[TIPS] 17 Writing Secrets

One author shares his tried-and-true principles for making good writing better.

By Steven Goldsberry

1. Never save your best for last. Start with your best. Expend
yourself
immediately, then see what happens. The better you do at the
beginning,
the better you continue to do.

2. The opening paragraph, sentence, line, phrase, word, title -- the
beginning is the most important part of the work. It sets the tone and
lets the readers know you're a commanding writer.

3. The first duty of a writer is to entertain. Readers lose interest
with exposition and abstract philosophy. They want to be entertained.
But they feel cheated if, in the course of entertaining, you haven't
taught them something.

4. Show, don't tell or editorialize. "Not ideas about the thing, but
the
thing itself." -- Wallace Stevens

5. Voice is more important than image. "Poetry is not a thing, but a
way
of saying it." -- A.E. Housman

6. Story is more important than anything. Readers (and publishers)
care
a lot less about craft than content. The question they ask isn't, "How
accomplished is the writer?" but, "How good is the story?"

7. These rules, pressed far enough, contradict each other. Such is the
nature of rules for art.

8. All writing records conflict. Give the opposition quality attention
and good lines. The power of the the antagonists should equal that of
the protagonists.

9. Shift focus often. Vary sentence structure and type; jump back and
forth in time and place; make a good mix of narration, description,
exposition and dialogue.

10. Be careful of your diction. A single word, like a drop of iodine
in
a gallon of water, can change the color of your entire manuscript.

11. Provide readers with closure. The last sentences of the novel echo
something that happened earlier. Life comes full circle. "If I have a
pistol in my first chapter, a pistol ends the book." --Ann Rule

12. By the end of the work, the conflict should reach some
satisfactory
resolution. Not always a "happily ever after" ending, but something
should be finalized.

13. Revise, revise. You never get it on the first try. Art shows up in
rewriting.

14. Avoid excessive use of adjectives and adverbs; trust the precision
of your nouns and verbs. Verb form: the shorter the better. Avoid
helping verbs and progressives. Avoid passive voice. Avoid cliche and
stock phrases.

15. Be interesting with every sentence. Be brief. Hemingway's first
editor at the Kansas City Star gave him this style sheet: "Use short
sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be
positive, not negative." Hemingway later referred to that list as "the
best rules I ever learned for the business of writing."

16. If you can be misread, you will be.

17. There are no rules for good writing. But: learn, practice and
master
the rules first. "You cannot transcend what you do not know."