Writing fast

I imagine that anyone who writes or wants to write novels will probably find themselves wondering, “How can I write faster?” 

There are a number of factors to take into account.

What’s your record?  You can’t know if you are writing faster unless you have been keeping track of your productivity in the first place.   I have a spreadsheet on which I track the dates I have written, my starting and stopping times, and my word-count during that period of time.  I’ve been doing this for several years and this helps me notice work patterns and gives me a baseline for judging my own productivity.

What is the best way that you work?  Experiment. 

I actually write fiction faster if I handwrite it instead of typing it.  This was totally counter-intuitive to me, and only a freak accident could pry my Macbook Air from my fingers long enough for me to figure this out.

Story time!   

I was at a writing retreat and on the second-to-last day in the afternoon I discovered that I had inexplicably unconsciously severed my computer’s power cord. (gasp) Long story as to how, but essentially I couldn’t use my computer for the rest of the retreat. (Chagrin! Dismay!)

I could have spent the rest of the time commiserating endlessly with my writing buddies (and thereby wasting their time). I could have demanded someone take me to an Apple store immediately so I could replace my power cord.  But instead, I chose to go old school--paper and pencil.  How productive could I be while handwriting?   I decided to experiment to find out.

I recorded my start time and my end time, and then I counted every word I had written.  (A bit mind-numbing, yes. But I was curious.)  My word count actually went up. 

So I did it again.  Wrote for an hour, recording start and end time, and then counted my words.  My word-count went up again.  I had actually improved!

I did it again.  My word-count went up again.   

Whoooooa!  Dude!  What does this mean?  Could it be....?

Over the process of experimenting with this, I discovered that I really did compose fiction faster when handwriting.  This shocked me because I have typed my journal entries for years because that is faster.   I type when journaling, but I compose fiction best while handwriting.

Why was handwriting faster for me?  When I try to compose while typing, I write a sentence quickly, and then spend minutes between sentences thinking of what I’m going to say next.  And I get distracted by other thoughts and I have to pull myself back on task and then I forget where I was in the story, so I have to reread and then think some more.  And when I finally think of something to write, the words don’t seem to appear until I’m actually typing them. 

When I’m handwriting, I think of a sentence, and as I am writing out that sentence, my mind has time to think about the next sentence. By the time I get to the period, the next sentence is there in my head and I never pause, just keep writing.  Sure, I can type faster than I can handwrite, but the important part isn’t putting the words down, it is composing them. 

So what does this mean for you?  You need to figure out what speed you naturally compose at, and you need to pick the capture method best synchronized to that, otherwise you will frustrate yourself.  I have talked to people who compose in gushes and they don’t have time to handwrite it out.  They have to capture it or it’s gone.  Typing or dictation is the best method there.  If it comes out slow, then handwrite it. 

Another thing I learned by experimenting is that I work best by writing in hour-long spurts.  I have ADD, and even though I take medication for it, it is very hard for me to sit longer than that and be productive.  So after an hour of writing, I’ll stand up, walk around, get a drink of water, do a spot of housework, and then go back to writing.  Writing in general is not very natural to me; I’ve had to train myself little by little over years to do this. 

You have to figure out the best way that you work. 

Is there a best time of day for you?  Morning? Afternoon?  Late at night?

Do you have to be in a certain place?

Do you need music or silence? 

Do you need to be fresh or can you be tired?

Do you write best by working for a period of time, or chasing a work-count goal?

Typing or handwriting?

Long writing sessions or shorter sessions?

Do you know what has to happen in your next scene?  Do you know where it's supposed to go? It is hard to write anything if you don’t know what to say.  

 If you don’t know exactly what the characters say, you can at least write down what they are supposed to talk about or what they are supposed to argue about. You can even write down what they might argue about.

I seem to work best when I make a list for a scene of all the important things characters could debate, then a list of things they could gossip about, as well as important things that need to happen.  With that list, I put it in order of priority, and then I start imagining how the characters are going to attack that list.  (It’s like I pretend the character has a to do list.) 

