On Writing: It's Not the Words

While reviewing a manuscript the other day, something occurred to me, something that many authors (myself included) tend to forget: the words aren’t the important part. Writing is not about the words.

We get too attached to words. Especially the words we’ve slaved over and poured out on the paper. But good writing is not about the words; you can throw out all those words, and replace them with other words, and it can still mean the same thing. And as with code, throwing out all the words/code and starting over practically guarantees a better result. Let me explain.

I belong to a local songwriter’s association. Once a month, we meet and critique each other’s latest efforts (alas, I haven’t been participating as often as I’d like, but that’s what New Year’s Resolutions are for.) While critiquing other people’s lyrics and song structures, I’m constantly amazed at the similarities to the book writing process. Beginners make the same sorts of mistakes, and experts work their craft with similar subtlety.

Novice song writers (and sometimes those who should know better) tend to use too many words. Instead of showing the audience an idea, they feel compelled to tell the audience all about it. In detail, with all the articles, pronouns and other trappings of regular speech. But most good songs aren’t written that way; it’s generally not the same style as a novel or spoken speech.

Reminds me of an old limerick:

There once was a young poet named Stan
Whose poetry just wouldn’t scan
When asked why, he said in reply
“It’s because I try to fit as many words on the last line as I possibly can“

But here’s the thing. When writing a song, sometimes you have to rework the lyrics to fit the music, and sometimes you change the music to fit the words. To maintain a fixed rhyme scheme or meter, your choice of words can get quite restricted. And you know what? Not only is that a great exercise, but in the end the song has the same meaning. The words “don’t matter” in that there are many other words that would do, but we end up using these particular words because they rhyme, or have the necessary number of syllables and stress in the right place, and so on.

So what does this mean to writing in general?

Show, Don’t Tell

First, remember to show your audience what you want to convey, don’t just tell them about it. The difference is subtle, but important. Showing and explaining is much more direct than telling. Telling is monologue, and monotonous; a good book is a dialogue, and engaging.

I get a chuckle every time I see an author write, “I’d like to tell you all about xyzzy now.” Just tell me!

You don’t have to disclose everything you know about a subject. I’m sure the history of a technology and biographies of the major players involved is fascinating, but most of the time that sort of information just isn’t relevant to the topic at hand. Rip it out of the book, and save it for a blog post.

Map it out

Dave relates writing to the Hero’s Journey. But it’s all too easy to forget the whole “journey” part.

If a book is a journey, you need to start with a map. Not an outline of the topics you’re going to cover, but a map of where you’re taking the reader. As author you’re not just doing a brain-dump of information onto the paper, you’re taking the reader on a trip.

What are the landmarks you’ll see along the way? Is this the place where you’ll lead the reader up to the brink of the chasm and show them the steep cliffs before showing them the easy path down? Or are you going to lead them on the easy path, and point up to the menacing cliffs you avoided?

What will the reader feel along the way? Are you going to lose their attention across the boring vast plains in the middle? (Maybe you don’t want to cross those plains in that case :-) At each rest break, what can you do to keep them excited enough to continue the journey?

I find myself constantly asking authors to provide more roadmaps or markers for the journey. Tell me where we’re headed next. Remind me where we’ve been, what lies ahead, and how they are connected. Remind me what the important parts were that we just saw.

Before you start writing, before you think about an outline, think about a map—from the reader’s perspective. Draw out their journey, and begin to plan the sights you’ll see, the stopping points, which parts will be going uphill and difficult, and which parts will be downhill and easy.

Then you can start writing the words.

It’s an agile world, so of course you can (and should) go back and revise your map as needed.

In keeping with the plot/story analogy, you can also think of your map as a storyboard. Draw out the “scenes,” again from the reader’s perspective.

In keeping with the themes from Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, I will of course suggest that you hand-draw both the map and storyboards.

