Reach your writing goals (and have fun!) by being more curious, creative, and productive. Ann provides practical tips and motivation for writers at all stages to improve their skills, pursue publishing, and expand their reach. Ann keeps most episodes short and focused so writers only need a few minutes to collect ideas, inspiration, resources and recommendations to apply to their work. She incorporates interviews from publishing professionals and authors like Jane Friedman, Allison Fallon, Ron Friedman, Shawn Smucker, and Jennifer Dukes Lee to bring additional insight. Ann and her guests cover everything from self-editing and goal-setting to administrative and scheduling challenges. Subscribe for ongoing coaching to advance your writing life and career. More at annkroeker.com.
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Is Substack the Best Platform for Writers? Jane Friedman’s Expert Opinion
Wednesday, September 11, 2024 • Duration
Is Substack the best platform for writers? Is it right for you?
In this interview, publishing expert Jane Friedman explores Substack's social media-like features, blogging-like functionality, podcast-host possibilities...and its implications for writers. From using Substack "Notes" to community cross-promotion, it's an ecosystem worth understanding.
Substack is more than just newsletters—it's a blog, social media, podcast host, and email marketing tool all-in-one platform. Perfect for beginners, but should we trust it with all of our content?
Learn the pros and cons of Substack on our latest episode of the "Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach" podcast after skimming the show notes and summary below.
But first...
Meet Jane Friedman:
Jane Friedman has 25 years of experience in book publishing, with expertise in business strategy for authors and publishers. She’s the co-founder and editor of The Hot Sheet, a paid newsletter about the book publishing industry with over 2,500 subscribers, and has previously worked for Writer’s Digest and the Virginia Quarterly Review. In 2023, Jane was awarded Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane's website, janefriedman.com, offers a wealth of resources for authors. She writes many of the articles herself and also features guest writers who are experts in various aspects of writing and publishing. You may have followed some of the many links I've shared in my own newsletter, as Jane's content and curation of expert input consistently provides top-notch education and encouragement for writers across genres.
Jane’s most recent book is The Business of Being a Writer (sponsored post/affiliate link to Amazon) (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. And a new edition is to be released in Spring 2025.
Jane is everywhere. She’s been in The New York Times, The Atlantic, CNN, Wired, BBC, The Guardian, CBC, The Washington Post, Fox News, USA Today, and NPR.
And now she’s here on the "Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach" podcast, discussing Substack for writers.
https://youtu.be/JP2EuDDDGRI
Mentioned in the show (it's a lot!):
Read Jane’s thorough and thoughtful analysis of Substack from March 2024: https://janefriedman.com/substack-is-both-great-and-terrible-for-authors/
Sign up for Jane's free newsletter, Electric Speed, or see if The Hot Sheet, her paid newsletter for publishing professionals, is right for you.
Leigh Stein (switched from offering a free MailChimp newsletter to offering a paid Substack): the website signup page: https://www.leighstein.com/newsletter | direct link to “Attention Economy” substack: https://leighstein.substack.com/
Ann mentions paying for George Saunders’ “Story Club” substack: https://georgesaunders.substack.com/
And paying for Jeannette Ouellette’s “Writing in the Dark” substack: https://writinginthedark.substack.com/
Article in The Verge about the Substack controversy about Nazis using the platform: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/8/24030756/substack-nazi-newsletter-content-moderation
Alternatives to Substack include Beehiiv https://www.beehiiv.com/ and Ghost. https://ghost.org/
All the Substack newsletters Jane subscribes to here: https://substack.com/@janefriedman/reads
Courtney Maum’s “Before and After the Book Deal” https://courtneymaum.substack.com/
Elle Griffin’s “Elysian Press” (Jane warned that her decision to unsubscribe from all substacks and only use the app means she’s encouraging others to do the same and will lose all of her own subscribers): https://www.elysian.press/
Dr. Jen Gunter’s “The Vajenda”: https://vajenda.substack.com/
Peter Schoppert’s “AI and Copyright” substack: https://aicopyright.substack.com/
Benedict Evans’ tech analysis newsletter on his own solution (possibly MailChimp with Memberful, a WordPress plugin to manage the subscription version): https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter
Use what’s happened to you, to shape your writing
Friday, August 16, 2024 • Duration 05:30
“A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource," writer Jorge Luis Borges said in an interview, when asked about his blindness.
