Reflections on writing well

Principles, influences, resources

Above: “Saint Jerome in his study” by Caravaggio (1571-1610).

Truth, in fact, is not all, for in addition to truth there is style; and behind style there is wisdom, wisdom which is born of understanding and the ripe experience of life garnered by a powerful mind. — C.E.M. Joad, Return to Philosophy, 1935, 172.

Sloppy language makes sloppy thought possible. — Richard Mitchell

Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king. He is an independent force in the world. Abandoned by his party, betrayed by his friends, stripped of his offices, whoever can command this power is still formidable. — Winston Churchill

Introduction

When I was a student, I took a class with a professor who was highly regarded for his towering intellect. It was a philosophy seminar with a unique emphasis on philosophical writing. The semester consisted of a careful reading and discussion of one book, which was chosen not merely for its philosophical rigor but for its quality of prose.¹

The core assignments of the course were three short argumentative papers in which we would either critique some argument by the author or argue some point relating to a topic from the text. The twist was that the professor graded each paper in person. When a paper came due, we had to meet face to face with him during office hours—behind closed doors—where he judged it with us line by line. That grading process was invaluable, though somewhat intimidating. It taught me to be comfortable with blunt challenges to my written ideas and gave me the constructive feedback I needed to sharpen my arguments and the language I used to express them.

The most impactful exercise, however, was our weekly handwritten assignment. The task was to pick a paragraph from that week’s reading—whichever one stood out to us as an exceptional piece of writing, and there were many such passages. Once picked, we copied it down exactly as the author wrote it—preferably in cursive. Then we wrote it down a second time, except this time we tried to put the author’s point in our own words while imitating his writing style as best we could. This practice of handwriting and imitation is well established in traditional courses in English composition—and it works.²

It was during this semester that I began to take writing seriously. I came to see the power and beauty of clear and forceful prose. There is an art to expressing a line of argument in English and I fell in love with cultivating that art. I made it a goal to develop a masterful command of the English language and began searching for authors whose prose style I wanted to imitate.

Over the years, as I’ve sought to improve my writing ability, I’ve compiled a list of principles, influences, and resources. I would like to share them here for any readers who might be interested.

Principles

The opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina reads:

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

The same is true for writing. A good piece of writing is good because of certain virtues it possesses. But a bad piece of writing is bad for any number of reasons.

Becoming a good writer requires three things. First, clear writing begins with clear thinking. If you are struggling to express an idea, it is almost always because you have not fully thought it through. At least a rudimentary mastery of logic goes a long way, but ultimately you have to spend time thinking—an activity most people go to great lengths to avoid.

Second, good writing demands reading good writers and imitating their style. This is how many great writers became great. The British philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell, was an influential writer on a wide range of academic subjects. His writing style should be imitated by every writer—even if his morals and philosophical outlook should not! In any case, he got his start as a writer through imitation:

Until I was twenty-one, I wished to write more or less in the style of John Stuart Mill. I liked the structure of his sentences and his manner of developing a subject…

[There] is much to be gained by familiarity with good prose, especially in cultivating a sense for prose rhythm.³

Now take Robert Louis Stevenson, who needs no introduction. He is one of the best writers the English language ever produced. His universally praised novel Treasure Island is among my favorite examples of how to introduce characters, add suspense, and drive the reader deeply into a story. He had this to say about how he developed his writing style:

Whenever I read a book or a passage that peculiarly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful, and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction, and the coordination of parts...

That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write; whether I have profited or not, that is the way. It was so Keats learned, and there was never a finer temperament for literature than Keats’s; it was so, if we could trace it out, that all men have learned; and that is why a revival of letters is always accompanied or heralded by a cast back to earlier and fresher models.⁴

The authors I reference in this reflection are exemplary. They are not only to be read, and read closely, but imitated as well.

Third, you must actually devote time to writing, even if it’s bad writing. You will never progress without practice and a willingness to fail. Thomas Sowell, who is no slouch when it comes to good writing, echoes the point:

From time to time, I get a letter from some aspiring young writer, asking about how to write or how to get published. My usual response is that the only way I know to become a good writer is to be a bad writer and keep on improving.⁵

The late philosopher Dallas Willard also echoed it when speaking about his successful path to academic tenure:

The first two papers I published were each two solid years in writing. They came out in print 12-15 pages long, but they’d probably been re-written 65 times. That’s what I tell my students now. “Work on it. Work on it. When you think it’s good, it’s probably not. Just keep working. It’ll get better. All writing is re-writing. You never get it right; it’ll just get better. When you’ve gone through it many times and replaced the one word with another word, and then replaced that word with the same word again, you’re getting there.” So that’s how I worked.⁶

Fourth, there is something Willard once said, which I’ve applied to more areas of my life than just writing. It’s a comment I have carried with me over the years, and has helped me navigate the world of social media, fast news, instant commentary, and self-promotion. He said that God told him early on in his career: “Never try to find a place to speak, try to have something to say.” We writers get attached to our own writings. We impatiently seek to put them before the wider world, often before they (or we) are ready for it. That temptation we must resist out of principle. If we succeed, then we will not only spare ourselves some unforced retractions; but more importantly, when the right occasions present themselves, we will indeed have something good to say—and we will say it well.

