The Art of Writing — How to Be Good — In a Nutshell (or Two)

Writing is an art, indeed, in many cases.

What you need to be good at it? Follow these thoughts, it’s about jotting down ideas, appreciating the ideas, finding a structure, writing it down, make it emotional — and, also, selling it…

Why me?

Numerous types of writing exist, and often people might be surprised that one would call them that. As a literary M.A. of long standing and with even more reading to her name I can safely say I know most of what can be known about writing, especially in English or German.

Why care?

Writing in this day and age of internet, text messaging and blogging is the most often used format of sharing thoughts!
And even chatting is often, although apparently a casual format, the expression of that wish: to share.

What is Writing?

Would you consider a post in a forum ‘writing’?
Or an email?
Or a casual short personal message on one of the chat applications that have started flowering ever since IRC and its clients first came into being?

People often think of books being ‘writing’, only. Or perhaps even an article in a newspaper.
But anything written in words that is being created every day, is ‘writing’ — and the days of the internet have made the amount so huge it can be frightening to think of how much is being written — and how comparatively little is being read…?

Writing and Types

I stress this point to create a kind of awareness of types of writing.
I’ve mentioned a few already:

• books
• articles in magazines or
• articles in newspapers
• posts in a forum
• emails
• letters
• chat
• …

And some of these have sub-types. Most of them follow certain rules as regards structure, wording and length — or rather ‘shortness’.

So, don’t underestimate what you most probably are doing already every day!

How to Be Good at It

Practice, practice, practice!
Whenever thoughts come to your mind you like to share at some point, make notes…and again…and again…

About one of the most prolific German writers of the 19th century, Jean Paul, it was reported after his death that he had gathered thousands of little notes in small boxes for ideas about what to write.
He would take a small notebook and pencil everywhere he went and jot down ideas.

Take notes! And keep them, even if you don’t use them!

Find a Structure

To be good in a field and at a type or types of writing, such as scientific or fictional writing, poems or let’s say, philosophical writing, you also have to get your thoughts straight, structure them and make them clear.

This sounds easy but is not always, when you start out. Yet, if you are able to read this and want to — you will grasp the principle.

The Magic Three of Structure

The sometimes basic and simple rules of structure may seem daunting at a glance: but a few simple ideas and steps can get you started.

The three magic blocks of almost anything you can think of that is not poetry, are

• introduction,
• exposition, and
• conclusion.

It means that you start out with explaining your topic, a blog-post for example, or an essay.
You go on to explain what it really is all about.
You sum up with a few choice sentences.

What to Put in?

That depends a lot on what you want to do and whom you want to reach:

• Customers of a certain industry will look for one type of wording.
• Software developers will expect a wording fitting their field.
• Mathematicians will only accept what follows basic rules of expression and clarity, as well as use of formulas.
• People who know language will look for beauty of expression.
• People pressed for time will look for brevity!

That’s why people looking for a love story will not pick up a treatise on algorithms.

Your Audience is Key!

Whatever you write, you usually have a picture in your mind of whom you are writing to — or for.
But in some cases you may wonder: who are they? What are they like? What do they need — or want?

Find out about that first!
Rules might exist, where the audience is determined by the medium itself that you write for.
If no rules apply in the classical sense, such as a newspaper article, newspaper report or column — audience is key!

Address them!
Once you have that in front of your mind’s eye, writing will become a lot easier: such as thinking of your grandparents, when you start writing; or your kids, or your friends… or…

Sell it…?

Yes, sometimes, it’s about selling. Especially when you want to reach a large number of people with what you have written, selling — and making it about such larger audiences — has a lot to do with it.

In some parts of the world, ‘writing as an art’ and being famous for it is still considered to be some kind of a genius’ task, with inspiration and vision at the bottom of it.

But books that sell ‘by the bucket load’, are very much about the majority, in taste, in ideas — and they have to be sold.

This may sound disillusioning, if you were of the opinion that writing and fame could be still rooted in art alone.
But it is only partly. Because entertaining many people can be a task and an art, too.

And selling it to them.

Move Them!

At the bottom of most writing you can ‘sell’ easily is the ‘moving content’.
It simply means that emotions you are able to stir in your readers and a picture you conjure up in their minds using words, will keep them at it.

Move people, create emotions, even grave or scary ones, as long as strong - for strong emotions for most people are cue to anything they will go back to.

Consider these two sentences as examples:

“If the concept is calculated based on the reasoning used in the background, and relevancy and frequency let it become more probable, the recall and precision values are met to advantage.” *(random example)

“She looked at him with wide eyes, the dark room lit only by a candle that flickered nervously in the background. The shadows danced across his face, and the gleaming muzzle of the gun, he slowly raised until it had become level with her shoulder… He hesitated….”

The Sale

Above I mentioned already that certain circles still feel writing as an art should be based on artists’ and audiences’ inspiration alone, considering sales to be almost a vulgar idea in the face of noble art.
Yet, many books that are so-called best-sellers are based on the marketing, in that case, the agency used to sell them.

Agatha Christie is one example. The ‘Harry Potter’ series of books and its author Joanne K. Rowling are one of the most recent ones.
Both of them wrote about very commonly known subjects, drawn from numerous past examples, that is basically Gaelic / British fairy story tradition on the one hand and ‘whodunit’-puzzles on the other.

Style and subject matter are pleasing, exciting to many — and the wording fits what the majority of people can consume without much effort. They are not the only ones able to write like that. Multiple books out there fit this description.
But without the initial sale, the agency, the marketing, they would not be where they are now.

Summing it Up…

Writing, as you can see, is about a couple of things, to me it is mostly about these: share thoughts, and entertain, perhaps even educate.
Let your audience enjoy what you did!