You might think a scene planned like this could end up sounded really mechanical and contrived, but fortunately my ADD kicks in, and I let the characters go through that list any old way they want to.  They can even go off on tangents, but by the end of the scene, they must have hit all the necessary things on the list.  If they don’t hit the important stuff, I keep them there until they finish it.

Occasionally my characters surprise me by throwing in important things I hadn’t previously thought of, rendering my list moot. They open new cans of worms.   After I get done being torked off about that, I realize they were smarter than me and the new direction is better for the story anyway. 

Does this mean the list was a failure?  No, my list becomes the criteria by which I can judge digressions and plot bunnies to see whether they are any good or not.  If it looks better than the stuff I’ve planned, then I know the digression was definitely a good thing.  Otherwise, I need to find where I went off the rails.

Essentially, I outline the things that need to happen in a scene, but I discovery-write the order in which they will occur.  That's one way I try to make my ADD work for me.

Are you excited about what’s supposed to happen?  Let’s face it.  If it doesn’t interest you, then how the heck do you expect a reader to be interested?   However, if you are interested, then by golly, nothing is going to get in the way of your writing that scene.  You’ll want to write it as soon as you can. 

And guess what? You can write it right now.

In my teens, the thing that always made me get bogged down when trying to write a story was that I felt like I had to write through a bunch of boring stuff to get to the exciting stuff.  I thought I had to start at the beginning and write straight to the end. As a result, I never made it very far before I lost interest.

On my first novel that I am currently working on, I threw out the write-from-beginning-to-end rule.  I told myself, “I’m going to write the shiny-sparkly-awesome scenes when I want to.”   And thereby I have written far more on this story than I have ever written on any other story I tried. 

I’ve said to myself, “I’m really interested in writing this scene where the bandit flirts with the priestess while chopping wood,” and even though most of my story hadn’t actually gotten there yet, I wrote it anyway.  I wrote devastating revelations for the end of my story, and then starting filling in the scenes that led up to it.

It’s like building islands in an ocean and then building bridges between them.

What about filler scenes that have to happen but are boring?  You have two tactics you can use.  First, do everything you can to keep from having to write the boring scene. (In the professional office world that 's called procrastination, but in the fictional writing world it's just common courtesy to yourself and your readers.)  Second, if you absolutely have to write it, think of all the crazy things you could do to it to make it more interesting for yourself.  Include a sentient land squid, if you have to, or kill someone with the Traveling Shovel of Death.    

Conclusion

I don’t know if this is all the factors involved in maximizing productivity.  But they are what I have discovered thus far.  (After all, I'm only on my first novel.)

1)   Track your productivity. Dates, times, word-count.  Use mad spreadsheet skilz.

2)   Experiment to find your best working conditions and best capture method that matches your composition speed.

3)   Know what is supposed to happen in that scene in front of you.

4)   Only write the scenes that interest you.   Don’t write the boring scenes until you’ve figured out how they can interest you.

Developing voice

I read something interesting some months back about how a writer can develop their voice.  (I just wish I could remember who wrote it and where I found it.)

The writer said that they develop their voice by choosing an author whose voice they admire and then copying down by hand a few pages of that author’s best work.  They said this gets the rhythm and the diction and style of the author more deeply into their consciousness.

I don’t think this is about turning into a chameleon.   I think this is about widening the range of tone a writer can access.  It gives you the ability to create characters that have their own distinct style.  That’s pretty powerful. 

I can remember once after reading Pride and Prejudice to my grandma, I went and wrote in my journal and found Austen’s diction flowing out my pen.  Rather fun.

Ways to name your characters

When you want to write a story or a book, one of the first things you’ll want to do is name your character.  There are easy and hard ways to do this.  The hard way is to sit and think of names.  The easy way is to generate lists of names you like ahead of time and pick one that you think will work.

As I’ve read different stories, I’ve noticed that authors sometimes have a pattern in the names they choose for characters.   Often, they will choose names that have different first initials so that readers will be able to tell at a glance who the character is.  A_____ is the hero, and D______ is the love interest, and  Q_______ is the villain.   You know you are a fantasy author if you lean toward names that start with or contain X, Q, Z, V, K…  (wink)

Some authors like to create names that have lots of strange consonants but which are nearly unpronounceable when reading them out loud.  Like a hero named Soiuwrdoimcsxz.  As a reader, I personally don’t like this because it makes it hard for me to read the book out loud to my family and hard to discuss the book with family or friends.  I’m sure the poor souls who have to read out loud to create audio books hate it.  (Just a thought--if you as an author must have tongue-twisting character names and a particular way you want them to be pronounced, why not make it a little easier for your readers and include a pronunciation guide at the back of your book?)