"All things have been given to us for a purpose," he continued, "and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”1
You may be familiar with Kate Bowler’s book Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved, and you might think it would push back against the wording of this sentiment.
Everything That Happens Can Shape Your Writing
But I take the quote’s overall message to mean we can work with whatever happens, good or bad. In fact, that’s kind of what Kate Bowler has done. Her misfortunes shaped her art.
This summer brought our family celebrations, gatherings, challenges, and losses. And they came so fast, I couldn’t find time to document them all. For now, they’re jumbled in my mind and heart.
Reflecting on Highs and Lows
The Borges quote encourages me to revisit the summer’s ups and downs when life starts to slow...to take my time as I capture the details (and emotions) of the chaos that whizzed past.
Will you join me?
As you reflect on the past few months—the moments you couldn’t control, the raw material of your life—consider how you can work with all that transpired.
Were there adventures? Celebrations? Humiliations? Misfortunes? Embarrassments?
From these "resources," we, as writers, shape:
stories that resonate
ideas that stick
opinions that stir discussions
advice that steers decisions
revelations that open others to new perspectives
We, as word artists, can transform all that happens to us into art.
Transform Experience into Creative Expression
As you reflect on the past few months—the moments you couldn’t control, the raw material of your life—consider how you can work with it.
Explore your journal notes, expand on fleeting thoughts, and, with your creative flair, discover the meaning and purpose within those experiences.
Whether they become part of a poem, essay, book, or blog post, see their purpose.
"Remember," writes Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird. "that you own what happened to you."2
Every event, episode, and experience contributes to your becoming who you are as a creative human.
Every hardship, misfortune, humiliation, joy, success, and celebration is a resource waiting to be shaped into art.
A Prompt to Capture Life’s “Raw Material”
Use this prompt to tap into the raw material of your life:
Something significant that happened to me is ______________________.
This is what happened: ________________________. Use vivid language and specific details as you recall the facts. What did you see, hear, or notice?
Here's how it shaped and changed me: _____________________. How did this experience shift your perspective, behavior, or beliefs? What did you learn about yourself or the world?
This is how I connect it with how it made me feel, deep down: _________________. What emotions did it stir? Did those feelings evolve over time?
Here's how I can use the experience in my creative life: __________________________. Could it inspire a story, poem, or essay? What universal themes does it touch on?
Your Creative Prerogative
The details may stay in your personal journal while the experience finds its way into your body of work in more subtle ways.
Your experience and insights may simply inform your work, your style, your ideas without being your work.
Or you may write it "slant," relying on metaphor to hint at its impact.
It's your creative prerogative to shape it as you wish.
Because the experience shapes you, but you shape it, as well.
Resources
What Lies Beneath the Surface of Your Life?
To Be More Creative, Write a Letter to Your Reader
Thursday, October 26, 2023 • Duration 08:24
Dear Writer,
It’s easy to freeze up when we’re writing for the faceless masses or the random reader who happens upon our words.
What do we say to all those people? How can we speak with heart to a total stranger?
Next thing you know, we second-guess our ideas, our prose, our very selves. We fade to beige without saying what we really think, without being specific, without our signature wit and whimsy.
What would that random person who doesn’t even know me think if I crack a joke?
We lose our creativity, our passion, our joy.
We freeze. We get stuck.
We’re afraid to stand out, so we play it safe. We write dull, ordinary prose that could be penned by anyone at all, even ChatGPT.
Unlock Your Creative Voice: Write a Letter to Your Reader
One way to unlock creativity is to write a letter—a letter to your reader.
And not just any nameless, faceless reader but a specific person you actually know.
Dear Anthony…
Dear Paula…
Dear Lissa…
When you think of the kind of person you’re trying to reach with your words, does Lissa fit?
Good.
Now, write her a letter about a question or struggle that she herself has voiced.
Weave in ideas that can help.
Encourage her with a vulnerable story.
Add a little pizzazz that only you can include—after all, she knows you. She’ll grin at your joke and “get” your allusion.
When you’re done, you can send her the note, if you want.
Or you can cross out Lissa’s name and replace it with the type of person you write for:
Dear Weary Homeschool Mom…
Dear New Gardener…
Dear Journaler…
If that feels awkward to publish, cross off the salutation altogether.
Dear Anthony…
Dear Paula…
Dear Lissa…
I’ll bet you can find a great hook in your opening lines, and the letter-writing trick disarmed you enough to write fresh and real and personable.
