“Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn’t. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still… you look at all this stuff with a grain ” – Mickey Spillane, author of lots of pulp detective stories.
Category / Why I didn’t write today
6 tips on how to write good English from the bloke who did ‘1984’…
You can write, right? You can construct a sentence, hold your audience and get your point across? Or at least you like to think so? Even the best of us can improve though, you should take a look at this…
As you may have seen, the novel ‘1984’ has had something of a second birth recently – due to a mixture of the current political climate and the simple fact that true classics never die. Like fashion, classic books tend to be reinvented by shifts in culture.
It’s been sitting in bestseller lists since it was first published in 1949. I vividly remember the first time I read it, some thirteen years ago.
I’m not sure if you were aware, but Orwell actually came up with a few succinct rules that anyone who wants to write English (well) should follow. I thought I’d share them with you on this Tuesday Evening, and I’ll add my own two bits underneath each one.
– Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Be original and don’t sound like every other soul out there. This is especially relevant now, as with the internet everyone has a voice and a platform to broadcast it from. Any two-bit writer (ahem) can start up their own blog with a silly name and starting typing! To stand out, the majority of your words need to be cliche free.
– Never use a long word where a short one will do.
Long words may go down well with an academic audience, but not every audience member is going to have a MENSA membership. Big words tend to break sentences up and if a reader snags too much while looking at your piece their minds and their eyes will soon wander…and you don’t want them to go off and buy ‘The Sun’, do you?
– If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Less is more. With every sentence you write you’re fighting to keep your reader, so don’t drone. Be your own editor too – look everything over, and don’t be afraid to cut bland words out. You’ll also be surprised at how many typos you make when you look back at what you’ve done.
This isn’t your ‘6000 word’ University essay – you don’t need to ‘pad it out’.
(Ignore this if you’re still a student – pad away!)
– Never use a passive where you can use the active.
Active makes for exciting writing. Who gets off on reading boring stuff?
Active: The dog bit the man.
Passive: The man was bitten by the dog.
See this example here? Admittedly it’s not the longest sentence either way, but the former grabs you right away – it’s snappy (pun!) and to the point, and you’re instantly waiting for the next sentence. Whereas the latter feels a bit slow, and you have to almost compute it before you read the next sentence.
– Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Goes hand in hand with your audience – by all means use exciting words and turns of phrase – but if everyone was well-versed in jargon they wouldn’t call it jargon. Think of the internal frame of the business you work for – would your average joe (or reader) know all of your office slang and corporate terms?
Err…wot’s ROI?
– Break any of those rules sooner than say anything barbarous.
I Googled what barbarous meant. It means brutal. I guessed that because it sounded like ‘barbarian’ and barbarians aren’t known for being gentle, especially Conan.
Come on – you were wondering why I had a pic of Arnie instead of Orwell, right?
If you’re interested in Orwell’s essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’ check it out here.
Words that are wise
“A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it”
– Dr Johnson
What took you off the sofa today?
The writing that connects with you emotionally is the best. You must have had it before where you’ve read a few sentences, and had to look up from the page and take a moment to reflect on how much you can relate to it.
Not only that but great writing can also change your perspective on so many things, or at the very least give you an insight into why others’ perspectives differ from yours.
Sorry if I’m stating the obvious, but sometimes in life I feel we need to be ‘Captain Obvious’ occasionally and remind ourselves of the things that we take for granted.
But where do you get the ammo? I mean sure, some of us are born with a natural affinity for words – some people can construct a sentence with enough flare and gusto to match a West End show. But, without having the right topic to talk about – flowery writing is just flowery writing. Almost like a piece of average art – hung up in a corner of your house that you never really look at, pleasing to the eye but otherwise useless.
To me, it comes from experience – I love reading stories about faraway lands and cities I’ve never seen. But the ones that get to me the most, with the devil in their detail, are those that are written by people who have actually gotten out of their sofas and been there.
So this is one of the things I’m going to do to make sure that I write more, and better. I’m going to push my boundaries, get out of my sofa more and take in more of what life has to offer.
As we all know very well, it’s so easy to get involved in solving life’s day-to-day problems that you can sometimes lose sight of the great stuff happening around you.
Success. Cubed.
“The object of the game is to win”
– Football coach Vince Lombardi when he was asked what the game was all about. A nice window into the mindset of the motivated.
When the world zigs, zag.
It’s a Saturday morning, and I thought I’d kick off the day by sharing this image. It’s one that I always go back to, in a effort to remind myself that sometimes the greatest ideas are the simplest.
It was 1982 and everyone was wearing blue jeans, as they had been for many years. Levi Strauss was considered the market leader and zillions of people all over the globe would visit their stores to get their jeans.
However, there were rumours that denim was going out of fashion and so Levi’s wanted to play a daring ace card…they wanted to launch black denim. Something pretty alien to their customers at the time.
They approached advertising agency BBH and thus the poster above was born, and it was a rip-roaring success.
Many fashionistas like to go against the grain, and be different from ‘sheep’ the world over so the image of the black sheep going against the tide appealed to them.
Not only that, but the clothes we wear are a form of expressionism and we all like to think we’re an individual – just like the black sheep in that picture.
Looking at this also makes me want to go out and buy Levi’s jeans…why must I be such an easy target for advertising bigwigs the world over?
A dinner party for strangers…
You’ve been asked to help your friend host a dinner party. You’re a decent cook and you know your way around a wine-food pairing scale, so you should have no problems.
The catch is…you don’t know any of the guests – they’re all your friend’s friends. Of course that’ll create a few general social hurdles for you to scale when the night comes, such as initiating conversation with strangers (!!) – but, the main obstacle is having to cook and prepare a night of entertainment for some people you know nothing about.
