Culture & Writing 17 Jun 2007 04:57 am
The key to good writing
I've been learning this the hard way: experience. I can't tell you how often in the last six months I've chopped out huge portions of blog entries that seemed like they were trying too hard, or detracted from the overall entry itself. I had a paragraph and a half in this entry, for example, that I simply had to remove because it took something away from the whole. Even though I really wanted to share a second video, it would have made the main thrust of the entry less impactful.
Scott Adams at the Dilbert Blog writes this entry that's spot-on. Unfortunately even though you've read the article, it probably won't make you a better writer right away. Most writing lessons are learned by beating your head against the wall, in my experience. But it could also be that I'm just stubborn…
The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don't fight it.
Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don't write, "He was very happy" when you can write "He was happy." You think the word "very" adds something. It doesn't. Prune your sentences.
I'm convinced that most people can't write well, and don't care about writing well because their high school English classes facilitated the opposite. The primary lessons learned there were, "more is better" and "literature is boring."
The other, more subtle points like word selection to create tone and setting should only be attempted after the basics of simple writing are assimilated. (Note that I didn't say mastered. 
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on 17 Jun 2007 at 9:26 pm 1.Durf said …
Some Japanese-to-English translators (in North America, mainly) charge by the word of output. They take a Japanese text, turn it into a 300-word English text, and charge 300 x 20 cents, or whatever their rate is. Those translators tend not to do any self-editing, and their work can suffer. A lot.
The standard practice in Japan is to charge per page of source material; then it doesn't matter how concise the translators are in the end, because they're getting the same amount of money for the job.