This is the first in a series on writing. It's aimed at amateurs who must write for work, or for school, or who just want to learn how to do it.
"Your writing's so good - I just don't have that gift."
I hear some version of this regularly, and I respond the same way every time: "Neither do I."
Writing for me has been a life-long journey. My freshman year of college, I submitted a history essay that was so bad, the professor quit marking after page 1 and simply wrote on the last page, "See me after class." There was no grade because he couldn't assign one lower than F.
He did, however, begin to work with me. And that started me on the career path I have followed now for 40 years.
I mostly write nonfiction - essays, books, articles, and histories - because I've always found real life more engrossing than fiction. This is not to say, however, that I've ignored fiction. In fact, fiction writing has made me a better writer. It will make you a better writer, too. Here are three ways that fiction has helped me.
It's taught me to love writing - As much as I love nonfiction, reading a well-spun tale is what attracts us to the written word. In my estimation, Muhammad and Chalemagne by Henri Pirenne is perhaps the best piece of nonfiction history ever published. I have read and reread it many times throughout my life, marveling how succinctly the arguments are stated, and how well the evidence is put together in a relatively slim volume. I marvel more that after 80 years, it remains one of the most important history books ever written, with scholars still arguing over its thesis.
To rip on a corny phrase, however, it's no Moby Dick. Herman Melville's classic tale of the White Whale is also a book I reread often. But for very different reasons than I reread Pirenne. Melville was a master at capturing the language of the people of his day. In Chapter 9, "The Sermon," the minister speaks to the power of the human mind to see truth. He also talks of our responsibility to carry it out. “... Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway!”
The repetition of "Woe," the challenge to those who would smooth over the troubles that facing the truth brings, all caught in the simple words of a sermon. Essays cannot capture the depths of these truths as well as Melville has in these few words. But the style he uses is replicable in many types of nonfiction writing.
Writing in short, simple, staccato sentences. Using opposition to make your point ("Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale!"). These are skills that every writer requires. And they are key to successful nonfiction writing.
Capturing the point of what you want to say, and getting it up front early. Stephen King is certainly the modern master of horror writing. He's also the master of capturing the essence of his novels in one short expression. His most recent book, The Institute, is a great example. A complex tell of circumstance, telekinetic powers, and the importance of checking our Machiavellian impulses, King boils the point of the novel to these few words: "Great events turn on small hinges."
This type of simplicity is something nonfiction writers should aspire to capture in their works. Less really is more when it comes to writing. The better you understand your subject matter, and the longer you wrestle with the points you're trying to convey, the more likely you are to arrive at such a succinct statement of who you are and what you want to transmit to others.
Learning to let go and feel the pull of creativity. Writing is grounded in rules. Grammar, spelling, sentence structure, argument, and form. To be a good writer is to master these rules. Great poets are masters of the rules who have learned to bend them just so. And in the cracks that bending creates, true creative genius emerges.
Consider the example of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."
The poem's lines are in a classic iambic pattern, with four metric feet. It is beautiful in its simplicity, and arguably the most difficult style of poetry to write. The pattern breaks in the final stanza, however. The last word in the third line rhymes with the last word in the previous two lines. and is the same word in the last line. In no other stanza does the last word in the third line rhyme.
But it is this break in the pattern that gives the poem its sense of calm and peace.
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep."
Frost claims this poem just came to him and was written relatively quickly. A piece of pure inspiration. But the inspiration itself would have never found its way to the page had Frost not already mastered the rules.
Learn the rules of nonfiction writing. Only then will you be in a place to create truly inspired works.
Writing is a process. You're always striving to get better. Always working to find a better way to say something. The writing journey is the joy. Embrace it, and you're well on your way.