Writing a Letter to Your Reader Frees Your Natural Voice
From the writer’s perspective, writing a letter to your reader can remove that feeling of writing to the faceless masses and instead invite an easy tone and thoughts that convey empathy and intimacy.
J. Willis Westlake, author of an 1800s book about letter-writing, says:
In other [writing] productions there is the restraint induced by the feeling that a thousand eyes are peering over the writer’s shoulder and scrutinizing every word; while letters are written when the mind is as it were in dressing-gown and slippers — free, natural, active, perfectly at home, and with all the fountains of fancy, wit, and sentiment in full play.1
By tricking your mind into donning its dressing-gown and slippers, you can achieve that “free, natural, active, perfectly at home” tone, style, and voice. Your readers will love reading your “fancy, wit, and sentiment in full play.”
Genuine Letters Contain Our Most Interesting Content
And it’s not just our style, tone, and voice that letters unleash; it’s also the content itself.
Westlake continues, “Though written, as all genuine letters are, for the private eye of one or two familiar friends, and without any thought of their publication, they nevertheless often form the most interesting and imperishable of an author’s productions.”2
In other words, these letters contain our “most interesting and imperishable” ideas. So why not write them as letters first?
Discover Epistolary Writing
This letter-writing format is labeled “epistolary” writing. And the epistolary approach is used more widely in published work than you might be thinking. For example, advice columns.
Advice Columns
Advice columns like the classic “Dear Abby” and more recent “Dear Sugar” dished out empathetic responses that addressed specific needs that were sent in from readers.
The writer connected directly with the recipient who asked the initial question and with every reader who “listened in.”
Epistolary Nonfiction Books
Then there are nonfiction epistolary books,
What Lies Beneath the Surface of Your Life?
Tuesday, November 13, 2018 • Duration 09:03
[Ep 174]
In last week’s interview, Patrice Gopo described the stories that bubbled up inside her—personal stories about topics she cared deeply about as she grappled with her identity and where she fit in society.
Patrice grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, as a black American daughter of Jamaican immigrants. She wanted to explore that, to make sense of it all.
How?
Through writing. She turned to the essay to figure out her life, to delve into her experiences—to discover self and live a more meaningful life
We, too, can delve into our experiences, diving beneath the surface to discover ourselves and live more meaningful lives.
Elizabeth Lesser writes in Broken Open:
If we don’t listen to the voice of the soul, it sings a stranger tune. If we don’t go looking for what lies beneath the surface of our lives, the soul comes looking for us.
I haven’t read Lesser’s book, but that line urging us to look for what lies beneath the surface of our lives? We can use writing to do just that: to look for what lies beneath and listen to the voice of the soul.
Capture Ideas
It starts with an image, perhaps, or an interaction that bubbles up—a scene or memory. Pay attention to each one. Capture in detail this scene or image.
You can do this on the spot or during a writing session later. Add sensory details. Try to recreate it objectively. That helps to examine and explore the meaning in it.
If you don’t have time to write at that instant, jot down in a notebook a key word or phrase that can serve as a reminder or prompt. When you settle in to write it out in more detail, you’ll have many to choose from.
Anne Lamott captures these snatches on 3x5 cards she carries in her pocket. Patrice uses a simple composition notebook tucked in her bag. I use Evernote or Google Keep.
Ask Why?
When you write—when you start to dive in and look beneath the surface—be curious about yourself, about that scene or image or snatch of dialogue.
Why am I remembering that moment my dad grazed his leg with the chainsaw? Why does the sensation of flying back and forth in the swing keep coming back to me? Why does that glass doorknob make me tear up?
Patrice says that when we're trying to understand what's happening in our lives or in the world—when we delve deeply into an incident to see its significance and why it matters—that’s meaning-making on the page.
The incident could be big or small. As an example, Patrice said she noted in her journal that a couple of weeks ago her husband brought her a chocolate bar. It occurred to her he's been bringing her chocolate bars throughout their entire marriage.
Why?
Why are these chocolate bar moments over the years coming to mind? Why does he bring them? It seems small, but it’s rising to the surface. She’s listening to the voice of her soul.
She pulled out her composition book and started writing some of the other scenes and memories, all because she was struck by that recurring image of a chocolate bar.
She doesn’t know the answer yet; the meaning is unclear. For now, she’s exploring it.
We can do that, too.
We can write scenes and reflect. Let’s let curiosity and a sense of discovery lead us.