So what do you do? I mean, yeah you can create an all-rounder menu that you hope everyone will like – but then, particularly in this day & age, diets are so widespread that you could majorly miss the mark. And hell hath no embarrassment as embarrassingly embarrassing as mild social embarrassment, right?
Imagine the social ramifications – a collection of eyeballs bulging out as you dare to serve brie to a vegan! Or, on a somewhat darker note, the chance that the cake you prepared might trigger off a nut allergy – meaning a change of location from your living room to A & E.
And, believe me, the options in A & E vending machines aren’t gourmet. Even if you put a cocktail stick through them.
How would you resolve this predicament? It’s simple really. You’d investigate. You’d ask your friend and perhaps use social media to check their friends’ Instagrams – as, let’s face it, if a meal is munched without being uploaded to Instagram, was it even consumed at all?
But the point I’m driving at is that you’d research. You’d get an idea of who you were cooking for, and you’d make up your night accordingly. Creating a menu to accommodate everyone – a peppering of personal flair here and there.
My question is – why wouldn’t you do that for your writing?
Whether it be a blog post, a sales letter, social content, a novel, etc – you need to have an idea of who you’re writing for and what they’d like.
Next time you sit down to write something, take a little time to do some research about the kind of person you’ll be writing for.
Those reading a ‘young adult’ novel aren’t going to want to read a breakaway chapter about Thatcher’s Britain, while senior citizens aren’t going to respond very well to a meme about how annoying it is when your mum disturbs your FIFA game by calling you to dinner.
Personalisation is the key to connecting with your audience, and if you’re not interested in finding out about them you’ll struggle to engage them.
If a tree falls in…
…the middle of the forest, and there’s no one around to hear it – does it still make a noise?
There’s a question to kick off the long Easter weekend.
Answers on a postcard, please.
Minimalism and the never-ending ‘how are you?’
So, you’ve got a day to yourself and you’ve got a little bit of money in your back pocket. You decide to go shopping and pick up some new clothes, because let’s face it – even the best stocked wardrobe needs to be freshened up every now and then.
You walk into one of those kind of sleek clothes shops that have more mannequins than clothing lines – you know the type I mean, right? The sort of uber-white, brightly lit joint that’s so minimally minimalist you almost think you’ve accidentally walked into an empty lot.
As you enter a sales assistant walks past you – stopping briefly to assess you. They work out your social stature, your waist size and whether or not you fit in with their pre-programmed ideals of what looks best for the brand.
“Hi, how are you?” they sing out cheerfully, a couple of coat-hangers strung over each shoulder – the attached garments billowing out in their wake like a cape. A superhero for the well dressed minimalist capitalist consumer.
So, what do you say? I mean you’re not going to open up your deepest, darkest fears to a stranger are you? Well, you might. But most likely you’ll just say “I’m good” and then go about your day…staying perhaps a couple more minutes before you decide that a white t-shirt with a full stop in the middle isn’t going to make you look as cool as the person you want to be.
But do you know what I always say?
I always say, “I’m good thank you, how are you?”
And do you know what they say? Nothing. They’ve already walked past and gone back to their day – forever leaving me hanging.
Not just clothing shops, but all sorts of stores, restaurants and even bars. I’m always left wondering how they are and how their day is going.
Why do I ask? Why do I care?
Because I feel that, as a writer, I need to be in tune with other people…I need to be interested in other people.
Because that’s where the true stories lie – the beauty of observation is that it’s so easy! There are great characters all around us, with great perspectives and feelings – but if we don’t take any notice of them, we’re losing free research. A free chance to craft and calculate new characters.
It’s a well-known fact that many authors base characters on people they’ve known – because the best characters tend to originally be born of flesh and blood – not from the factories of the creative mind. Or, at least not fully.
So, open your eyes/ears and ask someone how they are.
Unless you can get Beyonce to sing halfway through your story…
In yesterday’s post I touched on the subject of sport, and I kept on thinking about it afterwards.
If the statistics that a quick Google search have given me are to be believed…and, let’s face it, in this world of ‘alternative facts’ you never know…association football is the most popular sport in the world. With a whopping 3.5 billion fans spread across the globe!
I’m happy to admit that I’m in that number.
One of the things that I’ve noticed about football, which sets it apart from many other sports, is that it’s a fast-paced, free-flowing game. Asides from a fifteen minute break between halves the action is nearly continuous – only ever broken up by the occasional free-kick, throw-in or injury.
That makes it fairly easy to watch and it means that, unless it’s an incredibly boring game, it’s harder for the average viewer to get distracted. I’ve tried to watch sports such as cricket or American football before and I’ve never found myself as involved. The pace of cricket can be slow and a match can often last a very, very long time – I’m stumped as to why anyone can actually like it! When it comes to American football, my lasting impression is that a game seems to have more stoppages than national rail!
I find that this is something that I can attribute to my writing. I won’t lie to you, as an up and coming writer I’m looking to write for a wide target audience right now and will continue to do so until I make my name.
Any marketer worth their salt will tell you that the average Joe (or Jane) has a short attention span, so when they’re reading a story the action and the dialogue needs to have a zip and a zing to it or else their readership will soon decide to put the book down and go back to their busy lives…or at least update their Facebook statuses and find the right Instagram filter for their next meal.
So, the lesson for you and I today, is to find a flow to the action of the story and once we find it – we need to make sure that we keep it going. We should only break for long, drawn-out paragraphs of self introspection when we really have to.
Although having said that, if anyone can make their novel like the Superbowl and have Beyonce singing halfway through, that will probably work too…so don’t fully rule other sports out!
Congrats to anyone who can correctly recognise the guy in this blog’s featured image.
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