It’s much better to make or use names that sing and zing.  Good names feel good to say, so much so that when your reader is done reading your book they will want to give the name to one of their children someday.  Or their next pet.  (Doesn't mean they should, but they will want to.  ;-) )

Some fantasy novels make all of their names unusual.  The function of this is to cue the readers that the culture is very different because naming conventions are different from our culture. I have noticed a cost to this--the names often seem blah or they seem to sound a lot alike.  (Terrick, Jarran,etc.) It could be argued that it could establish the naming conventions of the culture in the book, but I think a little more care with naming could help names feel interesting.

Another method of naming I’ve noticed is common names uniquely spelled.  These names look usual to readers eyes while evoking a different place, yet it also helps those who read the story out loud and gives a subconscious feeling of familiarity.  (Alison >> Alesyn)  Or, you can take a name you like and then mutate it beyond recognition.

When main character names are more recognizable or familiar than secondary characters or redshirts, readers instantly feel closer to them.  It’s a little trick for making a character sympathetic and cuing the reader to pay more attention to them.

Another method of naming is to smash together common names to make something that sounds different, but whose pieces are recognizable.  (Brandon + Christopher = Brandopher or Chrisdon.) 

You can name your character something exotic. For instance, a Japanese name is going to stick out in a list of Anglo-Saxon names.   This conveys that your main character is very different from his or her culture, like in fish-out-of-water stories or stories about misfits.   You can even put in your story that your character always has people joking about their name or asking about where they got their name.  If your character has an unusual name, call attention to it.

You can name characters after their attributes.  This works best for giving criminal types their names because it aids their anonymity.  Maybe you’ll call the guy with the short fuse “Stomps” after the way he stomps around.  Maybe the guy who inspects all the stolen merchandise with a magnifying glass for serial numbers will be called “GlassEye.”   Keep in mind, though, that trait names are very memorable, so if you use trait names for your criminal element then you’ll have to have very strong names for your main characters to make them easier to recall.  (If all your main characters are criminal, however, then you don’t have that problem..)

Attribute names aren't just for your criminals.  Remington Steele has the “steele” to make it strong and the “Remington” to give it sophistication.  

You’ll want to develop an ear for names.  This means noticing when you find a name that appeals to you.  Think about what part of it is appealing and why.  Is it the sound?  Whatever you may think of Kim Kardashian or her family, you have to admit that her name is lovely to say.  It has those enviable qualities of sing and zing.  (It has alliteration with the double Ks, the “dash” in the middle makes it both strong and hip, and the “ian” at the end gives it a very classical sound, like Marian, Dorian, Julian, etc.)   Can you make other names that sound similar?  

Would a location name work?  Indiana Jones and John Denver are memorable because a common name is combined with an intriguing place name.   In Indiana Jones, the “Indiana” is a nickname that suggests some kind of skill, though we don’t quite know what.  In the name “John Denver,” the “Denver” evokes a sense of location and that of a common man who has risen to the top.  If you met guys named John Chicago, John Phoenix, or John Seattle, what would you expect them to be like?

Finally, as I mentioned earlier in this post, I think it is best to collect lists of names you like, whether by chance or by consulting the many name generators on the internet. (One of my favorites is Seventh Sanctum, which I have linked to in my sidebar.) When you need a name for a character, you can then choose something from a list and get back to your writing more quickly, rather than losing your flow. 

When and how making a story timeline helps

As I’ve been working on my novel, I’ve been writing my scenes non-linearly, working on what I find interesting rather than going in a straight line from past into the future.   With a first novel, I figure that any measures I take to keep me writing rather than quitting are allowed. 

Of course, the result of this was that I wrote a lot of scenes with one side of the love triangle, which left the other side of the love triangle rather undeveloped.  I was then left with the problem of trying to figure out where I could insert scenes with the second love-interest.

