HOW TO WRITE
The successive steps in writing are:
1. Have a subject that appeals to you, and write for an actual reader.
2. Gather all the material your subject demands.
3. Arrange your material in the most effective order.
4. Write as fast as you can.
5. Revise, recast, rewrite what you have written.
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1. Write on a subject which interests you and one that you know something
about. Good writing will not result merely from trying to satisfy an
instructor. You can write well only if you have a compelling reason for
writing; if you desire to convince, inform, or entertain a definite
reader.
Know the state of mind you want your reader to be in when he finishes
reading your composition. Write for a definite reader such as a college
freshman, a high school student, an automobile owner, a ten-year-old
boy, a proprietor of a retail store in a town of from 15,000 to 20,000
inhabitants. It will often be helpful if, after you choose the general
class to whom your writing is addressed, you select one individual you
know and keep him constantly in mind while you write. Thus instead of
writing for a ten-year-old boy write for your brother Robert.
Choose a subject that can be covered in the number of words at your
disposal. If you are writing a four-hundred-word theme, “The American
High School” is a poor subject. It would take a series of volumes to
exhaust the possibilities in that title. Even eliminating a large
portion of it by taking the topic “High School Newspapers,” “High School
Debating,” “High School Dramatics,” or “High School Athletics,” helps but
little. Narrowing any one of these subjects so that it applies only to
your own high school still leaves you with more material than can well be
put into a short theme. Good subjects for such themes are “The First Time
I Faced an Audience,” “The Best Play I Ever Made,” “How I Felt When My
Story Appeared in the School Paper,” and “The Most Exciting Play I Ever
Saw in a Baseball Game.”
To take another example, “Cooking” is a subject broad enough for a Mrs.
Ralston, a Mrs. Lincoln, or a Miss Farmer. “Making Desserts” is too
comprehensive for any but an exhaustive treatise. “Making Ice Cream”
requires at least a booklet. Good short theme subjects would be “How
I Make My Favorite Sherbet,” “How to Make Chocolate Ice Cream without
Cream,” or “How to Make Ice Cream Roll with a Frozen Whipped Cream
Center.”
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2. Reflect, read, ask questions, observe in order to gather material
which will enable you to carry out your design. Gather, as applied
to material for writing, implies a go-and-get-it attitude. Gathering
material requires a physical as well as a mental search. Do not expect
material to come to you; go after it. Talk with persons who know. Read
what they have written. Good writing is most likely to result when the
writer fuses his own experience and observation with the experience and
observation of others. Gather all the material possible without trying to
decide, while you are getting it, what is important and what is not. Keep
your mind, your eyes, and your ears wide open. Get details and get plenty
of them. Steep, saturate yourself in your subject.
* * * * *
3. After you have gathered the material, discard everything that will
not help you to produce the effect you are trying for. Then if there are
any gaps in your composition, gather more material to fill them up. Some
writers get the best results by putting a plan on paper before starting
to write; others let a plan take more or less definite shape in their
minds, but do not try to set down any hard and fast outline. The reason
for not making a hard and fast outline is that a curious thing often
happens to any writer who has written much. He finds—on occasion—that
his composition seems to write itself. The characters he thought he had
created have minds of their own and refuse to let him treat them like
puppets. His thoughts seem to be alive and to exist apart from him. They
insist on expressing themselves in their own way. An experienced writer
does some of his best work when he seems to be merely the medium through
which ideas are seeking to translate themselves from whatever world it is
they inhabit to this one. If, on the other hand, a writer is continually
consulting a plan, his ideas and characters never take things into their
own hands.
Write for someone to read. Put yourself in that reader’s place and see if
your writing is producing the desired effect. Begin your composition with
the details that will most effectively attract his attention and arouse
his interest. Continue writing so that you will retain his attention and
interest. Stop when you have said all you have to say.
* * * * *
4. Write rapidly and at white heat. If pertinent ideas keep coming to you
forget about your plan. Get your inspiration on paper before it cools. If
you finally find a system—or even a lack of one—that enables you to write
fast and at the same time to feel that you are creating something, do not
let anyone talk you into trying some other plan. Stick to your own.
* * * * *
5. Revise at leisure, but ruthlessly, in cold blood, and continue to
revise, rearrange, and rewrite indefinitely until the finished product
satisfies you.
Make the final draft absolutely correct. Avoid especially the common
faults that denote the semi-illiterate man or woman. If you make errors
that would not be made by a twelve-year-old child, your composition will
get scant consideration from an intelligent reader. While revising,
question everything, spelling, grammar, choice of words, punctuation;
question the usefulness of each idea, and the arrangement of the parts of
the completed composition.
Start writing soon enough to give yourself ample time for revision. Let
the first draft get cold before you look at it again. If you wait several
days after the first draft is finished you can approach your own writing
as objectively as if it had been done by someone else. It will then be
much easier to question every letter, every word, every phrase, every
sentence, every paragraph, every idea, besides the whole composition and
each of its parts.
Make everything in your composition justify itself. Whenever you are
satisfied to do mediocre work the rest of the world is satisfied with
the valuation you have set on yourself. Be your own severest critic. Show
your own writing no mercy. Some of the world’s most successful writers of
advertisements as well as of novels have rewritten their best work time
and again before giving it to the public. What reads smoothly takes hours
of toil to produce.
Many good instructors insist on receiving two copies of every composition
from each student; one a rough, lead pencil draft, and the other the
finished manuscript.