Fifth, I think Russell was right when he said that a writer’s style cannot be good

unless it has an intimate and almost involuntary expression of the personality of the writer, and then only if the writer’s personality is worth expressing.

At the end of the day, your writing must come from you and no one else. The practice of imitation is merely a tool; the goal is to develop your own sense of style. And if you are not a person with something to say—a person worth listening to—then your writing will not be worth reading.

Finally, because the previous five principles concern the philosophy of style, I must say something about the mechanics of style. You cannot progress as a writer without both. Here are some brief rules on mechanics that I try to follow:

Rules for Writing from C. S. Lewis

1. Always try to use language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else. Know the meaning of every word you use; be clear, and remember that readers can’t know your mind. Tell them exactly what they need to know to understand you.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. Instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

6. Turn off the radio. [There weren’t computers, smart phones, or TV’s in Lewis’s day, but the same point applies to all three.]

7. Read good books and avoid most magazines [i.e., avoid slop online].

8. Write with the ear, not the eye. Make every sentence sound good.

Rules for Writing from George Orwell

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

5. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

Influences

Many writers and writings have influenced me—far more than I can enumerate here. The following is merely a sample.

1. The late philosopher Brand Blanshard once wrote a short book—or perhaps it is a long essay—titled On Philosophical Style, in which he offers a defense of clarity and elegance in philosophical prose. He also takes up the question: Why is it difficult in academic writing, especially philosophy, to write in a simple passionate style that people want to read?

Part of the difficulty, he says, comes from the fact that writing good philosophy requires things like abstract analysis and cogent argumentation, which by their nature resist a simple passionate style. He discusses the degree to which the difficulty may be overcome and how to do it. One of the conclusions he draws is that affections are needed for good style, and certain affections—e.g., love for knowledge and truth—are easily cultivated in philosophy and will transform the philosopher’s style.

Anyway, Blanshard says a lot more, and he says it better than I ever could. I commend his short work to every writer, philosopher or not. It’s not too long (twenty pages or so) and it will give a big return on whatever time you take to read it.⁷

2. Every writer should read Neil Postman’s brief preface to his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. Those mere three paragraphs are nothing but compelling, page-turning prose. Short and sweet, it fulfills a key purpose of any preface: it makes you want to read the rest of the book!

3. Speaking of prefaces, the one Nicholas Wolterstorff wrote for his Cambridge monograph on John Locke is one the best I’ve ever read in a philosophy text. He makes Locke’s epistemology read like a thriller:

There’s a story making the rounds today about the beginnings of modern philosophy in which John Locke is either villain or tragic hero—take your pick. According to this story, the core of modern philosophy was epistemology, “theory of knowledge”; and epistemology was the project of discovering the nature, foundations, and scope of knowledge.
. . .
Locke is villain or tragic hero in that story because the story itself has turned out to be either pathetic or tragic: We now know it to have been an illusion that philosophy-as-epistemology could be “an autonomous discipline. . . distinct from and sitting in judgment upon” religion and art, science and morality.

In this book I tell a different story about the same events. In this alternative story Locke is not the philosopher in the tower rendering judgments on who knows what and how, but the philosopher in the street offering advice to his anxious combative compatriots on how to overcome the cultural crisis engulfing them. Locke was as much a cultural philosopher in his epistemology as he was a social philosopher in his political theory. For centuries European humanity had resolved its moral and religious quandaries by appealing to its intellectual inheritance—its tradition. By Locke’s day and in Locke’s place this tradition had split into warring fragments. Thus on the cultural agenda there was the question: How should we form our beliefs on fundamental matters of religion and morality so as to live together in social harmony, when we can no longer appeal to a shared and unified tradition? This anxious question motivated Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke does indeed offer a “theory of knowledge.” But that theory of knowledge, though important in its own right… is placed in the Essay as a step on the path toward answering that other question which Locke regarded as much more important. Knowledge, said he, is “short and scanty.” How are we to pick our way when we find ourselves forced, as we all are, to leave the small clearing of knowledge and enter the twilight of belief and disbelief?⁸

4. Few could explain economics like the late Henry Hazlitt. He knew and learned from history and could easily disseminate knowledge from the Ivory Tower to the common man. He had a simple, clear, and forceful style. The first chapter of his book Economics in One Lesson is no exception. Here’s an excerpt:

Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine—the special pleading of selfish interests. While every group has certain economic interests identical with those of all groups, every group has also, as we shall see, interests antagonistic to those of all other groups. While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The group that would benefit by such policies, having such a direct interest in them, will argue for them plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds to devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible.

