Writing is a form of communication, and all communication involves a sender, a receiver, and an intervening space that has to be bridged. When you sit down to write, however, that intervening space often seems particularly large and formidable.
Compared with communicating by speech, communicating in writing is more of a process whose outcome cannot easily be foreseen. When speaking to someone face to face you can make at least a rough assessment of what that person is like, and, as the conversation develops, you can adjust your approach to take into account what you learn from the responses they give. You can also use a whole repertory of body language and facial expressions to help communicate your message. When you are writing to or for someone, you cannot see them, hear them, or receive feedback. It is rather like speaking into a microphone for the benefit of a radio audience. You know that there is probably someone out there, but you do not know who is switched on and who is switched off, who is carrying on a conversation with someone else, who is making coffee, and who is hanging on your every word. Furthermore, as a writer, you have nothing to communicate with except the words that you write down on the page – no tone of voice, no smiles and grimaces, no nods and winks, no little movements of your hands. All the meaning signified by these little gestures has somehow to be put into the text, or what you have to say must be perfectly clear without them. It is no wonder that for some people staring at a blank piece of paper or a blank screen is a very intimidating experience.
Despite the difficulties just mentioned, almost everyone can, and almost everyone does, make contact in writing. The situation outlined in the previous paragraph has its advantages as well as its disadvantages. Chief among them is the fact that you are, generally speaking, far more in control when wielding a pen or tapping away at the keyboard than when holding forth extempore. You have time to prepare what you want to communicate; even more important, you have time to look at what you have prepared, think about it, revise it, and correct it. When speaking, you commit yourself at once. When writing, in contrast, you do not have to commit yourself until you are quite sure that what you have written is precisely what you want to say and that you have said it exactly in the way that you wanted to.
Similarly, you can control not only how your message comes across, but how you come across as a person. When planning or revising a text, it is worth asking yourself, ‘How does this make me look?’ You are under no obligation to show yourself warts and all. Creative writers often appear to have a different personality on paper from the one they show in real life – sometimes a better and wiser one, sometimes one that is more exciting and adventurous. But the same is true, to a greater or lesser extent, of everyone who writes. You may want to reveal a lot about your personality in a personal letter. In more formal writing, the usual aim is to appear as a mature, dignified and reasonably knowledgeable adult – with an individual personality, but without too many idiosyncrasies on show. The crucial fact is you are in control, able to define your own image, quietly, in your own time, just as you define your message.
In writing, as in conversation, communication is much easier when you already have, or when you have managed to establish, a rapport with your opposite number. Writing a letter to a close friend is generally one of the easiest and most pleasant kinds of writing there is. It is not too difficult, usually, to get an imaginary conversation going with them, because you already know what they are like, what they are likely to be doing, and how they are likely to react when reading your letter. All this in turn makes it much easier to write in your own voice, to write as you speak, with an individual turn of phrase or personal colour and tone. Ideally, some of this relaxed confidence and some of this personal flavouring should go into writing of a more formal kind as well.
‘Know your reader’ is a maxim that is constantly being drilled into writers. If you know nothing, try to find out something, or try to imagine what he or she might be like. If nothing else, imagine how you yourself would respond if you received a piece of writing of the kind that you are about to send to someone else. This is a good first step to opening the outward channels of communication and to getting yourself started. It helps to have a target to aim at; it helps to have at least an imagined ear to speak to.
The message has to be adjusted to suit the person for whom it is intended. It is obviously inappropriate to write to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the same way that you would to the manager of a local supermarket. Language, however, is an extremely versatile instrument. It can be made to express an enormous range of tones and to imply a wide variety of relationships between the writer and the addressee. Which style language to use on what occasion is a question that will be dealt with in chapter 8. For the moment is suffices to point out that until you have identified your reader, there are no sure grounds for deciding what tone of approach to adopt.
Whoever the reader happens to be, it will often be the case – especially in a work situation – that he or she will not have a great deal of time to spend on reading what you write. A friend may be happy to sit down and devote half an hour to rambling along with you. Customers and colleagues have other demands on their time. Imagining your reader also involves realistically assessing how much of his or her attention you are likely to be able to take up. This will vitally affect how you construct and express your message. Be clear – that is the golden rule, and be brief. Say what you have to say in as few words as you can without sacrificing clarity.
What constitutes clarity depends to some extent on the context in which you are writing. What is clear to a fellow professional or colleague may be anything but clear to a lay person. To explain something to a child may require far more effort than making it understandable to an adult. Again, you have to know your reader or imagine your reader, before you can decide, for example, how much technical terminology he or she can cope with.