This is when it became important to me to make a timeline of events in my story.  Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc.  

In my timeline, first I put in what I’d already written according to the time cues that I’d already written.  (Time cues are like “two hours later” or “two days later.”) 

When I looked at that list of days and events, I realized I could compact my story and make it happen faster, so I adjusted my timeline and started adjusting my story. 

(Adjusting the time cues in my story took less time using the program Scrivener than it would have taken if I’d written in Word because in Scrivener you can easily jump to any point in your story without having to search for it.  Fabulous time-saver!)

With a timeline, I could tell where interactions between the overwritten love interest happened, and therefore see where interactions between the underwritten love interest needed to be.

I don’t know if I could have planned my novel on a timeline at the beginning because I was still fuzzy on my plot.  It was only when I had written a pretty decent amount—like 70,000 words-- that it became necessary to be so clear about when things were happening.

Blogging headline formulas—DO NOT ABUSE

Many people who want to increase traffic on their blog seem to have taken advantage of their search engines and have run across blogger-targeted articles, such as the fabulous “10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work” [http://www.copyblogger.com/10-sure-fire-headline-formulas-that-work/]. There’s oodles of advice out there about how to grab eyeballs, and it is clear that people are using these techniques. One formula type in particular is the one in this paragraph. It’s built like this: “[number] Things You Should Know about [topic]”.

Just remember, any time you use these formulas, make sure that you have great content to match them, otherwise you will let down your reader. It isn’t necessarily a conscious letdown, but it registers anyway, even if it is deep in the subconscious. Eventually, lots of those subconscious letdowns can add up and suddenly register in the conscious.

In the case of the formula “_____ Things You Should Know about _______”, if each thing in your list isn’t really great information, you actually risk two things:

1. You risk diluting your credibility as a provider of good content
2. You risk poisoning that particular formula
   

If everyone starts writing cruddy suggestions with this formula, then eventually readers will learn not to believe the headline formula. Suddenly the great formula no longer works.

How do you make sure that you don’t let down your readers? Don’t just give them lists; give them insight. Anyone can use Google and build a list off of someone else’s list, but you demonstrate real value by providing insight and penetration for each list item.

Don’t think that people won’t notice crud-writing attached to exciting headline formulas. I’m starting to notice it, and I really loathe having my time wasted by an exciting headline perched over drivel.

I could end this blog post right here, but I’m going to tell you a story that relates to this issue of misusing a formula. I think I will title my story, “How the TV news lost its hold on me.”

When I was a teen, I found TV news fascinating. I could watch it hour after hour. But gradually, after watching it often enough, I started to notice a pattern emerging. At the end of a news segment, the announcer would say something like:

Coming up next—Are chinchillas the next fashion in fur? Then, find out how one university has achieved an astonishing increase in graduation rates. And, are you paying more for your groceries than the people across town? All that and more, coming up after the break…

This kind of narration was accompanied by video footage that made it seem like a very exciting story. As a viewer, it piqued my curiosity enough that I was willing to sit through the commercials. But the more I watched, the more I started to notice the news story I anticipated so highly was never quite as interesting as it had been hyped. Nor was it as in depth as I expected. I don’t remember how many rounds of teaser-commercials-news I went through before I began to become cynical about the TV news form, but my cynicism developed when I was just a teenager. Once made cynical, I began to avoid TV news.

Why do I tell you this story about TV news when this blog post is about blogging headline formulas? Simply to make this point-- we don’t want to repeat those mistakes in the new, pristine medium of blogging. SUBSTANCE, people, we need SUBSTANCE!!

Why should I write multiple drafts?

I used to think that I didn’t need to write multiple drafts. I thought I could get it completely right the first time. I was a bit of a “bleeder”; writing was like opening a vein in my arm and then drip-drip-dripping onto the paper. Once it was on paper, it was there and THAT’S HOW IT WAS GOING TO BE.

So what changed me from a draft-averse writer to a draft-o-phile?

Short explanation: I started really caring about my writing.

