How to Write Well | Research

What separates good writing from bad? After surveying the advice of masters—Orwell, Zinsser, Strunk & White, Pinker, Graham—patterns emerge. The consensus is striking.

The Core Principle: Clarity Through Simplicity

Every authority arrives at the same destination: simplicity. Not simple ideas, but simple expression of complex ideas.

Zinsser (On Writing Well): “The secret to good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest component.” He claims up to 50% of first drafts can be cut.

Orwell (Politics and the English Language): Six rules, but really one rule—don’t obscure meaning. The famous list:

Never use a metaphor you’ve seen in print
Never use a long word where a short will do
If it’s possible to cut a word, cut it
Never use passive when active works
Never use jargon when everyday English exists
Break any rule rather than say anything barbarous

Strunk & White: “Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”

The Curse of Knowledge

Steven Pinker identifies the primary cause of bad writing: the curse of knowledge—the failure to understand that others don’t know what we know.

Writers assume readers share their context. They skip steps that seem “obvious.” They use jargon without definition. The result is inaccessible prose.

Antidotes:

Use concrete nouns and tangible things instead of abstractions
Assume readers are intelligent but uninformed on your specific topic
Show drafts to representative readers
Allow time between writing and editing (fresh eyes)
Spell out acronyms on first use

Pinker advocates classic style: conversational prose where “the writer points to things in the world the reader can see.” The goal is to help readers see reality, not to build abstraction upon abstraction.

Concrete Beats Abstract

“The more abstract your language, the more unclear and boring it will be. The more concrete and specific, the more clear and vivid.”

Abstract: “The project had challenges.” Concrete: “The team missed three deadlines, burned through the budget in two months, and lost their lead engineer to a competitor.”

The ladder of abstraction (from Jack Hart’s A Writer’s Coach): Writers can move up and down between abstract and concrete. Most stay stuck at the top. The magic happens when you descend far enough for readers to picture a specific scene.

The pattern: use abstract language for thesis statements and topic sentences, but make development concrete and specific.

Show, Don’t Tell

Chekhov: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

Not a commandment to always show—that would be exhausting. The rule is: show what matters to the character and the plot; tell between the gaps.

Tell: “She was nervous.” Show: “She drummed her fingers on the table, eyes flicking to the door every few seconds.”

Telling is efficient. Showing creates emotional depth. Use both strategically.

Strong Verbs, Few Adverbs

Weak verbs lean on adverbs: “walked slowly,” “said loudly.” Strong verbs stand alone: “shuffled,” “roared.”

Not a ban on adverbs—moderation, not prohibition. But when you find verb + adverb, ask: is there a single verb that does the work?

Before: “He walked casually into the bar.” After: “He ambled into the bar.”

Before: “Hayley walked angrily to the door.” After: “Hayley stormed to the door.”

Sentence Variety Creates Rhythm

“Adding sentence variety to prose can give it life and rhythm. Too many sentences with the same structure and length can grow monotonous.”

Mix short and long sentences. Short sentences punch. Long sentences develop and flow. The alternation creates musicality.

Techniques:

Vary sentence length deliberately
Match rhythm to mood (action = short, clipped; introspection = flowing)
Mix simple, compound, and complex structures
Avoid starting too many sentences with “The,” “It,” “This,” or “I”
Read aloud—you’ll hear when rhythm breaks

Writing Is Thinking

Paul Graham: “Writing converts your ideas from vague to bad. But that’s a step forward, because once you can see the brokenness, you can fix it.”

The essay is a discovery tool. The word comes from French “essayer”—to try, to attempt. Montaigne wasn’t demonstrating expertise; he was exploring what puzzled him.

“Ideas can feel complete. It’s only when you try to put them into words that you discover they’re not.”

Writing forces compression. That constraint breeds clarity. You can’t cheat by gesturing vaguely—you must commit to specific words.

