The Four Cornerstones of Good Writing

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the world’s greatest writer. Certain forms of punctuation scare the _____ out of me. I’ve jumped through all the educational hoops there is and yet I still agonise over the minute details i.e. whether a semi-colon is appropriate or not.

Are the grammarians gathering at my front door to ring my doorbell and shriek through the letterbox as I type this? Probably, but it doesn’t matter. I feel I’ve learned at least a few things that might be of use to anyone who wants to improve their English-writing skills.

Whether you’re writing an essay or a book, there are four cornerstones of good writing that can enhance any piece of work.

1. Shorter is sweeter

Tolstoy may have been brilliant but he certainly wasn’t brief. Where possible, keep sentences short and to the point. If you think people are going to love looking up every complicated, Latinate word you include, you’d be wrong. If anything, surplus words dilute your message.

Of course, you are going to have to use longer sentences with multiple clauses some time or another, but remember that punctuation is your best friend in these instances. Don’t be afraid of inserting a comma or two, even if you feel it’s not quite in the right place, as long stretches of text without any break is a far more heinous crime.

2. Develop a style

Easier said than done, right? Most definitely.

I’m not going to lie to you: out of the four cornerstones, this will take the longest to develop. And rightly so – your voice is your biggest commodity. It is your take on life that will draw people in and keep them hooked as they navigate the metaphorical trenches of your story.

Every writer has a unique style because every writer has led a unique existence. To find yours, you must read widely, highlight what passages come at you like a sledgehammer to the face, and then thrash out your own ideas on a blank sheet of paper. So what if you end up with a bin full of crumpled-up papers; that’s what recycling is for.

3. Sell your story

This cornerstone is, in many ways, the yin to point number one’s yang.

Don’t feel afraid of being bold, idiomatic and free with your language. Even in academic works, which are notoriously sterile, I try to end sections with an elaborate sentence that both ties everything together and shows a stylistic flair.

Sell your story with examples that back-up what you are trying to say; with metaphors and similes that liven up your work and bring the person reading it in to your mindset. No matter what we write, we are always trying to forge a connection between reader and writer.

Just…try not to over-do it.

4. Presentation, presentation, presentation

There’s this old saying that I have a love/hate relationship with: you can’t polish a turd. I agree with it (not from first-hand experience, FYI). However, you can polish your own writing and make once dull words shine brighter than Tom Cruise’s zillion watt smile.

You may read something and wonder, “how did they come up with something so accurate, so brilliant, so thought-provoking?” Simply put, they probably didn’t. Not at first. Good writing is the product of many re-writes and many hours dwelling on a single word because you know you can think of a better one. It is a worthwhile agony since it brings you a kind of fulfillment that nothing else can match up to.

Sometimes the wording can be right but the structure abysmal. For blogs, it is common to see one-line paragraphs, scarcely found in books. This writing style is used because readers of a blog have the Internet at their fingertips, and are but a click away from abandoning a post once they discover it is a block of text, regardless of the quality of the content.

Break up your prose, make it digestible and you will be rewarded for it.