Long explanation: I got an idea for a large writing project that turned out to involve a lot more research and thought than I anticipated. Here’s what happened. I would dash off an interpretation, and then a few days later, I would find myself dissatisfied with whole swathes of my writing. I really cared about the project, so it had to be good, it had to be crystal clear, and I wanted it to have the best insight I could possibly muster. When the writing was good, I was intensely exhilarated, but when it wasn’t good, I was profoundly frustrated. So here’s the point—revisiting my writing after I thought I was done made me see that I needed to do another draft. Really caring about my writing and wanting it to be the best made me want to do another draft. And because I was practically obsessed with the project, I revisited my writing often enough that I kept catching more things to fix that I hadn’t noticed before.

I started to notice a pattern in the drafts I was doing.

1. Adding material
2. Organizing material
3. Removing material
4. Adding citations
5. Checking meaning
6. Checking grammar and punctuation

Each step above does not represent a single draft. Sometimes I had multiple drafts at a particular step. (The stages of organizing material and adding material usually involved the most drafts.)

I learned that each draft would reveal problems, and each draft had to be totally fixed before I could move on to the next. I learned that the small problems wouldn't be obvious until the bigger problems got fixed.

This experience showed me better than any school writing project that procrastinating a writing assignment until the last moment means that not all problems are going to get caught if there isn’t time to do multiple drafts.

Writing a new draft used to be harder than it is now. Before word processors made it easy to type papers, people used to make all their notes on note cards. Then they would put all those note cards in order and make a draft out of them. Writing a draft took a long time, so it made sense to avoid it as much as possible. (I’m so glad this is not our reality now!)

Now the barrier to doing multiple drafts has been substantially lowered, so there is no reason to avoid it. We can type out our first draft, print it out, then start scribbling notes all over it. We can cross things out, write additional snippets in the margins, and draw arrows where we want to move sentences or paragraphs. This is one of my favorite methods of drafting.

When you start bragging about the huge numbers of drafts you've done, that's when you know you're becoming a real writer.

Be green while drafting: You can save trees when doing multiple drafts by reusing the paper and printing on the back side too. Then recycle it.

How to cut huge chunks from your writing

So you’ve discovered that large chunks of your writing are unusable for your assignment. DOH!! How do you bring yourself to delete them?

Don’t delete them; just move them to a different file.

Call it “essay junk” and keep it around, but don’t delete it. That’s your hard work, so it is hard to let go immediately. It might come in handy someday down the line. If anything, years in the future, you may go back to look at it just to see if it was as brilliant as you thought it was. Then, if you find it was really trash, you can delete it happily.

When I learned this trick, my writing quality jumped. Suddenly I didn’t have to keep the crud that was off-topic but too good to delete. Out it went, and new better writing could take its place.

For fiction writers: If you have junk scenes, put them together in a “crazy file” for your own amusement. If you ever have a bad day, you can read back through it and laugh at yourself, then go back and read your successful work with the satisfaction that you know a thing or too about what should go in and what should stay out.

The REAL reason for bad grammar

This is a secret I discovered while working as a writing tutor. When I’d run across bad grammar in a student’s writing, it was usually accompanied by some kind of unusual turn of phrase that made the whole thought of the sentence seem odd. I would ask them what they meant by it, and they would look at me like, “Huh?

As I thought about their questionable sentence, I would begin to see a number of different possible meanings that it might convey, so I would ask them. “Do you mean ______ or do you mean ______ or do you mean _______?” Then they would stare at me and one of two things would happen:

They would say, “No I meant _______.”
They would say, “I’m not sure…”

Bad grammar doesn’t necessarily happen out of ignorance. Usually it happens when we most struggle to express our thoughts.

Often the students I tutored didn’t know exactly what they meant by a sentence until I asked them. That’s when they discovered the way they rendered their sentence was not what they meant at all. Then they had to clarify, and I got to help them craft their sentence so that it said exactly what they meant. When we know exactly what we mean, it is easier to write with good grammar.

When the students didn’t know which of the optional meanings I rattled off was the one they wanted, that was usually a sign that they didn’t know exactly what they wanted to mean. In these cases, often they had just written what they thought would sound good to a teacher. (Their heart may not have been fully committed to the words on the paper.) When I told them the different ways that their writing could be interpreted, they learned (perhaps for the first time) how their writing affected a reader. I suspect that many of them had never had this experience.