Stay open as you listen to the voice of the soul; look for what lies beneath the surface of your life.
You Don’t Need an Outline or Plan
Thanks to our early academic training in the essay form, it’s tempting to set out with a thesis and outline our way into understanding, theme, and meaning.
Resist...at least, at first.
Anne Lamott, in a podcast interview for "Books of Your Life with Elizabeth," says not to worry about outlines.
There’s that old saying that you can’t get lost if you don’t have a destination. People are always saying, “Don’t you have an outline?” And I say, “No, I don’t know what I’m doing. How would I be able to do an outline? I’ll find out what I’m doing by doing the writing.”
Start writing without knowing what you’re doing or where you’re going.
Ep 173: [Interview] Patrice Gopo on Meaning Making on the Page and Studying the Craft
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 • Duration 46:32
At Breathe Christian Writers Conference, held October 12 and 13, 2018, I interviewed three authors who served on the speaking team. We discussed all things writing, like their writing challenges, their writing process, and their advice for writers. All for you.
I’m sharing these conversations with you, mixing them in with my standard short solo episodes.
You heard from Shawn Smucker in episode 171. Today, I bring you the second interview: a conversation with Patrice Gopo. We discussed her work as an essayist and meaning-making on the page. She gives us an inside look at her writing process, including several techniques she’s used study the craft of writing as well as the importance of feedback.
I begin by reading her bio as we sat down to talk, so you’ll get the official info at the start. Today, enjoy getting to know and learn from Patrice Gopo (and check out multiple resources below).
Patrice Gopo’s essays have appeared in a variety of literary journals and other publications, including Gulf Coast, Full Grown People, Creative Nonfiction, and online in The New York Times and The Washington Post. She is the recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Literature Fellowship, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the author of All the Colors We Will See, an essay collection about race, immigration, and belonging. Her book is a Fall 2018 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.
Resources:
Patrice's Writing Resources: to help you develop as a writer - recommended classes, conferences, coaches and editors, craft books, and community
Sign up for her newsletter and receive an essay from the book along with the discussion guide: https://www.patricegopo.com/subscribe/
Patrice's website: patricegopo.com
Patrice on Twitter: @patricegopo
Patrice on Instagram: @patricegopo
Patrice on Facebook: @patricegopowrites
All the Colors We Will See, by Patrice Gopo [affiliate link, which means I will receive a small compensation at no charge to you if you click through to check it out and purchase]
All the Places We Call Home, Patrice's debut children's book (releases June 2022) [affiliate link]
Ann's Patreon account
All podcast episodes
You can subscribe to this podcast using your podcast player or find it through Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or Spotify.
Have you grabbed the free mini-course?
Make Your Sentences Sing:
7 Sentence Openers to Add Music to Your Prose
Go to annkroeker.com/sentenceopeners to learn more and to enroll for free. If it looks interesting, you can dive right in.
Ep 172: 4 Simple Ways to Put Your Own Writing First
Tuesday, October 30, 2018 • Duration 11:44
As you know from my interview with Shawn Smucker, he’s a novelist with ambitious goals—on track to write ten books in ten years. He's written three of his own books—two novels and a memoir. His fourth will be released in 2019.
To make a living, he works as a cowriter and ghostwriter. Several years ago he was hit with the realization that he could live his whole life writing books for others and never write his own.
With that, he made the switch to writing his own things first every day. It might just be for an hour, but if he commits to writing his own projects first, he knows it's going to happen.
Shawn’s wakeup call can serve as our own, calling for us to prioritize our own writing. If we don’t, other things will swallow our time and energy and we’ll have nothing left.
But when we do prioritize our writing—when we put our own work first—we start to achieve our writing goals and build our body of work.
We can bring our best, most creative selves to our own projects by prioritizing in four different ways.
1. Write Your Own Things First Every Day
Shawn prioritizes his own writing by literally doing it first—waking up early to commit a few minutes or a few hours to his work-in-progress. His secret is to follow a routine.
Morning Routines
Shawn’s routine has been to get up early, but instead of diving directly into the work-for-hire, he sits down and writes for an hour or so on his personal projects.
We can set up a routine, too: Get up early and write for 20 minutes or an hour on our own projects before proceeding with the rest of the day—ensuring that our work progresses.
Famous Writers’ Morning Routines
We’ll be in good company with this commitment to rising early to get to the work. In an interview for The Paris Review in 1958, Ernest Hemingway said:
When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.