Clarity and brevity are courtesies that the writer pays the reader, especially the reader who is pressed for time. But there are other courtesies as well. Communication is not solely about the passing on of information, although most of the types of writing that will be discussed in this book have that purpose mainly in mind. ‘Passing the time of day’ with someone is a legitimate form of communication too, though it often has no information content at all. It fills a vacuum, gives a friendly or courteous context to a meeting, or establishes a mildly friendly relationship between people. Even functional communications benefit from the human touch. Modern living involves a considerable amount of ‘talking to machines’, but the final thing to be said about the invisible reader is that he or she is not a machine. He or she will not take kindly to being addressed as one or apparently being addressed by one. If you have the confidence to retain your own natural and personal ‘voice’ while writing and the skill to refine and adjust it as the circumstances demand, then you will be able to bridge the communication gap effectively and satisfy most readers.
You must know what you want to say. That is the subject of the next section.
‘Where were you fellows when the paper was blank?’ – said by American comedian Fred Allen to some writers who had heavily edited one of his scripts.
One of the most common ways of getting started with any piece of writing is to wait until the deadline for delivering it is so close that a combination of guilt and despair drives you to put something – anything – down on paper.
It does not have to be like that, and indeed it ought not to be like that, because doing the job in a great hurry robs you of an advantage of writing mentioned in the previous section – time to think and correct. A piece of writing should be a considered opinion, not an opinion off the top of your head. Before you even begin to plan what you write, you need to plan your time so that you are able to do the job properly.
There are some people, whether operating under time constraints or not, who find it very difficult to plan things in advance. They need to do something, to move a pen over paper or put characters on the screen, simply in order to get their creative juices flowing at all. There is some validity in this approach, and something like it is often recommended for producing a first draft (see p. 191, ‘Drafting’). But ‘How do I know what I mean till I see what I say?’ is not a question that people with a more orderly mindset are likely to ask. Rushing in can waste a great deal of time and effort. If time is scarce, and it usually is, it should be used wisely and that means taking a more deliberate and more systematic approach.
One of the wisest uses of time is to think about precisely what it is that you wish or need to say. Especially in those cases where a quick scan is all that your piece of writing may receive, it is absolutely vital to be clear in your own mind what you want the reader to pick up. Obviously, if what you are saying is not clear to you, the chances of its being clear to the reader are very slim indeed.
Consequently, a systematic approach to writing demands that thinking about the topic – researching it, taking notes, and clarifying in your own mind precisely what information you want to convey or what point of view you wish to express – should precede any attempt to get things down on paper. In fact, it may be better to actively resist the temptation to pick up the pen or switch on the computer until you feel clear and settled about why you are writing and what you are saying. Then you may find it useful to compose a statement of intent, setting out in one sentence, or two or three at most, precisely what your purpose is in writing. Typical statements of intent might be the following:
To ask the council to move the zebra crossing in the High Street to a new and safer position.
To cancel the existing order for type Β gaskets. To replace it with a similar order for type C gaskets.
To make my boss see the advantages of getting time off in lieu in contrast to being paid overtime.
I want advice on how to make changes to my will.
The statement of intent does not have to be a proper sentence or one that you can incorporate into the piece as it stands – though it may be helpful if it is. Its purpose is to give you a starting point and a guideline. You may even want to change it later if, having thought more about it, you decide that your actual purpose is something different from what you thought it was at first. In any case, once your purpose and your ideas are clear, the time has come to consider how to organize your material in such a way as to carry out your task successfully.
All but the most informal and spontaneous pieces of writing will benefit from being planned in advance. Planning assists both writer and reader. A piece of writing with a clear and logical structure is easier for the reader to take in than one which is confused, rambles, repeats itself, or is connected in a way that makes perfect sense to the writer but which no other person is able to follow.
For the writer, likewise, the benefits of careful preparation are enormous. Filling the blank page or screen is much easier if you know not only what you want to say, but have worked out a way of saying it. Making a plan also forces you to clarify your message further. It should help you to distinguish between the more important and less important among the various things you have to say. It also makes it easier to see which items belong together.
