draft, you probably wouldn’t believe it. A draft shows that the piece is there, that it is somehow possible; revision is the magic that gets your writing down there. Some authors are quite timid and they just tinker around with little stuff like changing a few words without changing the underlying structure of the paper. It takes courage to real revision to delete major blocks, change the reasoning or throw out a very safe but boring start. The question in revision is not about what we can improve that will lead us to polished paper, it is rather a query of what the paper is really aiming at and how closely we are hitting our target. That question may bring you to a point that you have not previously thought of but is a productive one to visit.
About feedback, almost everyone gets a bit uneasy when they receive feedback on their work. Though, a writer who gets serious about receiving feedback and using it well will probably grow much quicker than one who is not interested in feedback. You learn not to respond to all your readers equally and just pick out one who gives you the answer to your question, rather to be able to differentiate and figure which part of the advice is valid and what just shows a personal opinion. For instance, someone reading a work says that a character is not real, and you can still keep that opinion; the time for a reaction is when everyone says the same. In fact, there is absolutely no obligation to take the feedback, but you do have an obligation to really get the meaning from it.
Saying ‘I disagree’ is not a mistake to be afraid of, but you should only allow yourself saying it after you have thought through really what the reader pointed out. Among all parts of writing, teaching and maintaining voice is really a difficult matter. It is not exactly style, style comes from the outside, like something you add on. Voice has been there all along underneath your words; in other words, even when you are not speaking or writing as if you were trying to sound ‘authoritative’ or ‘expert’, in fact, you are still speaking like you do because that is how you naturally think. Voice expresses itself in the uniqueness of the specific cases and the particular examples you give, through the jokes you tell and the things you refuse to explain. Many a poet writer sacrifices their voice under the guise of a higher style, but the consequence is that the words become correct yet unreadable.
Most of the readers are not attracted to a text purely because of its accuracy or being flawless technically. They are there because that someone from the far end of the page sounds familiar, it’s oneself. The whole process of writing is the external appearance of our thinking, in other words, it is written thought. So, whenever your writing is a bit cloudy the reason probably is not just an awkward sentence, it is you not having been clear with yourself. Instead of changing words, try to check if you really have got the idea that you want to express in your writing.
Talking about really if one knows thoroughly the topic of writing, he/she can write clearly on it. But a writer who simply uses very simple words is not always a good writer. Simplicity is a result of clarity – if you clearly understand what you mean, your writing is simple and straightforward. If you don’t actually know your idea, of course, you will need more words to explain it, you will use hedging, qualify your ideas, and make circles, trying to find the right wording. A better way to fix that is not better word choice – you just need to think about what you want to say longer before actually you put it into words, i.e. you need to do more preparation.
Last but not a lesser tip, the tip that holds all the tips together is, to complete the piece you are working on. There is no way, you can improve or publish a writing work which is left unfinished. It can neither reveal to you the things about the next paper you will need to know. Many authors have drawers filled with the first chapters and drafts they left half done; there is nothing essentially wrong about that – not every project that you start should, or could, even be completed. Still, some people take the idea of a work in progress and never finish it as a way of avoiding evaluation of their work. Getting rid of that mentality is not a craft decision; it is a personal one. Finish the piece. Send it for publication. Get yourself ready to start the next one. In the end, this is basically what writing is.
Writeic.com is a creative platform dedicated to writers, interview, storytellers, and digital creators who want to inspire the world through words. The authors at Writeic share insights on writing, creativity, storytelling, motivation, success story, and content creation to help readers grow their voice and unlock their creative potential.
