On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

by William Zinsser

wrote a book in 2004 called Writing About Your Life. It’s a memoir of various events in my own life, but it’s also a teaching book: along the way I explain the writing decisions I made. They are the same decisions that confront every writer going in search of his or her past: matters of selection, reduction, organization and tone.

Just because they’re writing fluently doesn’t mean they’re writing well.

For there isn’t any “right” way to do such personal work. There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.

This is the personal transaction that’s at the heart of good nonfiction writing. Out of it come two of the most important qualities that this book will go in search of: humanity and warmth. Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it’s not a question of gimmicks to “personalize” the author. It’s a question of using the English language in a way that will achieve the greatest clarity and strength.

But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to education and rank.

Simplify, simplify. Thoreau said it, as we are so often reminded, and no American writer more consistently practiced what he preached.

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other.

Writers must therefore constantly ask: what am I trying to say? Surprisingly often they don’t know. Then they must look at what they have written and ask: have I said it? Is it clear to someone encountering the subject for the first time? If it’s not, some fuzz has worked its way into the machinery. The clear writer is someone clearheaded enough to see this stuff for what it is: fuzz.

Consider all the prepositions that are draped onto verbs that don’t need any help.

Examine every word you put on paper. You’ll find a surprising number that don’t serve any purpose.

Clutter is political correctness gone amok.

Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.

George Orwell pointed out in “Politics and the English Language,” an essay written in 1946

I would put brackets around every component in a piece of writing that wasn’t doing useful work. Often just one word got bracketed: the unnecessary preposition appended to a verb (“order up”), or the adverb that carries the same meaning as the verb (“smile happily”), or the adjective that states a known fact (“tall skyscraper”).

My reason for bracketing the students’ superfluous words, instead of crossing them out, was to avoid violating their sacred prose. I wanted to leave the sentence intact for them to analyze. I was saying, “I may be wrong, but I think this can be deleted and the meaning won’t be affected. But you decide. Read the sentence without the bracketed material and see if it works.”

The point is that you have to strip your writing down before you can build it back up. You must know what the essential tools are and what job they were designed to do.

If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer,

If you aren’t allowed to use “I,” at least think “I” while you write, or write the first draft in the first person and then take the “I”s out. It will warm up your impersonal style.

Soon after you confront the matter of preserving your identity, another question will occur to you: “Who am I writing for?” It’s a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You are writing for yourself.

Just as it takes time to find yourself as a person, it takes time to find yourself as a stylist, and even then your style will change as you grow older.

It takes courage to be such a writer, but it is out of such courage that revered and influential journalists are born.

How to Survive in Your Native Land, a book by James Herndon describing his experiences as a teacher in a California junior high school.

You’ll never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive. The English language is rich in strong and supple words. Take the time to root around and find the ones you want.

What is “journalese”? It’s a quilt of instant words patched together out of other parts of speech. Adjectives are used as nouns (“greats,” “notables”). Nouns are used as verbs (“to host”), or they are chopped off to form verbs (“enthuse,” “emote”), or they are padded to form verbs (“beef up,” “put teeth into”).

If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I’d say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.

Also get in the habit of using dictionaries. My favorite for handy use is Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Edition,

Roget’s Thesaurus.

there’s no better friend to have around to nudge the memory than Roget. It saves you the time of rummaging in your brain—that network of overloaded grooves—to find the word that’s right on the tip of your tongue, where it doesn’t do you any good.

The Thesaurus is to the writer what a rhyming dictionary is to the songwriter—a reminder of all the choices—and you should use it with gratitude.

E. B. White makes the case cogently in The Elements of Style,

Good writers of prose must be part poet, always listening to what they write.

Theodore M. Bernstein, author of the excellent The Careful Writer: “We should apply the test of convenience. Does the word fill a real need? If it does, let’s give it a franchise.”

it’s true that the spoken language is looser than the written language,

Incorrect usage will lose you the readers you would most like to win.

“I choose always the grammatical form unless it sounds affected,” Marianne Moore explained,

The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.

All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem. It may be a problem of where to obtain the facts or how to organize the material. It may be a problem of approach or attitude, tone or style. Whatever it is, it has to be confronted and solved.

One choice is unity of pronoun. Are you going to write in the first person, as a participant, or in the third person, as an observer? Or even in the second person, that darling of sportswriters hung up on Hemingway?

Unity of tense is another choice. Most people write mainly in the past tense (“I went up to Boston the other day”), but some people write agreeably in the present (“I’m sitting in the dining car of the Yankee Limited and we’re pulling into Boston”). What is not agreeable is to switch back and forth.

Another choice is unity of mood. You might want to talk to the reader in the casual voice that The New Yorker has strenuously refined. Or you might want to approach the reader with a certain formality to describe a serious event or to present a set of important facts. Both tones are acceptable. In fact, any tone is acceptable. But don’t mix two or three.

“How much do I want to cover?” “What one point do I want to make?” The last two questions are especially important. Most nonfiction writers have a definitiveness complex. They feel that they are under some obligation—to the subject, to their honor, to the gods of writing—to make their article the last word. It’s a commendable impulse, but there is no last word.

As for what point you want to make, every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn’t have before. Not two thoughts, or five—just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader’s mind.

Now it often happens that you’ll make these prior decisions and then discover that they weren’t the right ones. The material begins to lead you in an unexpected direction, where you are more comfortable writing in a different tone. That’s normal—the act of writing generates some cluster of thoughts or memories that you didn’t anticipate. Don’t fight such a current if it feels right. Trust your material if it’s taking you into terrain you didn’t intend to enter but where the vibrations are good. Adjust your style accordingly and proceed to whatever destination you reach. Don’t become the prisoner of a preconceived plan. Writing is no respecter of blueprints.

But I urge you not to count on the reader to stick around. Readers want to know—very soon—what’s in it for them. Therefore your lead must capture the reader immediately and force him to keep reading.

Every paragraph should amplify the one that preceded it.

One moral of this story is that you should always collect more material than you will use.

Another moral is to look for your material everywhere, not just by reading the obvious sources and interviewing the obvious people.

Our daily landscape is thick with absurd messages and portents. Notice them. They not only have social significance; they are often just quirky enough to make a lead that’s different from everybody else’s.

Another approach is to just tell a story. It’s such a simple solution, so obvious and unsophisticated, that we often forget that it’s available to us. But narrative is the oldest and most compelling method of holding someone’s attention; everybody wants to be told a story. Always look for ways to convey your information in narrative form.