Patchfire blogged about developing goals for writing* today, which inspired a very long comment from me (she did call me out directly on Facebook, so I figured she was asking for anything I could throw at her) on what I consider important traits of good writers. I came up with and decided I needed to share it here, in a slightly wordier capacity. Ignoring the little e-spat about academic vs. “creative” (as someone who does it off/on for a living, I prefer the term “professional,” thank you very much) writing that ensued in the comments of Patchfire’s blog, I think most of these are applicable cross-genre — academic, creative, technical, informal, etc. If you don’t like my list, try Mark Twain’s instead. If you disagree with Mark Twain, perhaps you should consider a job writing copy for clothing catalogs.
These are a few of the traits I think are part and parcel of good writing. A strong writer should:
- Use and understand symbolism. Use and understand connotation (ie. subtext), which is a subtle form of symbolism.
- Create and implement figurative language maturely and avoid trite or cliched figures of speech. Don’t be afraid to play with language.
- Display an understanding of pacing. Avoiding a sense of “and then…” is one mark of a strong writer. Good pacing makes a simple story seem profound. Bad pacing makes a profound story into a movie of the week.
- Write with a strong narrative voice, even in non-fiction. Narrative voice is one reason why some biographies are so easy to read and others are a chore. If you don’t have a sense of your own voice, how is your reader meant to?
- Eschew obfuscation. Writing so nobody can understand what the hell you’re talking about doesn’t make you look smart; it makes you look pretentious. If you have a point, make it. If you have a thesis, show it. Circumlocution and superfluousness have their place, but humping your point/thesis is not it.
- Avoid retelling the same story unless you can write it better than the original. You can swap out whatever other items you like for hair combs and pocket watch chains, but we all know you’re just rewriting “The Gift of the Magi.” And yes, we’ve also all read that essay on feminist themes in “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” so you’d better find something awfully revelatory to add to that particular line of thought before you invest several hours of your time in it.
- Ensure that any item or creature that interacts w/ your main characters should be a tool that furthers the plot line, a symbol (see #1) that sheds light in the inner mechanisms of the character, or both. If you aren’t giving us Chekov’s gun or a satisfying red herring, don’t give it to us. Don’t give the readers details they don’t need simply for the sake of including more details.
- Craft quality sentences, because if you can’t write a good sentence, you can’t write a good paragraph or essay. The devil is in the details.
- View learning to write as a ongoing process, not a terminal goal post. You never really “learn to write.” It’s not a finite skill set. You can always improve your voice, your style, your finesse.
- Have the ability to accept and implement edits from an editor (or professor or word-wise friend). All manner of grammatical errors can be overlooked in the arena of professional writing if you have the ability to work well with an editor.
Since I don’t view academic writing as the termination of writing instruction, my goals for teaching writing to my children are much more in line with developing the above traits than in developing fluency in specific formats. MLA, Chicago, and AP style all have their places, but they aren’t the sum of writing. If a writer has good prose, s/he can always apply a format to it. It’s easier to teach a good writer to work within a set of formatting rules than it is to teach someone who knows the formatting rules to write well.
What traits do you think are requisite in a good writer? How do those traits related to your goals in teaching writing?
*Stay on my good side and share your writing goals w/ Patchfire, too, as she started this whole conversation.
ETA: Also consider reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “How to Write with Style”.
Number 8. HUGE. All of those hours spent diagramming sentences really are worth it.
Nice post. ( Note that I don’t give a rip about crafting great sentences in blog comments. 
)
I love diagramming sentences!
Apparently writing conversations are scary!
While I was nursing this morning, I realized we were using academic differently. You were, I think, reading academic as “having to do with the academy,” where I was meaning it as “acquired by formal education” and “nonfiction.” Yes, I know that “nonfiction” is not an official definition of “academic.”
Hate to bust your bubble, chica, but nonfiction is creative writing. That’s what it’s referred to as “creative nonfiction” in literary circles. It isn’t a term that just means “not fiction.”
I’m talking about writing as applied by professionals, whether that’s in the form of prose fiction, journalism (magazine/news paper writing), technical writing, grant writing, or something else.
Not all nonfiction is creative. Trust me, I’ve trudged through too much of it.
See, I am not talking about writing by professionals, per se. I’m talking about writing in life that isn’t fiction. There’s lots of writing that I do, but I’m not doing it professionally. It’s still important to have writing skills to use in everyday life. Sure, there’s a chance that my kids will need professional writing skills. That is only *part* of what I’m aiming for, though (hence my insistence that they be capable self-editors as well).
Nonfiction is a genre within the realm of creative writing. Again, I’m not talking about “stuff that isn’t fiction.” Nonfiction has a specific literary meaning. Maybe that’s where we’re crossing signals, here.
