10 Points on Writing Well

This started as a letter to my cousin who is graduating high school this year and wants to be a writer.

1. Minimalism usually makes for the best writing.

• Ernest Hemingway perfected this.
• Kill any and all unnecessary words.

2. Avoid technical jargon whenever possible.

3. Hook your audience from the first word, sentence, and paragraph.

• This means lead with something exciting, vigorous, and strong.

4. Keep paragraphs short, especially if you are publishing your piece on the web.

5. Avoid adverbs whenever possible as they tend to muddle up sentences.

• An adverb often means you just have not found the correct verb or adjective for the sentence. Keep looking. Use, use, use your thesaurus.

6. Change passive voice to active voice whenever possible. Learn to think in active voice.

• Active Voice: The sentence subject is actively performing the sentence’s verb.
• Passive Voice: The sentence’s subject is the recipient of the verb’s action.

7. Read. Read everything.

• We don’t just become smarter by reading, we gain our literary voice by reading. As a painter learns by studying the masters, a…