In addition to these endless pleadings of self-interest, there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.

In this lies the whole difference between good economics and bad. The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences. The bad economist sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups.

Resources

Every reference and citation that I’ve already mentioned is a recommended resource. But here are more, though of course it isn’t an exhaustive list.

Logic

Introduction to Logic (New York: Routledge) 3rd edition by Harry J. Gensler, S. J.

Socratic Logic: A Logic Text using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions, and Aristotelian Principles (South Bend, IN: ‎ St. Augustine’s Press) 3.1 edition by Peter Kreeft.

Formal Logic: Its Scope and Limits (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.) 4th edition by Richard Jeffrey and John P. Burgess.

Then there are the numerous old texts that will never go out of style—even if they go out of print. One is Principles Of Logic by Fr. George H. Joyce, S. J. (1864-1943). Another is Reason and Argument by Peter Geach (1916-2013).

General Writing

I highly recommend reading George Orwell’s essay Politics and the English Language. It is a classic statement on clarity, corruption of language, and disciplined prose.

Alastair Fowler’s How to Write. Interestingly, Fowler was a pupil of C. S. Lewis at Oxford. He wrote a fascinating account about his experience with Lewis as his supervisor.

Fr. Francis P. Donnelly, S. J. Model English, Part I: The Development of Thought & Part II: The Qualities of Style. These are must-reads on classical composition and rhetorical training through imitation. In part I, he derives all of his excellent examples from Washington Irving alone. He also wrote The Art of Interesting: Its Theory and Practice for Speakers and Writers.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Learning to Write.

Scott F. Crider’s The Office of Assertion: An Art of Rhetoric for the Academic Essay is a compact, classical guide on how to craft an argumentative essay.

Rudolf Flesch’s books are a sustained project in clarity, readability, and practical communication:

• The Art of Plain Talk (1946)

• The Art of Readable Writing (1949)

• How to Write Better (1951)

• The Art of Clear Thinking (1951)

• How to Write, Speak and Think More Effectively: Your Complete Course in the Art of Communication (1960)

• How to Be Brief: An Index to Simple Writing (1962)

• The ABC of Style: A Guide to Plain English (1964)

• How to Write Plain English: A Book for Lawyers and Consumers (1979)

Legal writing that is both clear and engaging is hard to achieve, so I’ve always enjoyed the few who could do it. Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are two of my most recent favorites. Justice Robert H. Jackson was one of the best of all time. I recommend reading any speech, essay, opinion, or dissent of his that you can get your hands on. Finally, in 1993 the The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing published “How I Write”, a nice collection of brief essays by legal professionals reflecting on their own writing methods. Your writing will improve simply by reading a good judicial writer.

1. The text was Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). Wolterstorff is one of the best living philosophical writers. His book was perfect material for the course.

2. See, e.g., the references later on in this essay to Fr. Donnelly, S. J., Robert Louis Stevenson, and Bertrand Russell.

3. Bertrand Russell, “How I Write,” in Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1956). https://russell-j.com/0951-HIW.HTM.

4. Robert Louis Stevenson, Learning to Write: Suggestions and Counsel from Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. John William Rogers (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1920), 3-5, https://archive.org/details/learningtowrite00stevrich.

5. “Some Thoughts About Writing”, by Thomas Sowell. <https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/he_24.pdf>.

6. “My Journey To and Beyond Tenure in a Secular University.” Faculty Forum Luncheon Remarks by Dallas Willard at the C.S. Lewis Foundation Summer Conference, University of San Diego. <https://dwillard.org/resources/articles/my-journey-to-and-beyond-tenure-in-a-secular-university>.

7. Contemporary philosophers I have always enjoyed reading, and who are also good at philosophy, include: Dallas Willard, Alvin Plantinga, George Bealer, Peter van Inwagen, Bill Vallicella, Edward Feser, John Carriero, and Roderick Chisholm.

8. John Locke and the Ethics of Belief (Cambridge Press: 1996).