Good grammar and punctuation arise out of being able to make our nebulous thoughts and impressions into words and by examining alternative ways of expressing ourselves. When you are determined to be understood, you want to make sure that the placing of your words exactly guides your reader, and you look for alternate ways your sentences might be read. Try to eliminate those possibilities when you don’t want them. Careful grammar and punctuation is the way you block out the host of unwanted alternative interpretations.

When you’re having troubles getting the words down

When you have to write something, do you have this trouble?

As a writing tutor, I worked with a particular student who felt so blocked that he simply couldn't write. When I probed him with questions about his writing process, he told me that his mind was actually flooded with words and ideas he could say. He was mentally overwhelmed and had no idea where to begin, so he would just freeze up. (I suppose that for him, it was like trying to push Niagara Falls through a garden hose; the hose would just burst.)

In these situations, the process of using a pencil and paper is too slow and ineffective. Other strategies must be employed. You may need to tell someone your thoughts and have them write them down for you. (Writing tutors will do this.) Or it may be necessary for you to talk out your paper as you type it. If you have this trouble, realize that you may be a verbal learner, one who thinks better talking. You could also get a tape recorder and talk out all your thoughts and then transcribe them.

In the case of the student that had trouble getting his thoughts down, we used the rest of the session in this way--he dictated his thoughts to me and I scribbled them down just as fast as I could. It was fascinating to see that his verbal organization was absolutely flawless; it was like a perfect outline. I pointed that out to him in the most enthusiastic manner. He was also excited about the idea of talking his paper out while typing it at the computer.

Take-away: When your mind is flooded, talk it out to a scribe.

Tutoring for academic writing: how to avoid postmodernistic hand-wringing

In writing centers across the country, inevitably the question comes up about whether the tutor has a right to tell the students what kind of writing is “right” in school. What about these minority cultures that have their own way of writing and expressing themselves with non-standard English and idiom? What right does the tutor have to squelch the students’ authentic voice?

For instance, if I was writing this for an academic paper, I might find I was expected to write something like the following:

Postmodernist theorists on writing tutoring have turned their attention to the cultural discourses that are marginalized in academic writing, and they advocate for a tutoring method in which the tutor acknowledges the student’s cultural discourse and dialogues with them about the tension between their cultural identity and they requirements of discoursing academically.

Is that crazy, or what? Why would anyone with a soul feel drawn to change their style of expression to fit something as lifeless as that? They’re not. Students have to be dragged kicking and screaming toward academic-style writing. The ones who realize what they are being asked to do frequently over-compensate by pulling out all the big words they can think of and thoroughly muddying up their writing in order to get the good grades.

But back to the question. What right do writing tutors have to tell students to change their writing style for academia? It took me a long time to answer this question for myself. Eventually I learned that academic writing is NOT the only alternate writing style besides one’s personal style. There are many styles. (It just seems like academic is the only style because that may be the only other style a student has been asked to write in.) But the more styles the writer learns about, the more it becomes obvious the writer only has to learn another set of skills in addition to the ones they have already. Just because you learn to write academically doesn’t mean that the other writing skills you consider more authentically “you” are destroyed. Learning different styles of writing (like business writing, creative writing, history writing, engineering writing, etc.) is about accumulating skills, not about blotting out your unique you-ness. Writing tutors help students craft writing that will succeed in academia.

Then we have to deal with the next question. How did academic writing develop into something that seems so dull and boring? (Sorry, you academics, but your prose IS boring. )

Academic writing (discourse) has become what it is because it meets a need and does it very well. It is built on the theory that time is scarce. Teachers know this as they look at a pile of student essays that they have to grade. For people who have only so much time they can spend reading and responding to writing, communication that is direct, logical, and dense with thought is highly valued. Academics want to know right away why they should be reading a paper; thus the thesis comes at the beginning. Once academics know why they are reading the paper, they want the reasons supporting that thesis presented in an orderly manner so they can easily pick them out. The academic doesn’t have the time to think of opposing arguments, so he wants them presented and rebutted in the paper. Then, just to make sure he hasn’t lost the point of the paper, he wants to be reminded in the end what it all adds up to, thus the thesis is repeated at the end.