The Telegraph reported that several famous authors rose early to write, including WH Auden, Beethoven, and Victor Hugo. They all liked to wake at 6am. Kurt Vonnegut and Maya Angelou rose even earlier. "Murakami, Voltaire and John Milton all set their alarms at 4am.”
So did Barbara Kingsolver. James Clear shared an excerpt of her explaining about the years when her kids were young. Back then, she said she rose early. “Too early,” in fact.
Four o’clock is standard. My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it’s because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head. So getting to my desk every day feels like a long emergency.
One way to prioritize your writing, then, is to give it the first hours of every day, rising early to do so. Get up, get to your desk, and start dumping those words out of your head. If it feels like a emergency, maybe that’s because it is.
2. Carve Out Time to Binge Write
Maybe early mornings and routines don’t work for you, at least not right now while you’re dealing with a broken arm or while you’re serving as a caregiver for aging parents. When every day seems disrupted by the next demand or emergency, routines may seem unattainable and you may need more sleep to get through the day.
Binge Writing to Make Progress
Try a different way to prioritize your work: by carving out a chunk of time to binge write.
Bec Evans, cofounder of Prolifiko, “the world’s digital coach,” concedes that binge writing overall is "less productive, leads to fewer ideas, more procrastination and even depression.”
But they surveyed writers on how they go about their work, and 36 percent of writers said "they wrote nothing for weeks, then had an intense period of writing. That’s the reality of their lives—bingeing is the only way they find time to write,
Ep 171: [Interview] Shawn Smucker on Cowriting, Ghostwriting, and Prioritizing Your Own Work
Tuesday, October 23, 2018 • Duration 46:16
At a writing conference held October 12 and 13, 2018, I interviewed three authors who served on the speaking team. We discussed all things writing, like their writing challenges, their writing process, and their advice for writers. All for you!
I’m going to share these conversations with you, mixing them in with my standard short solo episodes; in other words, you won’t be getting all three interviews in a row. But you’ll know an interview from a solo show because I’ll include “interview” in the subject line—that way you can set aside a longer chunk of time to listen.
Today, I bring you the first of the three: a conversation with Shawn Smucker. We discussed his work as a cowriter, ghostwriter, and novelist, and our discussion took place just before release day for his nonfiction book Once We Were Strangers.
Shawn Smucker is the author of the novels Light from Distant Stars, The Day the Angels Fell and The Edge of Over There, as well as the memoir, Once We Were Strangers. He lives with his wife and six children in the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You can find him online at www.shawnsmucker.com.
Resources:
Light from Distant Stars, Shawn’s 2019 novel
Building a Life Out of Words, Shawn's free e-book chronicling his first year trying to make a living cowriting
Shawn's website: shawnsmucker.com
Shawn on Twitter: @shawnsmucker
Shawn on Instagram: @shawnsmucker
The Day the Angels Fell [affiliate link, which means I will receive a small compensation at no charge to you if you click through to check it out and purchase]
The Edge of Over There [affiliate link]
Once, We Were Strangers [affiliate link]
Favorite books Shawn has re-read to analyze and learn (all affiliate links):
All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr [paperback]
Home, by Marilynne Robinson [Kindle ebook]
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson [paperback]
Lila, by Marilynne Robinson [Kindle ebook]
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson [Kindle ebook]
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving [paperback]
Ann's Patreon account
All podcast episodes
* * *
You can subscribe to this podcast using your podcast player or find it through Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or Spotify.
Have you grabbed the free mini-course?
Make Your Sentences Sing:
7 Sentence Openers to Add Music to Your Prose
Go to annkroeker.com/sentenceopeners to learn more and to enroll for free. If it looks interesting, you can dive right in.
Ep 170: How to Be a Better Writer (Pt 5) – Four Writing Tips
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 • Duration 08:04
Last time, we talked about the 6+1 Traits. When you take time to evaluate your work in each one, you can begin to identify areas of strength and weakness. Over time you can boost the weaker areas and become a better writer.
In the months ahead, I'll continue to explore ways we can improve our craft using these traits to organize each recommendation, but for now, I'm wrapping up this part of the series to bring you something new. I'll tell you all about it at the end of this post.
Writing tips, tricks, and tweaks offer immediate results, so here are four more tips to help you be a better writer.