Once a plan has been made and been found to be generally satisfactory, it also serves as a guide to progress. You can see how far you have reached and how much remains to be covered. Teachers frequently stress the importance of a plan, if only a rough one, for candidates writing essays in examinations. With the aid of a plan, examinees can pace themselves, ensuring that they leave enough time to cover all the crucial points. Few other people are forced to write against the clock in quite the same way as examination candidates, but there are often other constraints on one’s writing. For example, space. If you have only 2000 words at your disposal, then planning should enable you to allocate them sensibly. Finally, for those who have particular difficulty with beginnings, the construction of a plan enables you to start somewhere else. Begin with what comes easiest. Use it to get yourself going. Once the writing process has begun and you have achieved something, it is psychologically easier to go back and start to fill in the blanks.
How, then, do you go about making a plan? First, for all but the briefest and most informal writings and for all but the most organized and retentive of minds, a written plan is far better than a plan made in the head. Pieces of paper can get lost, but ideas that are not put down on paper can get lost far more easily.
What can be used to help make a plan? If what you are writing is based on something else – if, for example, you are replying to a letter – your plan may simply reflect the shape of the other document. Planning is easy if your purpose is to answer a letter, query, or complaint point by point. If what you are writing relates to a topic that has already been given to you – if, for example, you are writing an academic essay on a subject set by a teacher or examiner – then the key words in the title will probably act as cues. An essay title such as ‘The effects of colonial expansion on British foreign policy between 1748 and 1815’ contains four basic concepts ‘effects’, ‘colonial expansion’, ‘British foreign policy’ and ‘the period 1748 to 1815’, all of which provide focal points for clusters of ideas. If you have had to research your subject, then the notes of your findings are the obvious source of the ingredients for a plan. Another useful strategy is to enter into an imaginary conversation with your potential reader. Ask yourself the kind of questions that what you are intending to say might arouse in his or her mind. A short cut to this procedure is simply to jot down a series of question words: what? why? how? who? when? and where? The answers, as they relate to your particular topic, will frequently provide a useful basis for your plan. If, however, none of these is appropriate, and you are starting from scratch merely with an intention to write on a particular subject, then the best policy is usually to jot down any thoughts or ideas you have had on the subject in any order, and then try to sort them out.
It is very likely that as ideas come, they will begin to form themselves into groups and even to line themselves up in the order in which they might be presented. If they do not, then the next stage in the process is to shape them into order.
The structure that you choose for a piece of writing varies according to the kind of communication that you are preparing. Certain kinds of writing – such as the academic essay and the report – have a standard form which you depart from almost at your peril. Business letters also tend to follow a standard pattern. These patterns will be discussed later in the appropriate sections (‘Business letters’, pp. 242–51; ‘Reports’, pp. 269–73; ‘Essays’, pp. 283–91). There are a few general rules, however, which are applicable in a large number of cases, especially in functional writing.
The sooner you start your main intention, on the whole, the easier it will be for your reader to grasp the thread and to hold on to it through the rest of your writing. Start, writers are sometimes advised, with your conclusion. State the information that you have to give or the opinions that you wish to express straight away. Spend the rest of the time and space that you have available in providing support for the information or opinions. The reader, especially the reluctant reader or the reader under time constraints, will often thank you for encapsulating your message in a pithy opening sentence or paragraphs, not least because he or she is thus given the choice of whether to read on or not. Your opening, in this case, is like the headline of a newspaper report. As in a newspaper report, the logical order to follow is to place the points that support this conclusion in their relative order of importance, beginning with the most important and ending with the least. Readers can stop at any point once they know all they feel they need to know.
For example, take one of the statements of intent given on pp. 185–6. You intend to write a letter to the council asking them to move a zebra crossing. You have noted the facts that:
There was nearly an accident on the crossing last Thursday;
You know the crossing as a pedestrian and a motorist and don’t feel it’s safe from either point of view;
The crossing is on a bend;
The cars and lorries parked on both sides of the road make the crossing difficult to see;
Children use the crossing going to and from school;
You are willing to support a public protest.
It might seem tempting to begin the letter with the first point, especially if witnessing the near accident and being shocked and angered by it is what has compelled you to write. You might feel that the council need alerting to the fact that there is an accident waiting to happen and begin ‘There was nearly an accident…’ or ‘Did you know there was nearly an accident…?’ But your primary purpose is not to report the near accident but to urge that the crossing should be moved. You could begin with the accident, mention the other points, and conclude with something like: ‘For all these reasons the crossing must be moved.’
However, the better tactic is to begin with the main point, which can itself be strongly stated: ‘I feel very strongly that the zebra crossing in the High Street should be moved from its present position, which is very unsafe. I feel so strongly in fact that I should be willing to organize or support a public protest…’ The person who reads the letter should be left in no doubt as to what you are writing about or how strongly you feel. The best continuation then would probably be to set out why this crossing is always going to be dangerous – its position on a bend, the parked cars and lorries – and only then mention the specific event last Thursday.
