Quick Tips for Identifying Good Writing
While many qualities of writing are subjective, there are some standard characteristics that universally constitute good writing:
· Professional writing is not peppered with typos, poor grammar, and frequent misspellings
· Good writing doesn’t confuse the reader. If concepts that should be straightforward barely make sense, there’s a clarity problem.
· A well-organized piece of writing flows smoothly from one scene or idea to the next.
· The narrative has a clear, consistent, and distinct voice, which matches the tone and subject matter.
· Sentences are properly structured, words are used correctly, and the vocabulary is robust.
· In nonfiction, the work and its author should have established credibility, and in fiction, even if the story is fantastical, it must be believable.
Reading Widely
“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.”
- William Faulkner
We are like mirrors. We reflect back into the world all that we have taken in. If you mostly read textbooks, your writing will be dry and informative. If you read torrid romance novels, your prose will tend toward lusty descriptions. Read the classics and your work will sound mature. Read poetry and your work will be fluid and musical.
It's important to read technically adept writing so you don't pick up bad grammar habits, but what about voice and style, word choice and sentence structure? What about story and organization? How does what we read influence the more subtle aspects of our writing?
If you know exactly what kind of writer you want to be, you’re in luck. Your best bet is to read a lot within your favorite genre. Find authors that resonate with your sensibility and read all their books.
At the same time, you don’t want to rope yourself off from experiencing a wide range of styles. You might like high literature and want to pen the next Pulitzer-Prize-winning work of fiction. You should read the classics, of course, but don’t completely avoid the bestsellers. There’s a mentality among some writers that you should read only that which you want to write. It’s hogwash. Reading outside your chosen area of specialty will diversify and expand your skills, and you’ll be equipped to bring new techniques and methods into your craft. If you so choose, you’ll even be able to cross genre lines.
Everybody should read the classics, but why? The most obvious reason is that these works have withstood the test of time. Jane Austen, for example, has a huge and active fan base even though she wrote in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Why are people so passionate about her work a hundred years later?
Another reason to read the classics is to engage in thoughtful discussions. When writers discuss their craft, they rarely use contemporary examples as a basis unless they're in a book club. That’s because it’s likely whoever they’re talking to hasn't read the same contemporary books that they have. It's a vast market, and while some tight-knit reading and writing groups have a shared literary collection to draw from, when we discuss works in a broader setting, such as on a panel, in an interview, or to a blog audience, we cannot assume that everyone (or anyone) in the group has read the same modern books we have. It’s more likely that we’ve all read a few of the classics; they provide us with common ground because many of us read the same books as school assignments and many of these classics are so often referenced, mentioned, and discussed that we read them out of sheer curiosity, to see what all the fuss is about.
Chapter One: Reading
Start from the beginning