1. Ban "the" at the Start of a Sentence
My brother, who teaches writing at a university, reminded me of this tip: Never use "the" at the beginning of a sentence. While this may seem extreme—even ridiculous—what it does is force you to find new ways to vary your sentence openers. “The” is a useful word in the English language, but let’s face it: launching a sentence with "the" doesn’t offer much oomph.
I could soften the tip and say, “Rarely begin a sentence with ‘the,’” but if you make it a rule—if you never start a sentence with “the”—you’ll force yourself to reach for creative alternatives. Almost any other word will hook the reader better than "the."
So do it; or, rather, don’t do it. Don’t start sentences with “the.” See if you don’t write with a livelier style.
2. Vary Sentence Constructions
The first tip leads to the next: vary sentence constructions.
If you signed up for the free mini-course "Make Your Sentences Sing: 7 Sentence Openers to Add Music to Your Prose," you’ll have one set of options you can use to mix up your sentence constructions. If every sentence began the same way, we'd be bored after only a few paragraphs.
So mix up the way you construct your sentences. When you stop using “the” at the beginning of your sentences, you’ll turn to the myriad options available to you. But think, too, of the whole sentence and how one flows to the next. Your sentences can vary not just with how you begin them, but throughout. At the editing stage, take time to craft your sentences with care and then read them aloud.
Listen for mood and tone and style—does it match what you’re trying to convey? Listen for pace—does one naturally lead to the next to keep you reading or do they lag and sag? Listen for musicality—do your sentences sing?
3. Vary Sentence Length
As we play with our sentences, we'll want to switch up not only the type of sentences we use but also their length.
Don’t fret about these sentence-level changes while writing your draft, but as you edit, listening for the effect of your writing from paragraph to paragraph, you’ll hear your sentences work together to form the complete thought or beat.
Sometimes when we churn out a draft, we fall into a steady output that spits out sentences of similar length. When you have several medium-length sentences in a row, the piece may struggle to hold a reader's attention. A longer sentence in there somewhere—created by combining two medium-length sentences—may be an easy solution to try.
Add punch every once in a while by inserting a super short sentence—even one with only two or three words. That’ll grab the reader's attention better than an exclamation point. Tell the story or explain the logic, then drop in a short one. Try it. You’ll start to see how it breaks up a paragraph and gives the eye a place to stop a moment and think.
4. Be Natural
Remember how our English teachers banned contractions and the use of the first-person singular? Well, live free from those restrictions, my friend. In most situations, you’ll sound best when you use a natural, conversational tone and style.
Use Contractions
One easy way to sound more natural is to use those contractions we were told to leave out of our written communication. Unless you write for academic journals, lose the formality. You will becomes "you'll.
How to Be a Better Writer: Boost All 7 Traits of Great Writing
Friday, October 5, 2018 • Duration 10:11
[Ep 169]
I’m glad to be back after an unexpected and lengthy break when I needed to care for a relative during a complicated emergency. I’m sorry I didn’t have a way to let you know in the midst of it, but it looks like things are slowing down and stabilizing. I’m back in business—able to encourage and support you and your writing again.
Before my break, we were discussing how to be a better writer. I focused on small, quick wins to help you improve your writing right away with tips and tweaks. If you implement them, you will see a difference in your writing right away.
But I realized I want you to see how all writing advice fits into the bigger picture of how we arrive at great writing, so I wanted to share with you the 6+1 Traits. Boost all seven traits, and you will be a better writer.
6 + 1 Traits of Great Writing
The 6+1 Traits, developed by Education Northwest and promoted by the National Education Association, provides K-12 educators a way to teach and evaluate student writing.
I used these categories with high school students and found that whatever their projects—essays, term papers, and creative writing projects like poetry and short stories—the seven traits gave me a way to instruct and provide input. And the traits gave them a way to think through how to make any given piece clear and strong.
Not Just for Kids: Use the 6+1 Traits for Your Own Projects
While it may be geared for training young writers, the categories are useful for all ages and all levels of writing experience. Whether you're writing a blog post, a social media update, or a book—fiction or nonfiction—the 6+1 Traits serve as useful reminders and guides for all stages of the writing process, from idea and developmental stages down to the final proofread.
I love that they don’t focus disproportionately on conventions—usage, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. It includes that as one of the traits, but only one of the key characteristics of writing.
By exploring each trait instead of fixating on one or two, we don’t neglect areas that need attention. In fact, examining all the traits, we identify strengths and weakness not only in a given project but also in ourselves as a writer.
They help us move toward excellence.
The Traits
What are the traits?
