Writing “How To” Instructions: What I Learned from the Lowest Genre

By Skip Morris

Among those poets, essayists, and fiction writers who pass judgment on one another’s genres, all seem to agree: the how-to branch of expository writing is the lowest on the literary tree. A plausible view I suppose: how-to writing must be straightforward—metaphor becomes almost a sin. Artful shadow meanings become risky indulgences. And to be nearly impossible to misunderstand, sentences are kept simple and, typically, short.

How-to, for the most part, is true surface pro...