Sketching out what the journey will look like ensures that there is a journey. Otherwise, you may as well just be writing a dictionary…

It’s not the words

Finally, let me suggest that writing is not even about writing. It’s about re-writing. As many times as it takes. Maybe 5. Maybe 50. But that’s okay, because the actual words on the paper aren’t that important. Toss ‘em out, and try some others.

This is a first draft, by the way. So it likely has some of the very drawbacks I’ve pointed out :-) But maybe I’ll come back to it and revise it as needed.

This is version 1.0, as of 2008-12-09.

/\ndy

Comments

[Chris Sterling]

Thank you for this post. I am currently in the middle of writing a book and drawing a map seems like something I need to do based on where I am currently at. This will be my next activity so I can figure out if what I am writing is keeping the reader interested or not.

[Remko Tronçon]

Spot-on, Andy!

Now that you have shown us how to become a pragmatic progammer, thinker, and learner, why not write a book "Pragmatic Writing" to teach us novice technical writers how to become an entertaining writer like you. I'm sure there's quite a bit to tell about the analogies between pragmatic code and pragmatic text.

[Bil Kleb]

I've repeatedly found that my best technical papers are a result of making a story-boarded presentation of the material before writing the paper. The act of creating a engaging presentation tends to force a mapped narrative.

[Anders Sandvig]

Interesting Article. I have never thought of the map metaphor before, but usually when I get an idea, I will visualize it in my head and work on it with an "inner narrative" (i.e. talking to myself) before writing anything down. Sometimes I can spend weeks thinking about something before I write anything, and when I finally do, the writing itself is often just a mechanical process of transferring what's already in my head onto paper (or a text file).

Of course, I will spend time revising and rewriting things afterwards, but once I have made up my mind about what I am trying to say, rewriting it is all about changing the words and sentences to make the meaning clearer to the reader. I find the writing most difficult when I have not clearly defined what I want to communicate. Even if I am able to construct beautiful sentences with excellent wording, the resulting text will be complicated and hard to understand if the idea is not fully developed in my head first.

One problem with my inner narrative and visualization process is that I have to keep everything in my head for an extended period of time. Sometimes this can lead to things being forgotten and ideas "falling out" before I have been able to write them down. Maybe literally (or mentally) drawing an overview map and plotting paths on it will help ease the transition process from thoughts and visions to words. At least, I think it's worth a try. Thanks for the tip!

[Remko Tronçon]

Anders: It helps to write everything down from the start, even if you know that what you are writing doesn't make much sense yet. You'll find it much easier and faster to mold a text like that into something that you do like, instead of endlessly tossing it around in your head first. You will also forget much less, and you will stay more motivated by seeing something on paper.

As Andy says, writing is all about throwing away text you wrote, and rewriting it into a shorter, better, clearer piece of text. It's not about getting it right the first time.

[Anders Sandvig]

@Remko I agree. In theory I know it's better to write things down early, but I often find it hard to do so in practice. I do take notes of my various ideas and thoughts, but they are usually incoherent and hard to understand when I read them later. But I guess you are right, I should maybe just force myself to write stuff down, even if it doesn't make much sense. After all, it's better to have something cryptic on paper than not having anything when you eventually forget the original thought. Also, I guess writing stuff down frees up more space in my brain for new thoughts.

"[...] As Andy says, writing is all about throwing away text you wrote, and rewriting it into a shorter, better, clearer piece of text. It's not about getting it right the first time."

Yeah, he makes it sound so easy...

[Jennifer Neef]

WOW, what amazing insight. You understand the creative mind (likely because you own one!), and that this makes "outlines" and strict organization tips overwhelming to us. Yet with a message to write in our hearts, your suggestion of a map of destinations and drawings is incredible, inspirational. (what fun! you mean I start my writing project with an art project??! I love it! Where were you years ago??) I am so grateful to have found you and will check back often for further thoughts...(please write them!) God has truly given you a gift in this understanding of writing, and I am stepping away from my computer with new zeal and vision of how to accomplish my goals in this arena... and after a bout of discouragement feeling a smile in my heart, and at last like I truly can "get there from here!" Invigorating. Thank you, thank you.