Sure, kids should have basic letter writer, cover page writing, etc. skills, but any child who has had grammar and composition adequately covered in his/her education should be able to do that stuff, from a technical standpoint. What I’m talking about is style. Spelling, grammar, punctuation: those are all just means to an end, not the end itself. I’d rather read a letter or an essay with technical flaws and a strong voice than something that’s technically sound from a writer who has no sense of his/her writing style. That’s the problem with the dry, tedious nonfiction you’ve read — technically sound, but artistically lacking.
I’m using “nonfiction” in the library sense. As in, some things have a call number of “F” and some have “BIOG” and the rest are “nonfiction.”
No, not just letter writing or cover pages, though of course that’s important. I do mean, perhaps, things similar to what others may do professionally, but if they are done in a non-professional context, you have to be able to edit your own work for style, tone, voice, etc.
The library is wrong. Yet another reason not to use them! Biographies are a genre of creative nonfiction. Yes, even the boring and badly written ones.
Of course you should be able to correct your own work, but you won’t get the same quality of editing you’d get if someone else w/ the same skill set edits it. You can learn a lot of tricks to improve your self-editing (reading the paper backwards is a useful one, start w/ the last sentence of the last paragraph), but there’s a reason why I ask someone to look over anything I write that’s being posted somewhere other than my blog. When you know how it’s supposed to sound in your head, it’s hard to pick up on some of the areas where it doesn’t actually scan like that.
LOL. I’ll go back and add that to my list. But at least now you know from what position I was working.
Oh, I absolutely agree re: self-editing, but I still think it behooves us all to become as good as self-editing *as we can.*
Yes, that does make sense. I really like how KSU’s MAPW program breaks down the genres of writing, though. Lets me see the relationships.
They have three fields of writing: creative, rhetoric/composition/ and applied.
Creative encompasses three genres: fiction (which includes short stories, novels, etc.), nonfiction (biographics, memoirs, creative magazine writing), and poetry.
Rhet/Comp includes: teaching writing, academic writing, literacy studies.
Applied covers: technical writing, editing, business writing, web content development, and journalistic writing (the “write so no one hears your authorial voice” kind).
Hmm. Based on how they have it broken down, I would argue that it’s important to be familiar with all of them, though I would not demand excellence in poetry or fiction whereas I would with most of the remainder (okay, probably not teaching writing, either, since that seems like a more specialized skill).
I will expect competency in rhet/comp, but if that’s not their area of interest, that’s all I’ll expect.
Great list. I think I’d add to this something along the lines of being willing to self-edit with ruthless honesty. No matter how much I may love my own crap, sometimes I have to admit when it’s crap!
It really does take ruthlessness to self-edit well, and even then, I don’t think one can self-edit one’s works as well as another person could. When self-editing, there’s a tendency to either not cut enough or to cut way too much.
I love your list!
Good writing is grammatically correct, clear, concise, and well organized. Good writing communicates effectively. But great writing requires voice.
Voice can take a color-by-numbers story that has been retold for thousands of years and makes it engaging and relevant. Unfortunately, you can’t focus on voice until you fill up your language toolbox with grammar, vocabulary, and whatever can be gleaned from reading the masters.
I think the only way to get better at writing is to actually write on a regular basis (NaNoWriMo is great for focusing on quantity). If you are lucky enough to have a friend who can critique your work for free, take advantage of it! I adore constructive criticism since whatever I just finished writing is either the next great American novel or total gutter trash. Nope, there is no middle ground for me. I need perspective and actionable feedback.
As far as homeschooling goes, my son seems to have a natural flair for words (not so much for numbers). However, he has re-learned the same grammar every single year in public school and I don’t think that anything actually stuck. Teflon brain, perhaps? I’m hoping that by the end of this school year at home, he will have his basic grammar firmly cemented in his brain. (BTW, I love that MCT zips through the grammar and then reinforces it every day with practice sentences. He just won’t have the option to forget it!)
When my son tells me that a poem just popped in his head and he needs to hurry up and write it down, I will be encouraging; however, at his age, I’m more concerned that he fill up his “language toolbox*.”
(*I think that I stole this term from Stephen King’s “On Writing.” It’s been a while since I’ve read it.)
I completely agree with your list. Especially number 9. Also, I am a sucker for good pacing and great dialogue.
If I’m getting paid for my writing, I pull out my A-game. But I think with some things (as a reader and a writer) I make exceptions. Particularly blogging. I know what constitutes a quality sentence, but I’m a lazy reader in the morning and usually don’t give a rat’s butt about subjects and predicates. If I’m reading something at 7am, I probably want to be entertained. Or I want a link to something really cool. Even if the writing’s not “good,” it’s still acceptable and maybe even more desirable at that moment.
That said, I strongly believe in teaching good writing. The rule in my house is, “You must know the writing rules before you are allowed to break them.”
Mark Twain is my hero.