TECHNIQUES THAT'LL HELP MAKE YOUR WRITING SHINE
Welcome to part two of this post about how to improve your writing style. In part one, I talked about the need to identify and eradicate the enemies of good writing. If you missed it, you can read it here. In this post, I want to delve deeper not that subject and reveal some of the tricks and techniques I picked up while writing my first novel The Ninth Death of Zachary Green. As such, it’s aimed primarily at fiction writers but, hey, if you’re all about the non-fiction you may find some useful stuff in here, too. Read on to find out.
SAY 'NON' TO CLICHE!
Is your story’s main character a loose cannon? Do they have nerves of steel? Did they get out of bed on the wrong side this morning, or have they opened a can of worms? If the answer to any of those questions is yes, then you need to think outside of the box. Actually, scratch that. You need to get out of the box, pour petrol on it and set fire to the fucker. And while it’s burning you need to buy yourself a tank and use it to run over the box. Then, when you’ve done that, you need to shoot the box with your big tank gun.
Why? Because clichés suck. They are among good writing’s greatest foes.
As you might have guessed from the fancy acute accent hovering over its ‘e’, cliché is a French word. Originally, it was a printing term used to describe the metal plate (also known as a stereotype) that produced printed images. Interestingly, both cliché and stereotype have largely lost their original meaning and are now used to describe something commonplace and banal. Which are two more words synonymous with bad writing. So avoid clichés as much as you would stereotypical characters or situations if you want your story to shine.
As ever, there are exceptions to this. For me, the chief one is when you write dialogue. Because dialogue is a key method for revealing character in a story, the use of cliché may sometimes be appropriate. The protagonist in my novel, for example, comes from a certain neighbourhood in South London. So when he talks to other characters from that area, he and they all use language and idioms that are appropriate to their environment, age, education and class. Other than that and using it for comic or ironic effect, cliché has no place in good writing. So purge it from your prose.
How do you recognise a cliché? Well, if you find yourself typing a phrase you’ve heard a gazillion times before, then you’re most likely looking at one. So untype it, and instead think of a different way to say what you want to say. Play with the language. Try giving the cliché a new twist. Or simply rewrite what you want to say as clearly as you can.
WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE
Probably the most visited website on my computer is thesaurus.com. While writing my novel I became more obsessed with synonyms than at any time in my already word-geeky life. I wanted my writing to be as fresh and lucid as it possibly could be. And I knew from my work as a journalist that not reaching for an obvious or time-worn phrase would help me achieve that. As an added bonus, it also helped to reflect the narrator’s unusual state of mind.
You can, of course, go too far with this and end up using language that alienates your reader by using words that seem overblown. Or poncey, as we say in South London.
Many years ago, I remember reading An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. What I remember mainly about it was its language and how certain words in it jarred with me. And not just because they seemed arcane to my then-teenage brain. There was no way that even in the 1920s, when he wrote the book, that some of his stuffy phrases would have been in everyday use.
The one words that still sticks in my head all these years later is ‘interpolated’. Dreiser uses it frequently throughout the novel usually after a character has delivered a line of dialogue. He interpolated. She interpolated. Really? I mean what’s wrong with plain old he said or she said? This and other words frequently pushed me off the book’s pages, usually in search of a dictionary.
KEEP THINGS SIMPLE
Now, as a self-confessed word geek, I shouldn’t complain. But whenever I ask myself why I read fiction, I always come back to the same conclusion. It’s because I love to get lost in a good story. I suspect most readers of fiction would say something similar. So I’d argue that anything you write that prevents a reader from achieving that is bad writing. For that reason, wherever possible avoid using sesquipedalian language. In fact, don’t use a word like sesquipedalian. Just say fussy (or poncey), instead.
On a similar note, there’s a tendency, particularly among inexperienced writers to use a voice that tries to mimic what they think great literature should sound like. The resulting writing style is usually pretentious, pompous and inept.
Unless, for some inexplicable reason, you want to sound like Jacob Rees-Mogg, I’d suggest writing as you speak. Imagine a loved one or a close friend and try writing with them in mind. Write using a language you know they’d like and would easily understand. Writing like this will not only help keep your writing loose but your confidence high, both of which help when you’re trying to express what you need to say.
GET TO THE POINT
Your language also needs to be direct. Look at these two sentences, and imagine them as the opening lines of a story.
‘I walked into the shop this morning, and when the shopkeeper wasn’t looking I took something to eat even though I didn’t have enough money.’
‘This morning, I stole an apple from the shop because I was starving.’
The second sentence is more impactful because it gets to the point. It is concise. Any vagueness in the sentence has been removed and it punches harder for it. So watch out for flab or waffle in your writing. Hunt down any words that make your story drag, and eradicate them. Be ruthless about it. Constantly look to tighten your writing. Never use two or more words when you can use one, and always avoid tautologies. Your aim is to get as much across to the reader in as succinct a way as possible. As Stendhal pointed out, ‘Style cannot be too clear [or] too simple.’
TOO MUCH INFORMATION
And while we’re on writing advice from master storytellers, here’s what Anton Chekhov had to say about what to include in your story and what to ditch. ‘Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. In the first act, if there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third act it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.’
In other words, get rid of all extraneous or unnecessary information. And if you’re unsure if a piece of information is necessary or not, ask yourself whether the reader needs to know that detail in order to understand the outcome of the story. If the answer is no, then ask yourself why you’ve included it. And if you can’t come up with a better answer than ‘because I really like it,’ chances are it has no place in your story. So cut it out and add it to your folder of future story ideas. If it’s any good, you’ll be able to make use of it in another story further down the line.
FIVE TIMELESS TIPS
In my previous post, I said writing has no rules and I’m sticking by that. There are plenty of great guidelines, though, and before I sign off I want to share five quick ones with you. These come from a style sheet that was given to a young journalist many years ago. In my opinion, they offer some timeless advice….
1. Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs and vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.
2. Eliminate every superfluous word: write, ‘Funeral services will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday,’ not ‘The funeral services will be held at the hour of 2 o’clock on Tuesday.’
3. Avoid adjectives, especially such extravagant ones as splendid, gorgeous, grand and magnificent.
4. Watch out for trite phrases such as ‘crisp bank note’,” ‘cold cash’, ‘hard cash’, etc.
5. Strive for smoothness.
No, the journalist wasn’t me. It was Ernest Hemingway. The style sheet belonged to The Kansas City Star, the newspaper he started out on. He was only a teenager at the time, but many years later he remembered the style sheet and called it the ‘best rules I ever learnt in the business of writing.’
You can see the full style sheet here. It’s s a little antiquated in places, but to my mind, these five nuggets are as useful and relevant today as they were when Hemingway first read them over 100 years ago. And he did alright, didn’t he?
The Ninth Death of Zachary Green by Nick Soldinger is available to buy here.
Look out for future posts on how to improve your writing style soon.