Even if you want to keep your reader with you to the end, a statement of your aims and intentions or why you are writing still makes a useful starting point. There are many other possible ways of arranging material apart from listing supporting arguments in descending order of importance. A chronological or sequential approach will often make sense if you are talking about a process that proceeds step by step. An analytical breakdown of the main points of an argument or proposal may well provide a suitable framework. Here the technique of holding an imaginary question-and-answer session with the reader particularly comes into its own. Alternatively, a comparative structure may suit the subject. The events or performance of one year can be placed against those of another or the advantages and disadvantages of a particular course of action can be set out against each other. In cases where your task is to persuade or demonstrate something, then a logical and deductive sequence might be the best option. If A is the case, then the consequences are likely to be Β and C and therefore the best course of action to adopt is D.
There are many more types of possible plan than can be discussed here. What is important is to note that the material should be clearly marshalled to suit the writer’s purpose and to assist the reader’s understanding.
The way that you choose to lay out your plan on paper depends partly on circumstances and, in particular, whether you have to show the plan to anyone else. The principal purpose of an outline is to serve as an aid to the writer. As such it can be in any form that the writer chooses and as rough or smooth as he or she decides to make it. The most obvious form of outline is a list of points. If a list of points is compiled on computer, it is relatively easy to rearrange them, to make a subpoint into a main point and vice versa. The list of points can, if the writer wishes, be converted into a series of headings to form a skeleton for the piece and an easy reference guide for the reader. Each main point in the list should be followed by a list of subpoints which, ideally, would correspond to the paragraphs in a particular section. Especially in the earlier stages, a diagrammatic form may help to show how the various points relate to one another. A ‘web chart’ with the key words or points in boxes and radiating lines extending outwards to related concepts is one useful format. Presentation in the form of a flow chart may look better than a simple list and give a sense of onward progression in the writing. Some people recommend that, even at the planning stage, everything should be written in proper sentences. This maybe a useful discipline – especially where a plan has to be submitted for someone else’s criticism or approval – but in most cases notes will suffice.
Having constructed a plan, it is vital to check it. Check it first against your statement of intent if you made one. If your original intention and your initial plan vary, then one or the other must be changed. It may well be that the thinking that has gone into your plan has clarified your sense of what you want to say or your sense of priorities. If so, all well and good. If, however, your original intention remains paramount and a self-critical analysis suggests that the plan you have devised does not represent the best way of putting it across to your reader, then the plan must be changed. Making minor adjustments may be sufficient, but it may have to be discarded completely. Another structure or another approach may have to be tried. The only consolation in all the labour of these early stages of writing is that false starts usually lead to respectable endings. Preparing the piece may take as long as writing it, but preparation time is seldom wasted time. The benefits of having a reliable working plan outweigh all the agonies of trying to get it right.
In a stage-by-stage process of producing a written document, the stage following the construction of a plan is that of writing a draft, a draft being a version of the document written out in full and approximating to what you eventually intend to present to the reader.
A piece of writing usually goes through several drafts before it reaches its final form. The precise number of drafts will depend on the status of the work, the perfectionism of the writer and, not least, the time remaining to complete the task. A book, a shorter piece of creative prose or verse, or an important report will probably go through three, four, or even more drafts before reaching its final form. One draft will usually suffice for a letter, unless this first attempt shows major flaws.
When a draft is complete, it should be looked at very carefully, errors should be corrected, parts added where necessary and, perhaps more important, parts left out which are superfluous. Once a draft has been thoroughly revised, a new draft should be written incorporating all the satisfactory parts of the previous one together with any new additions. The drafting, revising, and editing process should continue until you are satisfied that the writing fulfils all your intentions, and then a final copy can be made.
The function of the first draft is to put flesh on the bones of your original plan. Ideas, notes, and plans are all very well, but the finished product has to appear in the form of connected sentences and paragraphs. The first draft marks the transition from the preparation stage to the stage of execution.
It is at this point that you are finally confronted by the dreaded blank page or screen. A writer who has gone through an extensive preparation process before beginning, however, is now generally at an advantage over one who starts from scratch. If you have thought about your subject matter, are confident about what you wish to put across, and have armed yourself with a detailed plan, then the chances are that you will have little difficulty in beginning at the beginning. But if for any reason the opening paragraph or section is a difficult one – and the beginning is vital, not least because it has to catch the reader’s interest and compel him or her to read on – then, as has been mentioned before, provided you have a plan, it is always possible to start elsewhere.
