Categories
Academic writing Editing Memoirs Paragraphs Writing style

Writing Without Fear: Finding Your Voice

At an art college where I used to teach, students were required to go on a field trip. As an incentive in my class, they had to write a 250-word report that would count for 5% of their final grade; I also guaranteed they would basically get an A on this assignment if they just finished it and handed it in. Interestingly, some of these reports were better written than their term papers. Freed from the necessity of conforming to their preconceived ideas of what an academic essay is supposed to be, they allowed their real abilities as writers to surface. More importantly, their personal voices came through.

Allowing what you write to reflect who you are and what you believe is a perennial balancing act for students and academics alike. But it is also an issue for people in a wide variety of situations—the businesswoman giving a keynote address at a dinner or writing copy for her company’s brochure; an aggrieved citizen writing a letter to their local district attorney; or an immigrant for whom English is a second language trying to write their resume.

Some editing services advertise they can transform a piece by an ESL author to make it read like it was written by a native speaker. To some extent, this is what we also do. But I don’t think it should be done at the expense of neutering who that person is. As a professor, one of the joys of working with international students was the added perspectives they brought to the classroom. And as a magazine editor, I likewise found the pluses of having contributors from around the world far outweighed the extra effort that may be involved in working with them.

Writing without fear can be especially hard for high school students writing their personal essays when applying to college. The hypercompetitive atmosphere surrounding the process can be very scary, which can lead applicants to be overly conservative. The resulting essay might seem to fulfill all the school’s requirements except one: the clear sense of who the applicant is. In other words, a lack of a personal voice, a quality admissions officers really do look for.

The one type of writing we have worked with that does not really suffer as much from artificial constraints is the personal memoir. These can be rather fun to work on. For instance, we once got a book written for family and friends (it was to be self-published). As such, the prose was casual and unforced, so we could concentrate on things like grammar and structure to allow it to breathe better. In this case, the author did not seem to understand how to break up their text into proper paragraphs (i.e., he made paragraphs that went on for pages, or run-on paragraphs). The results were very gratifying, and our job was made easier because the writer was speaking from his heart.

Categories
Editing Paragraphs

Paragraphs

Frontispiece illustration from part 2 of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, by her sister May Alcott. (AC85.Aℓ194L.1869 pt.2aa, Houghton Library, Harvard University, via Wikimedia).

As editors, one of the most common issues we deal with is that of overly long paragraphs. While there are no hard and fast rules, when a paragraph goes on for one or more pages, it’s probably too long. The reader can sometimes get lost, even when the writing itself is otherwise thoughtful and to the point.

My Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a paragraph as “a subdivision of a written composition that consists of one or more sentences, deals with one point or gives the words of one speaker, and begins on a new usually indented line.”

The always useful Purdue OWL notes that, “To be as effective as possible, a paragraph should contain each of the following: Unity, Coherence, A Topic Sentence, and Adequate Development.” In other words, a paragraph is usually focused on one specific aspect of your article, term paper, thesis, dissertation or book. As an author, it’s important to always think of each paragraph as an organic part of whatever you’re writing. Unfortunately, when students are taught to write stand-alone paragraphs in school, they are taught formulas: Write a topic sentence, give three supporting sentences, and then a conclusion sentence. In reality, it is not necessary to come up with a conclusion for each paragraph in an essay or book chapter; just end the paragraph in a way that completes the thought.

While it is common to quantify the number of sentences a paragraph should have (for example five, as mentioned above), in practice, this is not a hard and fast rule. Paragraphs of one or two sentences, depending on circumstances, can be more than adequate, though your professor might think otherwise. One of the most common uses of short paragraphs comes when dealing with dialog.

Screenwriters and playwrights don’t think twice about writing dialog in a rather straightforward manner, without any modification other than setting the scene. In writing prose, whether fiction or nonfiction, some sort of commentary is usually added. This can be as simple as something like “he said” and “she replied.” To illustrate a more literary approach, here’s a random sample from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women:

“That is the prettiest wedding I’ve been to for an age, Ned, and I don’t see why, for there wasn’t a bit of style about it,” observed Mrs. Moffat to her husband, as they drove away.

“Laurie, my lad, if you ever want to indulge in this sort of thing, get one of those little girls to help you, and I shall be perfectly satisfied,” said Mr. Laurence, settling himself in his easy-chair to rest, after the excitement of the morning.

“I’ll do my best to gratify you, sir,” was Laurie’s unusually dutiful reply, as he carefully unpinned the posy Jo had put in his button-hole.

It’s not uncommon in modern fiction for writers to use even shorter paragraphs for dramatic or poetic effect, such as this excerpt from Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief:

Just as the Führer was about to reply, she woke up.

It was January 1939. She was nine years old, soon to be ten.

Her brother was dead.

In this instance, each paragraph, despite its brevity, represents a complete thought, which would not be the case if all three were merged into one.

There’s nothing wrong with writing paragraphs of different lengths, whether short or long. Just make sure and be careful to make sure they contribute something to the overall impact of what you’re writing. In any case, if you’ve created long paragraphs that seem to go on and on, look for places to break them up.

Categories
Syntax Usage

A Rose by Any Other Name

Publicity still from Harold Ramis’ sci-fi comedy Multiplicity (1996) with Michael Keaton and Andie MacDowell, in which the Keaton character clones himself.

Many years ago, as a young college graduate, I decided to take a speed reading course at New York University. During the first class, the instructor boasted he was going to quickly double our speed without hurting our comprehension. The trick, so to speak, was to keep on going and not hesitate or backtrack on what we were reading. And lo and behold, everybody quickly fulfilled the instructor’s promise.

The reason this gimmick worked was rather simple. Unless you’re dealing with a very dense, scholarly tome, most writers almost unconsciously repeat themselves. They don’t necessarily do this by using the same words over and over again, but by reiterating the same ideas using different terms or phrases that have the identical or similar meanings (synonyms and related phrases, if you will). So, if you don’t immediately comprehend what’s on the page, you will quickly be cued in by the way the sentences and paragraphs are constructed.

While repetition may be inherent in your narrative, in writing nonfiction you need to be careful to not using the exact same word more than once in the same sentence unless absolutely necessary, or to make a point. Otherwise, your text might prove to be less interesting than it need be. (I’m not talking here of the use word repetition as a literary or poetic device.)

Thus, as an editor, one the most common ways I can improve a client’s writing is by looking for unnecessary word repetition and making appropriate substitutions. There are several ways to do this, the most common of which is to find a synonym or using alternative phrasing. The traditional way to find words with the same or similar meaning is by using a thesaurus. Today’s word processing programs provide useful lists of synonyms by placing your cursor on the word in question and either right clicking on it (in Windows) or by pressing the control key and tapping the mouse button at the same time (on a Mac); alternatively, you can use an online thesaurus like Miriam-Webster’s. Such sites not only provide useful lists of synonyms, but also antonyms (words with the opposite meaning), related words and phrases.

For instance, notice that in the opening paragraph of this blog post, I deliberately cut down the number of times I used the word “reading,” even though that was what I was writing about. Also, in the third sentence, I use the word “trick” in referring to what my instructor did, while in the opening of the second paragraph I used the “gimmick” instead. The process of doing so is not always easy, as you may have difficulty in finding an exact equivalent to such common words as (pardon the repetition) “reading,” but it’s worth the effort.