BASIC WAYS TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF YOUR WORK
‘Know your enemy.’ So wrote Sun Tzu over 2,000 years ago. OK, so he might have been talking about how to defeat Chinese warlords but it’s a great bit of advice. Especially for us writers. Because if you recognise the enemies of good writing, you can eliminate them from your work. And if you do that, you’ll instantly improve the quality of it, as well as your writing style.
I’ve picked up much of what I know about writing from my years working as a journalist, copywriter and editor. But, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog, the greatest lessons I’ve learnt as a writer came from writing my first novel The Ninth Death of Zachary Green. So, over the next two posts, I’m going to reveal some of what I’ve picked up. This first post is going to deal with some of the basics. Part two, meanwhile, will go into greater detail about certain techniques you can work on to improve your writing style.
WHAT IS WRITING STYLE?
OK, before we start, I guess it would be helpful to explain what I mean by writing style. I had a quick scope about to see what the great writers had to say on the subject. After much rooting around on my bookshelves and the internet, I came up with these three zingers…
‘Style is matter.’
– Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977).
‘Style is life! It is the very lifeblood of thought!’
– Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880).
‘Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of style.’
– Jonathan Swift 1667-1745).
What I take from these quotes is that your writing is your style, and your style is your writing. You can’t separate one from the other. For want of a better word, your writing style is the voice you use to tell your story.
IMPROVING YOUR VOICE
Of course, that voice can change from story to story. In my novel, for example, the protagonist Zac is also the narrator. Although we come from the same area of London, he’s much younger than me. So when I wrote the book, I had to find a voice that was right for him. One with its own idiosyncrasies and a lexicon that matched his character and state of mind. Zac’s voice is nothing like the voice I’m using here. For a start, he’d never use the word lexicon. Largely because it wouldn’t be in his, ahem, lexicon. And I wouldn’t use his voice in any other story I wrote either unless it was also being narrated by him. It’s his story told in his voice and in that respect I suppose it’s similar to an actor voicing a role.
Not all stories are told in the first person, however. The third and second person are also used. And when they are it’s not uncommon to find an author’s voice shining through the text. Sometimes that voice or style is so distinct you can tell who the writer is without looking at the cover. If you’ve ever read the likes of Dickens, James Ellroy or Irvine Welsh you’ll know what I mean.
Regardless of which narrative PoV you opt for, however, you can always improve your writing style by following a few guidelines. I would say rules but there aren’t any rules when it comes to writing. There’s only good writing and bad writing, and you can always fix the latter if you know what you’re doing.
LOOK AFTER YOUR TOOLS
When I was a medium-shot magazine executive on a successful title, I always made a point of giving a pep talk to the ‘workies’. These were the students and post-grads who came to the magazine for week-long work-experience placements. That week typically saw them tasked with a series of menial jobs tasks that nobody else in the office could be bothered to do. In other words, it wasn’t much of an experience. So, at the end of the week, I’d find the time to sit down with them. We’d grab a cuppa and I’d talk to them about the realities of earning a living from writing.
Among the various bits of advice I’d share with them was this: Take good care of your tools. Just like carpentry, writing is first and foremost a craft. If you were a carpenter, your work would suffer if your saws were rusty or your hammer was dented. As a writer, your basic tools are your words. So take care of them and make sure you use them correctly. Make sure they are spelt right and that the grammar you use to bind them together is accurate.
OK, so as advice goes I admit it’s as hokey as it is obvious but it needs to be said. I’ve met countless wannabe writers who don’t check their spelling, can’t use grammar correctly and fail miserably because of it.
In journalism, you must have these basics locked down to stand any chance of surviving in such a competitive industry. In the world of fiction writing, I’d argue it’s even more important.
Why? Because these things will help you to effectively communicate your story to your reader. They’ll also help you to keep a grip on your material.
GRAMMAR OFFERS STRUCTURE
As I mentioned in a previous post, fiction writing is a lonely business. It’s just you and your words in your imaginary world. And without wishing to freak you out, things can get weird in there. Even if your book is based in reality and you’ve got a stack of solid research to lean on, as I had, writing fiction can mess with your head. As the US writer Robert Cohen put it, ‘To write, we must sit alone in a room for hours conjuring ‘plots’. How closely this resembles mental illness – or yields to it – is something we’d prefer not to think about.’
And it’s true. When I was writing my novel, I’d frequently read back something I’d been working on and think, ‘Does that make any sense?’ Heck, there were even occasions when I’d stare at an individual word and wonder, ‘What does that really mean?’
In fact, there were times when what was going on inside of my head resembled that Dalí painting. You know, the one with the melting watches. It got particularly bad if I spent too much time on one particular passage. I’d work and rework it until I was too close to see it clearly anymore. Lying down in a darkened room helped. But stepping back and simply assessing the accuracy of the grammar I was using was what got me out of the doo-doo more often than not,.
After all, grammar’s purpose is to eradicate confusion in language. Subsequently, its system provides a structure that you can rely on if your words turn to soup. Used correctly, it’ll not only help your reader understand what you’re saying but also prevent your prose from disintegrating into gibberish.
WRITE TO BE READ
As much as I’d love to drag you down a rabbit hole here about words as abstract concepts, this is a post about how to improve your writing style. So instead, I’m going to tell you a story.
A friend of mine once met the writer and musician Dominic Behan. He asked him if he could think of anyone who’d ever finished reading James Joyce’s notoriously difficult book Finnegan’s Wake. Behan frowned, scratched his chin, and narrowed his eyes before offering an answer. ‘James Joyce?’ he said with a grin.
Now don’t get me wrong. I love a bit of Joyce. I also love writing that is unconventional and pushes the boundaries. I even tried to do a bit of that in my own novel. But using the correct words correctly, to paraphrase Swift, is the basic requirement of any good writing.
Yes, as a fiction writer there will be exceptions, such as the use of dialect in dialogue, for example. But for the most part, it is our job as writers to communicate the ideas we are trying to express as clearly as possible. And that means operating within the framework grammar provides and making sure your copy is clean and error-free.
IMPROVE YOUR GRAMMAR
So, if your grammar is weak, work on it. There are excellent books on the subject that can help. The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is universally acknowledged as the daddy. While Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss manages to make a dry subject genuinely fun to read about.
The Grammarly app is also a great tool, even the free version. Plus it publishes stacks of solid lessons about grammar on its website, too. The spell-checker in your word-processing software may also perform some basic grammar analysis. I know mine does. And I always run my copy through it as well as Grammarly as they occasionally detect different problems.
OK, that’s the basics out of the way. If you want to learn about some more in-depth techniques that can improve your writing style, then click here.
The Ninth Death of Zachary Green by Nick Soldinger is available to buy here.