The first draft also provides the writer with something to work on. Once the draft is there, the page or screen is no longer blank. And, though editing and revising may sound like a chore, for many people working on or with something that is already in existence is far easier and more rewarding than plucking ideas or words out of the air. A potter slaps down a lump of clay on the wheel and the most productive and satisfying part of the job is fingering and moulding the material until it reaches the desired shape. The writer has no comparable material to work with until he or she has put down many words on paper. Then, what is for many the most interesting part of the task commences – making it into an effective and elegant expression of your thoughts and intentions.
Producing a first draft usually falls into the category of activities carried out for the writer’s own benefit. The first draft is for his or her eyes only. It is an opportunity to discover problems and make mistakes. It is also generally recommended that the first draft should be written as far as possible in your own words and in your own voice. ‘Your own voice’ is the way of writing that comes naturally to you, writing as you personally would speak. Many, perhaps most, people ‘hear’ the words in their heads before or as they write them. If the inner voice speaks, follow it when writing the first draft. For all that has been said about knowing and making allowances for your reader, at this stage the important thing is to implement your plan and to get something down on paper or on the computer. You need not necessarily try too hard to achieve precisely the correct tone first time, certainly not if it involves any cramping of your own style or stemming your own flow. Adjustments can come later, when revising.
Bearing all this in mind, it is usually better that a first draft should be written in fairly long stretches and at a reasonable speed. The important thing is to get something continuous down on paper or on computer, and anything that militates against this should be avoided. For this reason, it is usually better to make editing a separate process rather than something you do as you go along. There are often practical problems involved in writing for a longish time at a stretch. Freedom from distractions is not always easy to come by in the modern office or the modern home. But much more can be achieved when you get a flow going than can be achieved in fits and starts. In particular, when the first draft has to be written, when what have been points and notes become paragraphs and sentences and what has been an outline or skeleton becomes a piece of extended prose, a period of quiet, concentrated time is of great importance.
The purpose of a draft is to allow for editing and improvement, so it is important to present it in such a way that corrections, deletions, and additions can be clearly made. This usually means typing with double spacing or leaving substantial gaps between the lines of a manuscript. It is far less convenient to have to make editorial notes on a separate sheet of paper, which, apart from the fact that it may get lost, then has to be put together with the actual text. For the same reason, when working on a computer, it is usually better to print out the text so that you can write over it rather than trying to do all the editing on screen.
Revision is not only an essential but also a creative task. If the right word or the best way of putting something did not come in a flash of inspiration, then the revision stage is the point at which you may arrive at it by thinking and reflecting or perhaps by consulting a reference book such as a thesaurus. There are a number of technical checks that need to be undertaken when revising, especially a careful examination of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. These are matters dealt with at length in the first part of this Writer’s Manual. A further task is to work on the details of sentence and paragraph construction and general style. These too are subjects that deserve more than a passing reference; the next chapter in this book is devoted to them. Perhaps what needs stressing most at this stage is that revision need not be a chore. A good deal of the hard work is already behind you. You have decided what you want to say, you have planned how to say it, indeed you have already said it after a fashion. Now is the time to ensure that it truly conveys your meaning to the reader and does so in a way that not merely presents no bar to communication but also, where appropriate, gives him or her a positive pleasure.
A few practical hints with regard to the revision stage. It is, as has been said, usually easier to edit on paper than on screen. Printing out your work also gives you a broader overview – not many double-spaced lines appear on a computer screen at any one time – and, furthermore, shows you how the piece will look when it goes onto paper. Where circumstances allow, it helps to leave an interval of time between the writing of a draft and its revision. After time spent doing something else, you may well be able to come back to your writing with fresh eyes and a greater willingness to be self-critical. Not only that, but the unconscious mind tends to work on in secret, while your conscious attention is directed elsewhere. You may find that, by allowing a period of time to elapse, you have solved some of the problems that you encountered on the first draft. For an even fresher view of the situation, show what you have written to someone else – preferably someone you trust and whose judgment you respect – and ask for his or her comments. It is not always advisable to do this with a first draft, which is in many cases made in order to be discarded; but a second or third draft, which you have already gone over carefully yourself, will probably benefit from a friendly but critical assessment by someone else. Finally, writers, like everyone else, must learn when to let go. It is possible to get into an obsessive state aiming at a degree of perfection that is always just beyond your grasp. Prepare, draft, correct, revise, redraft, and polish again, but then release your writing to the world.