Good Writing Is Rewriting

Hemingway: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Also: rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms 47 times.

Nabokov: “I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”

Zinsser: “Rewriting is the essence of writing well—where the game is won or lost.”

The consensus: 90% of good writing is rewriting. First drafts exist to be fixed, not to be good. Lower the bar for drafting; raise it for revision.

Kill Your Darlings

Arthur Quiller-Couch (often misattributed to Faulkner): “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press.”

The principle: if text serves only ornament, if its purpose is to display cleverness rather than drive the story forward, cut it. Style should serve the text’s purpose, not the writer’s ego.

Important nuance: this is advice about revision, not drafting. Write freely. Then revise ruthlessly.

Write for Readers, Not Yourself

Cognitive psychologist Ronald Kellogg: “The primary psychological difference between being a novice writer and an advanced writer is an awareness of audience.”

Writer-based prose: “If it makes sense to me, it’s fine.” Reader-based prose: focuses on clear communication to a specific audience.

Empathy is the core skill. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes. Build the bridge from your understanding to theirs—that’s your job, not theirs.

Paul Graham on Useful Writing

From “How to Write Usefully”—four components:

Correctness: Make claims as strong as possible without becoming false
Novelty: Say something readers didn’t know (or articulate what they sensed but couldn’t express)
Importance: Topics must matter—importance multiplies affected people by depth of effect
Strength: Present ideas definitively, use qualification strategically not excessively

The Morris Technique: only publish what you’re confident about. “You can ensure that every idea you publish is good by simply not publishing the ones that aren’t.”

From “The Best Essay”—great essays depend on topic quality, not just writing technique. Essays are instruments of thought. “Start with a question that sparks genuine curiosity. Commit ideas to specific words. Reread ruthlessly. Follow the most novel branches.”

Finding Your Voice

Voice is distinct from style and tone:

Voice: the personality behind the words (playful, lyrical, blunt)
Style: the mechanics (sentence structure, vocabulary, pacing)
Tone: the mood adopted in different situations (formal vs. casual)

Your voice is already in you. Writing should reflect how you speak—not just words, but personality, values, the stories you tell.

The path: read widely to discover what styles resonate. Write regularly to let your natural voice emerge. Trust that it will evolve over time.

“It often takes many years and thousands of pages for a writer’s true voice to emerge.”

The Discipline of Daily Practice

Murakami: Wake at 4am, write 5-6 hours, exercise, read, sleep by 9pm. Same routine daily—writing a novel requires stamina like survival training.

Alice Munro: “I write every morning, seven days a week… I am so compulsive that I have a quota of pages.”

Anthony Trollope: Woke at 5am, wrote until 8:30am with a watch on his desk—250 words every 15 minutes. If he finished a novel mid-session, he immediately started the next.

The pattern: ritual and consistency matter more than inspiration. Showing up at your desk for the 30th consecutive day is easier than 30 sporadic days spread over months.

It takes 66 days to form a habit. Start small—twenty minutes—not four hours.

How to Get Better

Read Like a Writer

Francine Prose (Reading Like a Writer): the best way to learn writing is to read, slowly and closely. Ask of every sentence: why this word? Why this structure? What is the writer trying to achieve?

Study the masters: Chekhov for detail, Orwell for clarity, Hemingway for economy, Austen for voice.

Get Feedback

Beta readers provide the reader’s perspective. Critique partners (fellow writers) provide craft feedback. Professional editors provide structural analysis.

The key: patterns in feedback reveal real issues. One person’s opinion is just an opinion; the same note from multiple readers is gold.

Practice with Purpose

Freewriting: write without stopping or editing for a set time. Julia Cameron’s “Morning Pages”—three pages, first thing, stream of consciousness.

Write prompts: use random sentences as story starters to break out of habitual patterns.

ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5): describe complex ideas simply. Strengthens clarity.

Do these exercises for ten minutes at a time, several times a week, during your peak creative hours.