Ideas
Organization
Word Choice
Sentence Fluency
Voice
Conventions
The “+ 1” trait is Appearance. Appearance is optional because it doesn’t relate to the writing itself—it’s about how we present our writing.
Ideas
Ideas form the core of our writing.
When developing your project and later when you’re editing, start with the idea. To be crystal clear on it, express the big idea succinctly—in a sentence—and then read your piece in light of the idea.
In nonfiction, is your writing clear and focused on that idea or are you veering off into the weeds? Do your main points and examples offer convincing support? If your idea isn’t clear to you, your idea won't come across clearly to the reader.
In fiction, ensure your short story or novel idea is strong and clear: Does your plot work? Your character arc? How about theme?
When you clarify and solidify your idea, you can turn to the second trait: Organization.
Organization
You can start thinking organizationally about how to present your idea starting with the title and subtitle (or headline, depending on what you’re writing). And then your introduction with a thesis. Will you create subheadings to chunk your ideas and present them logically?
In fiction, you organize the piece starting with the title, subtitle, and the opening scene and the hook. You move through, scene by scene, organizing your story in a way that best fits, whether chronologically or using flashbacks. You decide how to structure and which POV will you take.
As you experiment with organizational options, you’ll have to decide which choices best order the ideas or plot so the reader tracks with the piece all the way to the...
Ep 168: How to Be a Better Writer (Pt 3): Write Tight
Tuesday, September 4, 2018 • Duration 11:06
In a recent release of Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell introduces his podcast listeners to Dr. Bernadine Healy.
In this episode, he asks Johanna Schneider, who worked with Dr. Healy at the National Institutes of Health, to describe her to listeners. Schneider said several things, including this: "She had a wooden sign on her desk that said, ‘Strong verbs, short sentences.’ And that was Bernie.”
Using that wooden sign’s message as a callback, Gladwell seemed to say that Dr. Healy's value of strong verbs and short sentences conveyed formidable strength, in person and on paper. A force to be reckoned with, Dr. Healy communicated with precision and clarity.
“Strong verbs, short sentences” reminds me of the advice we hear so often: Write tight.
“If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” ~ George Orwell.
“Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn’t be there.” ~ William Zinsser
“Omit needless words.” ~ William Strunk Jr.
I thought about stopping right there. I mean, “Strong verbs, short sentences”? Strunk nailed it.
Omit Needless Words
In an increasingly impatient world accustomed to texts, tweets, and sound bytes, this classic advice feels timely and, like it or not, necessary. Readers are impatient. We can’t waste their time.
As we embrace this new cultural tendency toward sentence fragments and textspeak, we can write so tight we squeeze out nuance, texture, and meaning. If we interpret “Omit needless words” to mean “Write in the sparest style possible, like Hemingway,” we may be missing the point.
The Elements of Style elaborates on its own concise, unambiguous, three-word sentence, “Omit needless words” when it says this:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. (The Elements of Style)
Let every word tell.
Make every word count.
Include Necessary Words
Instead of hacking away at our work, reducing it to a series of short sentences that hammer away at the reader’s ear, we study our work to determine the necessary elements. Sometimes, we need more words for clarity.
Our culture often points to Ernest Hemingway as the master of strong verbs and short sentences, elevating him to the master of concise, clear writing—so much so, someone created an app called The Hemingway Editor.
From its help page, it claims the app "makes your writing bold and clear...Almost any bit of writing could use some cutting. Less is more, etc…. So, the Hemingway Editor will highlight (in yellow and red) where your writing is too dense. Try removing needless words or splitting the sentence into two. Your readers will thank you.”
Using the Automated Readability Index, the Hemingway Editor evaluates the “grade level” of your writing style when you paste a portion into the app, which you can do online for free.
Turns out Hemingway didn’t write like Hemingway, at least not the way we’ve oversimplified his style, reducing it to strong verbs and short, declarative sentences.
Hemingway Fails
I plucked The Sun Also Rises from my shelf. Listen to this sentence:
He was married five years, had three children, lost most of the fifty thousand dollars his father left him, the balance of the estate having gone to his mother, hardened into a rather unattractive mound under domestic unhappiness with a rich wife; and just when he had made up his mind to leave his wife she left him and went off with a miniature-painter. (4)
That’s one sentence—just one. Penned by Hemingway himself.
For fun (and I’m not the first to try this), I pasted it into the Hemingway Editor online. This sentence received a poor score.
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