The Four Principles of Good Writing
By: Giulia Penni
Tags: Writing Tips, Writing, Writers Block, Writer, Writers On Writing

The Four Principles of Good Writing

Use these powerful tactics to become a better writer.

Image by Carolyn V on Unsplash

Writing is beautiful, but it can also be intimidating. I often feel anxious when I write, and I am sure I am not alone: apprehension about writing is very common, especially among amateur writers.

Having some level of anxiety associated with writing is normal and means that you care about writing well. In excessive quantities, however, stress can be an obstacle and may cause writer’s block.

The writing process doesn’t have to be frightening. If you feel unsure about the quality of your work, try new tactics to improve your writing skills.

According to Shani Raja — a former editor for the Wall Street Journal — there are a few practical techniques writers can use to write better. The secret to becoming an exceptional writer, he says, boils down to four principles: Simplicity, clarity, elegance, and evocativeness.

Simplicity

Simplicity is a key ingredient to make your prose impactful, and there are many things you can do to simplify your language and create writing that is tight — in other words, writing in which all points are expressed efficiently.

First, avoid using fancy language, at least without a purpose. If your word choice is purposeful and clear, using colorful language is not a problem. However, pointlessly using big words just to impress your readers makes your writing slow and heavy. Try to simplify your sentences and to express yourself plainly. If your writing is plain, you will get your message across in the shortest time possible.

In order to achieve maximum efficiency (aka “tight” writing), you also have to cut excess words. To explain this point, Raja uses an example he found in a book on journalism. Imagine a sign above a fishmonger’s that says:

“Fresh Fish Sold Here”

Can you think of which of those words could be deleted? “Here” is redundant because if you are reading the sign, you probably are in front of it. “Fresh” is also redundant because nobody would buy fish that is not fresh. “Sold” is also unnecessary, and even “Fish”, because you can smell it. Now, this is just a humorous example, but the takeaway message is: there is always room for improvement, so keep on cutting until you find the optimal way to express your idea.

To simplify your writing you should avoid redundant words (e.g. “unexpected surprise”), implied words (i.e. words that imply what’s being said, such as “I usually tend”), and long words: short words are faster to read, therefore they are preferable, but you can choose a long word if it makes your meaning more clear.

Don’t create unnecessary ceremony in your paragraphs, like capitalizing words for no reason — I’ve seen a lot of this, and I may even do it myself: putting a capital letter at the front of a generic word, like “government”. A capitalized word is a distraction because it draws attention to itself, and we need to remove all visual distractions if we want to make our writing simple and clear.

Finally, a tip that is particularly important for non-native speakers like me: avoid double negatives (“That attitude won’t get you nowhere”) and be careful to not overuse punctuation, especially commas, as this may compromise clarity and elegance.

Clarity

Clarity is probably the most important ingredient. As a writer you cannot get away with it: clarity must come first.

Through simplicity, you can remove the heaviness; through clarity, you make sure that your message gets across beautifully. If the reader doesn’t understand what you are saying it’s your fault, not theirs.

How do you achieve clarity? First, you need to ask yourself: What am I trying to say? Get your idea down on paper and polish it until you have a meaningful point, otherwise, you may leave a fuzzy idea in your writing.

Second, make sure the causal elements in your sentences line up properly: the logical connection between your ideas should be as clear as possible, enabling the reader to get the meaning of the sentence instantly, without having to make inferences.

Raja also introduces the concept of comma splicing, which is a kind of mistake that happens when you use a comma to join two independent clauses, like: “I love you, I am angry with you now”. You can fix a comma splice by adding conjunctions (“I love you, but I am angry with you now”), by changing punctuation, or by making separate sentences. Comma splicing makes the sentences out of focus and needs to be corrected.

To eliminate any shade of doubt, you should get good at recognizing when ambiguity is present in your prose. Misplaced modifiers, for example, can create confusion and misunderstanding: a misplaced modifier is a word, phrase, or clause that is improperly separated from the word it modifies (e.g. “The pedestrian was hit by a car, sitting on the curb”, should be instead: “A car hit the pedestrian who was sitting on the curb”).

You don’t want your readers to go back and re-read a sentence because they were confused by it, do you? This happens when writing is not straightforward — the reader needs to make a huge effort to understand the meaning of a sentence or paragraph. Try to express your ideas in the clearest way possible, removing any formal or redundant words, as well as any buzzwords and specialized terms (jargon), unless you are addressing a very specific audience.

If you don’t want to harm the clarity of your writing, be highly conscious of your tenses: don’t switch between past, present, and future in your sentences. Finally, remove all the useless information to clear up space for the main idea. Remember that you don’t have to say everything at once, you can save some details for later.

Image by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Elegance

Elegance is what makes your writing flow. It’s the ingredient that gives your prose order and grace.

Compared to simplicity and clarity, elegance is a more difficult concept to understand, but I will try to explain what I have learned about this powerful tool so you can experiment with it.

Having a house style is critical if you want to write with elegance. A house style is a set of style principles that give unity and consistency to your writing, making it sound more authoritative. Style guides provide rules about capital letters, spelling, date formats, headings, etc. You too can give your articles a look of orderliness using the concept of house style. Whether you choose to italicize your titles or use the Oxford comma, try to avoid inconsistency: choose your own recognizable style rules and stick to them.

Another important quality of exceptional writing is narrative elegance. Everything that you write has a narrative, meaning a certain organization. When your content is well organized and there is a structured progression of ideas, your narrative flows nicely. To give your writing this elegance, you have to create order in your ideas: divide your narrative into meaningful sections and look at which one flows better into the other. By arranging your ideas in a beautiful way, you can achieve narrative elegance.

You also want to consider elegance as a key principle in your decisions about paragraphs. Organize your material in an easy-to-follow, elegant, and logical way. Don’t let your paragraphs get too long: huge blocks are unappealing for readers. Switch paragraphs every time there is a meaningful shift in emphasis.

Another way to bring more elegance to your writing is to make sure paragraphs and sentences transition well. Your prose should move along with gracefulness, with a certain rhythm or musicality.

Finally, try to balance the weights and structure of ideas in your writing, avoiding mistakes in parallel constructions and word echoes (i.e. repetitions of the same word in proximity).

Evocativeness

Evocativeness is the piece that completes the puzzle: evocative writing is writing that has the power to move you emotionally and to fire up your imagination. As a writer, you don’t always need evocativeness, but this ingredient can add something to your prose if you know how to use it properly.

There are a few ways to brings elements of evocativeness to your writing. One way is to create variety: avoid sameness. Make your writing stimulating, don’t use the same kind of words.

Add freshness: ready-made stock phrases like “Needless to say”, “At the end of the day”, “In all likelihood”, etc. as well as hedging words such us “Somehow”, “Somewhat”, “It seems”, “It appears” just make your writing dull. If a word doesn’t add value to your sentence, remove it. Make conscious choices.

If you want to make your writing more stimulating for your readers, focus on people and actions because these are things they can visualize. When you’re trying to create visual imagery carefully consider the structure of your sentences: put the cause first and the effect second to make it easier for your readers to see a picture. In terms of evocativeness, using the passive voice can also make your writing less clear as the picture you are trying to create forms more slowly than if a sentence is phrased actively.

The takeaway

I know, this is a lot to take in, but I hope you found this information interesting and perhaps useful as I did.

It takes a lot of time to perfect one’s writing skills. You will get better with effort and experience.

These principles that I just illustrated are powerful tools you can add to your writing. Keep perfecting these techniques as you write, applying them to your prose for the best result each time. And practice, practice, practice until you find your own voice.