Help for the Writer

Write good, clean copy

   Leave vague, passive verbs out of your copy and use single, active verbs instead. Write the story in order of importance and in the past tense since it has already happened. Also, write short paragraphs of three sentences or 100 words; longer paragraphs are good for books, but bore news readers.

   When writing, talk with your audience. You were there, they weren't. Let them know what happened and what is important. Don't write for the back pages or the classifieds - develop a flair in your writing that will entice the reader.

Pronouns

   Use pronouns on second reference to vary text. Make sure the pronoun reference is obvious to the reader. Never use a person's first name on second reference.

Editing and Rewriting

   First drafts are not the best writing you do. A first draft is usually throwing facts on the page just to get them out of your head. After you do this, it is time to clean up the copy.

   Copy editing cleans the copy while rewrites change the basic structure of the article. There are a few things to look for when editing that will make the job easier:
  • Wordiness - rewrite long passages with fewer words to get the idea across.

  • Prepostional phrases - many prepositional phrases can be rewritten as adjectives, thus saving space and decreasing your word count. However, be sure this doesn't detract from the story's flow.

  • Redundancies - both professional and amateur writers have a habit of repeating important information in a story. The information should only be given once. Another element of redundancy is using the same word twice within a sentence. If you do this, you should be able to shorten the sentence and only use the word once.
   Everyone is a writer, yet few write. Writing is not something that can be taught in a day, week, semester or year. Writing is a life-long process, a constant revision and a melding of ideas. We learn to write by reading great writing. We learn to write by writing and writing and writing and writing. It's not an easy trade, otherwise everyone would do it.

   We learn to write by learning stupid little rules which constrain us, but provide polish; which irritate, but display the writer's proficiency; which keep the tradition of the language alive; which turn a story from a stone into a gem (and, by the way, allow the writer to resell his story many times over to different publication$). And once we learn the rules, we learn when it's acceptable to break the rules to make a point.

   The best writers have to find their niche. Hemingway was an adequate reporter but a beautiful writer (see pp. 6, 195). Yet the style beaten into his stories from reporting shows through his work ("Old Man and the Sea," "The Sun Also Rises," "A Farewell to Arms"). Other reporters who became great writers include Charles Dickens, Jack London and Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain. If you can subject your writing to journalistic style, it will allow you to express yourself in languages everyone can understand. And, after all, isn't that communication?

If you don't understand something in this Web note, please e-mail Dr. Sitton.

İRonald W. Sitton 2004
Revised 200409002 — http://www.uamont.edu/FacultyWeb/sitton/crz/ntro/help.html