Three books on writing well
Writing does not come naturally to me. My brain is optimised for numbers and patterns, not words. Yet I persevere because it crystallises views, sparks conversations and can be helpful to others.
To improve, I am reading more generally, including books on how to write well. Thank you to two of my closest friends, cheerleaders and writing connoisseurs for sharing these with me. I hope they can be helpful to other aspiring writers as well.
On Writing Well, by William Zinsser
Zinsser was a writer and professor, who shared his best lessons on non-fiction writing in On Writing Well. These are the ones that have stuck with me, even if I don’t always nail them.
Write concisely and clearly. Go back and strip superfluous text, and strip again.
Have a hook from the very beginning. Don’t trust that your reader will stick with you without it.
Tell stories. Non-fiction can be made exciting and accessible this way, the opposite of a dry essay for a grad school assignment.
Quote other people where possible. Their words are far more expressive than a paraphrase, and they give the reader an insight into the character of your subjects.
Imitate other writers whose style you admire. I have attempted this with Kim Stanley Robinson when writing about the environment, Matt Levine for weird things in carbon finance, and Hanya Yanagihara for private reflections about my friendships. Experimenting with another’s voice has helped me develop my own.
On travel writing: take note of everything around you and immerse your reader with all their senses. Make it an adventure.
The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase, by Mark Forsyth
We learn illustrious writing 101 in school, when we study alliteration, rhetorical questions, and endless Shakespearean soliloquies. On Forsyth’s advice, I just used a “tri-colon” i.e. a three-part list, versus two or four. Three is more memorable and less jarring, and ordering them by ascending word length helps the sentence flow.
It wasn’t until reading this book that I understood “iambic pentameter”, the soothing and poetic cadence that Shakespeare is famous for. Iambic refers to the stress of the sounds in a word or phrase (tee-TUM, like “hello” or “the sun”), and pentameter means that this repeats 5 times in a line. So simple, yet not something I fully grasped when writing my own Hamlet soliloquy in Grade 12.
My favourite techniques that I want to experiment more with were:
Synaesthesia: the idea of confusing the senses to evoke a visual or emotion, like “smelling the sunlight” or “car honks slapping your face.”
Polyptoton: using the same word twice but to mean different things or play with it as a noun and a verb. For example, “grace me no grace,” by Shakespeare.
Hendiasys: converting an adjective to a noun for emphasis. For example, instead of “she wore a shocking dress,” write “she wore shock and a dress.”
Syllepsis: using one word in different ways in the same sentence, for surprise and emphasis. For example, the word “took”, in the phrase “he took his hat and no notice of his friends.”
Catachresis: when a phrase doesn’t make sense because it is wrong (grammatically or otherwise), but its incorrectness makes it sound great. Forsyth gives the example of “looking daggers”, while the concept reminded me of Doge memes: “much wow, many joy, very winter” etc.
Transferred epithets: giving adjectives to inanimate objects, but not quite to the point of personification. For example, “his eyes widened, and an astonished piece of toast fell from his grasp” by P.G. Wodehouse.
The War of Art, by Stephen Pressfield
The War of Art is another example of practising the voice of another author by personifying my own version of The Resistance. This book is about overcoming motivational struggles to write in the first place.
He makes the case, like many others, that great writers write. They are not necessarily born with writing talents, or the recipient of a divine gift. People become talented through practice and consistency, showing up every day no matter what.
This book is why I chose to start this daily writing challenge in the first place. It has forced me to constantly brainstorm ideas and to pay more attention to the world around me for inspiration. Without consistency, I wouldn’t have made nearly as much progress in the past two months.
Have you read any books that inspire you with the writing style, or that have improved your own writing? Reply with any suggestions.
Tim Harford does an excellent job at breaking down complex behavioral economics ideas in a clear and engaging way, mostly through story telling