Essays and The Hooker's Tale

Womagwriter made the comment that the same principles about essay writing could be applied pretty much to article writing.  That's so true - and it applies to all non-fiction as well as a lot of fiction writing.  And the principles spread even wider...

On February 19th I'm giving a talk at the Get Writing Conference at St Albans.  It's called The Hooker's Tale - their title, not mine (sensationalist, moi?  Perish the thought!) - and is going to cover how to hook readers and keep them reading.  I haven't yet worked out what I'm going to say but this is how I'll go about planning it.

First things first - look at the title.  It's not about how to get an agent, or manuscript presentation. I'm concentrating on hooking readers.  Immediately that suggests I'm going to cover suspense, pace, first pages, chapter ends but before I get to the content I need to think about timing.  

It's an hour slot so I need to allow approx 10-15 minutes at the end for questions, and maybe 5 minutes at the beginning for a late start (my talk is in the afternoon to the whole conference so it's bound to start late.  So, the bit when I'm yabbering away solo is going to take about 45 minutes.  

Thinking about content, I came up with 4 ideas immediately.  I've thought of a couple more: reader engagement and problem/solution.  That's 6.  Could I talk on each for about 7 minutes? Yup, so that's a rough structure organised.  If I get more ideas for possible sections I'll add them in as I go along

If I were writing an article I'd be thinking of the readership - a Guardian reader is a different beast from a Woman & Home reader, for example - but as it's a talk I'm thinking audience.  It's going to be large - could be as many as 200 - and most are going to be would-be writers.  So the talk could be quite technical and specific but it needs to work on a large scale.  Audience participation would be good to get people involved - I don't want to see yawning faces.  

I'm starting to mentally go through my list of exercises and work out if I could make them large scale.  There's a great one I've done before with a large audience that'll fit into this talk nicely - we'll start with that perhaps.  And so I go on, writing ideas down on index cards, arranging them into an interesting order...

It's exactly the same process as I'd suggest for writing an essay or an article or a business report and it's not dissimilar for fiction - a short story needs to be fixed on its main theme for example and not lose focus and stray into irrelevance.  Come along on the 19th and see if it's any good!

Essay Problems and Solutions II

So, you've got your structure, now to the writing.

1.  Shorten your sentences

There's a tendency to write long convoluted sentences which almost always read better when divided into two (or more).  Firstly, your writing sounds more confident when you make statements - the cat sat on the mat, for example, is a simple, straightforward statement.  Secondly, it's hard for the reader to hold a very long sentence in their head.  By the time they've got to the end they've forgotten the beginning.

2.  Cut the qualifiers

Academic writing is often about weighing up conflicting statements and leaving any judgements to the conclusion so it's tempting to add lots of qualifiers - maybe, might, can also, sometimes, possibly, perhaps, in certain circumstances etc.  All qualifiers weaken your writing, so they should be used sparingly.  

3.  Watch out for connecting words

Essays are about a series of ideas linked to follow an argument.  Linking or connecting words are useful, but you don't need them at the beginning of every sentence as the ideas themselves should clearly link. Moreover, therefore, also, on the other hand, despite... I have read sentences that start with a series of linking words.  Please - more is not better.

4. Use a dictionary

The English language is a wonderful thing, crammed with a variety of wonderful words.  Students often use good words, but not necessarily in exactly the right circumstances.  Do you really know the meaning of a word like crepuscular? If in doubt, check.  

5.  Clarity is everything

Academic writing can be obscure and jargon-filled, but that doesn't mean it's good academic writing.  Think of it this way:  you've got ideas which you want to communicate to the reader, so you want them to understand your ideas as easily as possible.  That means your writing needs to be as clear as possible.  The flipside is, confused writing = confused thinking.  

6.  Everybody re-writes

Students are sometimes amazed when I tell them that re-writing is what everybody does. I think they assume that writing should be like taking dictation from the heavens.  Well, apart from Mozart, that's never been true. Everybody re-writes, and their writing is miles better for it.

7.  Read through aloud

Another one every writer should do.  If you read aloud all those glitches, long sentences, lack of commas and so on become obvious.  And by reading aloud I do mean  out loud, not mumbling.  

Essay Problems and Solutions I

As the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Bristol I spend a lot of time looking at student essays on a wide range of subjects.  I find myself saying the same things day after day to students on how to improve their essay writing so thought I'd put them down here.

1. Answer the question  

Obvious you'd think, but often students stray.  There should be lots of clues in the title as to what you're supposed to be writing about.  Look for Directive Words eg examine, analyse, discuss, compare, evaluate and Key Words - if it mentions the C16th, then don't waste time on the C18th.  If you only answer half the question, you can only pick up half the marks.

2. Balance the essay

Essay questions often contain several parts eg with reference to two or three examples, or something along the lines of: Discuss the effects of....Explain why this may be.  Each part of the question should get roughly the same space.  If the question is eg Discuss the roles of women in C15th France, then work out how many roles women had (religious, domestic...) and take it from there.

3. Work out a structure

If you're comparing two texts you have a choice.  Either look at text A for the first half, then text B for the second -  AAAABBBB Or look at each text for the same topic ABABABAB.

4. Do some maths

If your essay is to be 2000 words long, each part should get roughly the same length of page time eg deduct 300 words for the Introduction and Conclusion, and a two-part/example essay will spend approx 850 words on each part.  

It's a good idea to work out how long you can spend on each part as it can save time by preventing you from doing unnecessary research and reading.  If it's the Discuss the roles of women in C15th France in 1000 words, and you've come up with 5 roles, then you know you can't spend more than 200 words on each role. That's not much, so it's a waste of time reading extensively round each role and finding lots of examples - you've only got space for one or two.

Once you've sorted out what you're doing and how you're going to do it, writing the essay is much, much easier - and I'll look at that tomorrow.

Funny How Life Turns Out

I didn't like writing essays much at school, and I didn't like it at university. In fact, one of my clearest memories is after my final final exam thinking: I will never write an essay EVER AGAIN.

Funny how life turns out.

As the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Bristol I'm giving advice to students about writing. It could be any sort of writing but, hardly surprisingly, essay writing is pretty much top of the list. I've given quite a few lectures on the subject too.

What I've realised is that the process of writing an essay, or an article, or a novel, or a short story, or a screenplay is pretty much the same. You select information and order it in a logical way which leads the reader through from start to finish without losing them on the journey. You pitch it depending on your target audience. The length is dictated by the form, the content is dictated by the length - an essay or short story is about a single idea, the novel, feature length screenplay or dissertation is about several ideas.

Every time I give a talk, I'm using the same skill base - selecting information and ordering it to make a satisfying whole. Same formula for a class, where exercises and readings take the place of quotes and citations. When I work on a novel, I'm asking myself if that bit of information about the central character is relevant, just the same way a student might wonder if they should include a particular reference.

All those years later after that final exam, I now realise I've spent the best part of my life doing what? Writing essays. Funny how life turns out.