How to Write a Novel

Chapter Three - What is good writing?

Do you ever wonder what makes writing good or bad? You often hear that, so and so is a good writer, or this was terribly written, but what does that even mean?

As a storyteller, our job is to be an effective communicator of ideas. In another chapter, I talk about Ideas being Currency and to treat them with respect.

Your readers cannot read your mind, they only know what you tell them, and what they infer from your writing. You need to tell a compelling story that engages them, moves them, challenges them, makes them laugh, makes them escape their reality, and potentially reshape the way they think about the world. We need to enter the minds of our readers, paint a thousand pictures, write music, create worlds that come to life in the minds...and all we have is our words.

This is no easy task.

So, the better we are with our words, the better storytellers we can become.

The tricky thing about good writing is that it looks very simple, creating unreal expectations of the skill. In fact, to get to a skill level where your writing looks clean, simple, and error free takes many years of practice.

Writing well is more than having proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar, it's about:

1. Being clear

2. Being concise

3. Having purpose

Clarity — use plain language and write in an informative way that doesn't confuse the reader. Avoid complicated or obscure words (you're not trying to impress people with your vocabulary), provide proper context so readers are grounded within the scene. For example, having two random people talking – we have no idea who they are, where they are, what relevance this has, and so on. Word choice has a lot to do with clarity. Some words are ambiguous, vague, or leave too much open to interpretation, or they are colloquial and don't connote the same meaning in other cultures or regions.

Having your ideas connected and organized in a logical manner makes a big difference. One sentence should naturally flow into the next, and one paragraph should flow into the next. Having non-sequitur sentences and paragraphs will confuse readers and make you appear amateurish.

Conciseness — being concise is actually very difficult and takes a lot of practice. There's a really great quote from Blaise Pascal where he was writing a letter to his sister and he said, "I'm sorry to have written you such a long letter, I didn't have time to write a shorter one. The obvious implication here is that writing concisely is more of a challenge. Novice writers tend to use more words to explain something that an advanced writer could explain using fewer words. More words tend to overwhelm the reader and add to their confusion.

When looking at a paragraph, ask yourself the following:

· Does this provide value to the story or reader?

· If I remove this part (word, sentence, paragraph, chapter, section) will any important details of the plot be lost?

· How can I say this with fewer words?

You may find that you can omit redundant sentences, choose more appropriate words, or scrap entire parts altogether.

Sometimes you need to make tough choices with your writing. For instance, if you spent a month writing a chapter and it's the best thing you've ever written, but it doesn't fit the story, then it has to go. You must be willing to let go of your beloved text. If you don't want to delete it, cut and paste it in a separate file, but leave it out of the story. Despite what some authors think, not every word they write is important.

Purpose — another mistake novice writers often make is they meander with their thoughts. Good writing is focused, it has direction, it has purpose. Every word and paragraph is there for a reason to drive toward a particular point.

A common examples that comes up often are:

· Off topic or irrelevant information

· Redundant information

· Fluff that adds no value other than to pad your word count

o Meaningless scenes or conversations

All these things just convolute the purpose of the story, which is to communicate ideas effectively.

It's not easy to write a full-length novel and it may be tempting to pad your story with fluff to make up the difference. Unfortunately, this will not make people excited to read your work. Writing that has no clear direction or lacks purpose will turn readers off. 

This especially comes up a lot with dialogue, where two or more characters engage in a conversation for the sake of having a conversation. 

Ask yourself, "Is this conversation necessary?" or "Does it drive the plot further?" If the answer is no in both cases, you should probably revise it or take it out completely.