Our current featured article was published in the November 2005 edition of The Writer.
Don't Be A Showoff
At the beginning of every writing
class and workshop I teach,
I ask my students to state
their goals. Their
responses are usually variations
on similar themes:
"I want to develop a distinctive
style."
"I want to be a great writer."
"I want to entertain my
audience."
They want, in other words, to be
noticed and admired.
Readers, I remind them, do not
pick up a novel or a short story
hoping to applaud the author. They
don't think of themselves as your
audience; they don't want to watch
you perform. Readers, in fact,
don't want to be aware of the
author at all. They want to be
engrossed in a good story.
It's not about you, I tell my students.
It's about your readers and
your story. Don't think about style.
Style is self-conscious and attention
getting. The concept of style has
unfortunately become confused
with flowery language, elaborate
figures of speech, convoluted sentences
and fancy vocabulary words.
Focus instead on writing clear,
crisp sentences that create pictures
your readers can see and emotions
they can feel. William Strunk Jr.
and E. B. White, authors of the
indispensable handbook The Elements
of Style, used the word
"style" to mean concise, precise,
uncluttered writing that is devoted
entirely to unambiguous communication
between author and reader.
That's the kind of style
worth developing.
Forget about becoming a great
writer. Work instead on writing
great stories. Think about your
reader, not yourself. When you
write well, your readers suspend
their disbelief and immerse themselves
in the characters and the
conflicts and the worlds you have
created in your story. They are
unaware of you. You are invisible.
Here are six steps to help you
become invisible...
... want to read the whole article? It is available as a PDF. Just click this link!
