THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF WRITING
Most1. Read; critically or casually. (Either will help.) By all means, read junk books, so long as they're well written, in standard prose. For the purpose of improving oneself, a junk book (on a movie star, for example) may not be good. But for the purpose of learning how to write (esp. for ESL students) they're as good or better than "serious" literature. Because they're page-turners; the reader wants to keep reading (and understand everything). It's a sugar-coated pill. While the reader's goal is to find out how Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie live together, the reader is nonetheless learning about basic writing style. (Movie music works the same way. The viewer likes the music because it's played during a love scene or chase scene, but soon develops a mature musical appreciation.)
2. Lower levels of generality. In other words, SHOW DON'T TELL. Use concrete, specific, and proper nouns instead of abstract, general, and common nouns; and use strong verbs instead of weak verbs.
(Not, "my brother," but, "Oscar, my brother." Not, "He loved her," but, "He kissed her madly." Not "criminals," but "juvenile delinquents" or "drug pushers," etc. Not, "He walked home drunk" but "He stumbled home drunk.")
3. Link (Coherence). Each sentence should refer back to the previous sentence, usually by synonymic replacements. Here's a simple example: (a) "Jane went to the store. Jane bought apples. Jane baked the apples at home." = (b) "Jane went to the store and [she] bought apples. She baked them at home." (a) is not coherent; (b) is coherent. The good writer must learn to do this at a higher level of organization.
4. The 5 W's + H. (Who, what, where, when, why, how.)
5. Give examples. (But don't always begin with the words, "For example"!) "Many people are hurting from the economy. Cynthia Chen, from GHYZ University, explained how she didn't have enough money to pay for her school books." (I used an example without using "for example.)
6. Use dialogue when possible: See Example in 5, plus: "'I'm behind in my studies because I was unable to buy my Geology textbook,' Cynthia said."
7. Use the Communication Triangle: who is your reader (academics? young people interested in Tom Cruise?)? What is your purpose in writing (to show that Cruise is a good actor? to entertain young people with fascinating details of Cruise's life?)? What is the best language to use for your purpos and audience: Big words borrowed from scholarly literature on cinema (to convince academics)? Spicy language (to appeal to young audiences)?
8. WHOLENESS. This includes FOCUS and COMPLETENESS. Focus means having a main idea to which other ideas are subordinated. Completeness means nothing important is left out.
9. REVISE. Back to #1. Because real revision is impossible without good models in the mind to check against. Writing is a dialogue with what's already written to make it better, based on reading it again (I've revised this brief essay many times). Here the Communication Triangle is important; one can only see weaknesses in one's text based on an imagined receiver (listener, reader).
Revision can be as simple as backspacing to replace one word with another. Or days later one realizes one needs two or three introductory paragraphs to add to what one has written. Or one needs a stronger conclusion, or more or better examples. Or sentences must be recast or deleted. Or focus changed, coherence (linking) improved, words defined or defined more clearly or replaced with better words.
10. BE SELECTIVE in using the rules. When you know the rules, you know when to break them. This comes from reading=judgment. You know when it's better to be general or not to use dialogue, or even when not to link ideas too strongly, for the sake of style, such as humor: "Aunt Agnes came. Uncle Marty came. Cousin Nancy came. Grandpa and Grandma came. I looked at my tiny Toyota and I wondered how I could drive them all to the airport at the same time!"
In the example above I purposely avoided coherence (good linking) for comic effect. This is called style.
Now let's apply these Ten Commandments to a simple example:
"The woman likes to read. The woman bought two books. She brought the books home. She put the book in her bookcase. The books were by her favorite writer."
Revised: "Cynthia Chen likes to read. She bought Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and installed them in her bookcase. 'J. K. Rowling is my favorite writer,' she said.'"
The above brief sentence illustrates the 10 Commandments. I revised (#9); I linked ideas by replacement (#3); I wrote at lower levels of generality (named the books and the person) (#2); I used dialogue (#6); I used a strong verb ("installed" instead of "placed" or "put") (#2); I gave examples (#5); I answered the questions who (Cynthia), what (books), where (bookstore, home) (#4); I used the Communication Triangle (#7) (my audience knows the writer and author; moreover, the books are popular and mentioning them will arouse feelings in my reader; I used Cynthia Chen rather than Tom Peroni, because my reader is likely to be Chinese and my purpose was to be understood by young students in Taiwan); I was selective (#10) in applying the rules (I did not mention the name of the bookstore in this case because my main focus [#8] was on a Taiwan's student's favorite reading, not where she bought the books); finally, I mentally compared what I wrote with numerous essays and profiles I have read with satisfaction in the past and in this way was able to judge the adequacy of my own writing. Only by having tasted many good tomato sauces can the cook keep adding flavor until it matches the model in his head.
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