The uninitiated writers accuse academic discourse of excessive use of jargon and uninteresting style. They say that academics make it hard for ordinary people to read. However, the fact is that academic writing also has to advance the field, and this may require inventing terms where none existed before. Naturally, this means that if a term is invented, it must be clearly defined so that it is not mistaken to mean something else. The more precise a term is, the more specialized it tends to become, and the greater the tendency for the uninitiated to misunderstand. Precision of meaning becomes even more necessary if a word is used in several different disciplines and means different things in each one. Academics strive for precision of language, so their language uses jargon.

When academics wish to advance their field, they realize that they “stand on the shoulders of giants” and it may not be clear to their readers which giants they are standing on. Therefore, they take care to communicate the context that their study can best be understood through. (Sometimes it becomes difficult to isolate the context from the thesis, however.) Academics seek to solve problems, so they have to communicate precisely what that problem is and how large it is. Academics realize that if they use scientific study to make advances, they have to make it possible for others to duplicate their experiments. Thus, they have to share their methods, calculations, and conclusions.

There is a reason that academic discourse developed. It serves a need in the university. If it were not useful, some other form of discourse would be quickly adopted.

If a writing tutor can communicate this to the student, the student will be more likely to understand the need to master academic discourse. Further, since the business world likewise values time, discourse in the business world is similarly direct.

Students often feel that their voice is being silenced by academic discourse. They fear that academic style will take over their communication, Borg-like, and that once assimilated, they will have great difficulty escaping. The tutor can comfort the student by emphasizing that every style of writing mastered adds to the student’s capability of communicating effectively and appropriately. If the student wishes to develop their personal voice, they can be encouraged to take creative writing classes and discover new ways of stretching their style.

Above all, the writing tutors need not become embroiled in postmodernistic hand-wringing about “privileged discourse” and “power structures.” They are there to help students master the writing style of their chosen discipline.

Why no one is a bad writer

Now, why would I want to start this post out with the kind of relativistic claptrap that would make English teachers want to tear their own eyeballs out? (And yes, if they are reading this post right now, they are doing that or something similar.)

I say it because it is true, and I observed it over and over as a writing tutor.

To put it simply, everyone writes according to his or her abilities, and no one deliberately sets out to be a bad writer. I observed so many students who would be labeled “bad writers” by their English teachers, but who were perfectly willing to change when the rules were explained to them in relation to their own writing when I tutored them in a one-on-one session. Most were very apologetic about such things as their comma usage and welcomed the chance to learn and practice those skills.

Here's the deal--we are all on a continuum of development, honing our skills. We are born, and we begin communicating by saying “mama.” We first get a pencil in hand, and we start scribbling. We learn how to form and interpret letters and draw scraggly stick figures. We begin putting letters together. Then we begin putting words together into sentences. Every assignment we are given calls forth something more than we ever thought was in us.

We learn to write better by reading writers that are better than us. We learn the turn of dialogue and where to put quotation marks and commas. We notice that sometimes a character’s thoughts are in italics.

We notice what is funny and try to imitate it. We learn about the ridiculous and fanciful. We learn to tell stories, we learn what kind of stories seem boring, and we try to write so as not to bore others.

We learn to argue a point and prove it. We learn to follow written instructions and we discover that there are different ways of interpreting instructions, depending on where a comma is placed.

We discover opinions that we don’t like and try to discredit them, and we learn how to twist word meanings and tangle words up. This causes us to begin guarding our own writing better so that the same is not done to us. We learn to examine our unspoken assumptions. We learn how to put our reasoning in order.

We notice interesting punctuation marks, and we try to figure out how to use them. We notice patterns of usage with dashes, parentheses, semicolons, and colons. We experiment with them and overdo it until we learn to use them sparingly. All along the way, we are corrected and praised and graded, and the more detailed the feedback, the better and faster we can improve.

Instead of calling a person "a bad writer," we should call a person "an unskilled writer." Yeah, yeah, I know I'm debating semantics, but skilled writing requires careful attention to word choice.