I said that writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself.
Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.
This is the personal transaction that’s at the heart of good nonfiction writing. Out of it come two of the most important qualities that this book will go in search of: humanity and warmth.
But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to education and rank.
The reader is someone with an attention span of about 30 seconds
It won’t do to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. If the reader is lost, it’s usually because the writer hasn’t been careful enough.
Faced with such obstacles, readers are at first tenacious. They blame themselves—they obviously missed something, and they go back over the mystifying sentence, or over the whole paragraph, piecing it out like an ancient rune, making guesses and moving on. But they won’t do that for long. The writer is making them work too hard, and they will look for one who is better at the craft.
Examine every word you put on paper. You’ll find a surprising number that don’t serve any purpose.
The personal friend has come into the language to distinguish him or her from the business friend, thereby debasing both language and friendship.
It’s the language of the flight attendant demonstrating the oxygen mask that will drop down if the plane should run out of air. “In the unlikely possibility that the aircraft should experience such an eventuality,” she begins—a phrase so oxygen-depriving in itself that we are prepared for any disaster.
“political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible....
Don’t dialogue with someone you can talk to. Don’t interface with anybody.
Just as insidious are all the word clusters with which we explain how we propose to go about our explaining: “I might add,” “It should be pointed out,” “It is interesting to note.” If you might add, add it. If it should be pointed out, point it out. If it is interesting to note, make it interesting;
Most first drafts can be cut by 50 percent without losing any information or losing the author’s voice.
Are you hanging on to something useless just because you think it’s beautiful? Simplify, simplify.
Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
There is no style store; style is organic to the person doing the writing, as much a part of him as his hair, or, if he is bald, his lack of it. Trying to add style is like adding a toupee
Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being examined for a hernia,
“Who am I to say what I think?” they ask. “Or what I feel?” “Who are you not to say what you think?” I tell them. “There’s only one you. Nobody else thinks or feels in exactly the same way.” “But nobody cares about my opinions,” they say. “It would make me feel conspicuous.” “They’ll care if you tell them something interesting,” I say, “and tell them in words that come naturally.”
Leaders who bob and weave like aging boxers don’t inspire confidence—or deserve it. The same thing is true of writers. Sell yourself, and your subject will exert its own appeal. Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.
Soon after you confront the matter of preserving your identity, another question will occur to you: “Who am I writing for?” It’s a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You are writing for yourself.
Don’t worry about whether the reader will “get it” if you indulge a sudden impulse for humor. If it amuses you in the act of writing, put it in. (It can always be taken out, but only you can put it in.)
You are writing primarily to please yourself, and if you go about it with enjoyment you will also entertain the readers who are worth writing for.
If you lose the dullards back in the dust, you don’t want them anyway.
In terms of craft, there’s no excuse for losing readers through sloppy workmanship. If they doze off in the middle of your article because you have been careless about a technical detail, the fault is yours. But on the larger issue of whether the reader likes you, or likes what you are saying or how you are saying it, or agrees with it, or feels an affinity for your sense of humor or your vision of life, don’t give him a moment’s worry. You are who you are, he is who he is, and either you’ll get along or you won’t.
To a man who keeps hens, all poultry lore is exciting and endlessly fascinating.
There’s a man writing about a subject I have absolutely no interest in. Yet I enjoy this piece thoroughly. I like the simple beauty of its style. I like the rhythms, the unexpected but refreshing words (“deified,” “allure,” “cackling”), the specific details like the Laced Wyandotte and the brooder house. But mainly what I like is that this is a man telling me unabashedly about a love affair with poultry that goes back to 1907.
The secret of his popularity—aside from his pyrotechnical use of the American language—was that he was writing for himself and didn’t give a damn what the reader might think.
Any writer who uses “ain’t” and “tendentious” in the same sentence, who quotes without using quotation marks, knows what he’s doing.
If you find yourself writing that someone recently enjoyed a spell of illness, or that a business has been enjoying a slump, ask yourself how much they enjoyed it.
We have no king to establish the King’s English; we only have the President’s English, which we don’t want.
ask yourself some basic questions before you start. For example: “In what capacity am I going to address the reader?” (Reporter? Provider of information? Average man or woman?) “What pronoun and tense am I going to use?” “What style?” (Impersonal reportorial? Personal but formal? Personal and casual?) “What attitude am I going to take toward the material?” (Involved? Detached? Judgmental? Ironic? Amused?) “How much do I want to cover?” “What one point do I want to make?”
When your zest begins to ebb, the reader is the first person to know it.
As for what point you want to make, every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn’t have before. Not two thoughts, or five—just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader’s mind. It will not only give you a better idea of what route you should follow and what destination you hope to reach; it will affect your decision about tone and attitude. Some points are best made by earnestness, some by dry understatement, some by humor.
The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead.
you should always collect more material than you will use.
For the nonfiction writer, the simplest way of putting this into a rule is: when you’re ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.
Something I often do in my writing is to bring the story full circle—to strike at the end an echo of a note that was sounded at the beginning. It gratifies my sense of symmetry, and it also pleases the reader, completing with its resonance the journey we set out on together.
Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around using a passive verb.
Most adverbs are unnecessary.
Most adjectives are also unnecessary.
the rule is simple: make your adjectives do work that needs to be done.
Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be confused. Be tired. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.
There’s not much to be said about the period except that most writers don’t reach it soon enough.
The dash is used in two ways. One is to amplify or justify in the second part of the sentence a thought you stated in the first part. “We decided to keep going—it was only 100 miles more and we could get there in time for dinner.”
Learn to alert the reader as soon as possible to any change in mood from the previous sentence. At least a dozen words will do this job for you: “but,” “yet,” “however,” “nevertheless,” “still,” “instead,” “thus,” “therefore,” “meanwhile,” “now,” “later,” “today,” “subsequently” and several more. I can’t overstate how much easier it is for readers to process a sentence if you start with “but” when you’re shifting direction. Or, conversely, how much harder it is if they must wait until the end to realize that you have shifted.
Surprisingly often a difficult problem in a sentence can be solved by simply getting rid of it.
Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual—it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.
Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it’s where the game is won or lost. That idea is hard to accept.
Read your article aloud from beginning to end, always remembering where you left the reader in the previous sentence.
Imagine science writing as an upside-down pyramid. Start at the bottom with the one fact a reader must know before he can learn any more. The second sentence broadens what was stated first, making the pyramid wider, and the third sentence broadens the second,
Write with respect for the English language at its best—and for readers at their best.
I took along on my journey another gift from my father: a bone-deep belief that quality is its own reward.