Ten Tips for Good Writing

You've talked to some people and searched out information on the Web. You're all ready to sit down at the keyboard and write. To do that, you need some basic tools, some simple tips that will help tell your story clearly.

Beth Ryan is a freelance writer based in St. John's. She has written for daily newspapers, magazines, radio and television since 1987. Here are some of the tips she's collected from writing every day — supplemented by great advice from other journalists and writing coaches.

Start by telling your story out loud. Tell it to your mother, your friend, a tape recorder, your cat. Explain what happened, who was involved, what they said, how it looked. Do this as if you were talking about something that happened on the way home from the mall this afternoon. Going through this process usually helps you figure out what story you're going to tell in writing.

Get the most out of every word and every sentence. Put subjects and verbs up front in your sentences to tell your reader exactly what happened. "The bus crashed into the building." Use active voice instead of passive.

Use concrete and specific words to get your meaning across. It was a pearl-grey Siamese -- not a cat. It was a crumbling cement building with broken panes of glass where windows used to be — not an abandoned building.

Avoid cliches and overused expressions. If you've heard it before, chances are everyone else has too. Push yourself to find a new way to get your point across.

Use simple words — not technical or flowery language, foreign phrases or rarely-used words. You are trying to communicate information and ideas — not show off your extensive vocabulary! That means using the language that most people know.

Keep your sentences short. Break longer sentences into two smaller ones or vary the length by putting a long sentence between shorter one. If there are two distinct ideas in your sentence, you probably need to break it into two smaller sentences.

Show your reader instead of telling. Don't say a person is friendly when you can say how they bounce down the street, smiling at everyone and calling hello to strangers.

Remember that you are telling story — that means characters, scenes and action. Who is there? What are like? What are they doing and saying? What does the place look like?

Make people earn their quotation marks. Quotes should be something interesting and compelling, something that the source says better than you could. Don't quote people stating facts — "The school board will hold a hearing next Monday night to find out what parents think of the school closures." Save the quotation marks for a person's opinion or their experience — "If parents don't turn up for the hearing, then I think we know that they just don't care about the school system," says Anne Smith, a school board member.

Avoid repetition in your stories. Once you've stated a fact or quoted someone who makes a point about a particular, there's no need to re-visit the issue.

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