Detailed & practical writing advice from 20 famous authors

Everyone can write. But very few can write well. To help you become a better writer, I’ve put together some useful wisdom and advice from 20 masters of the craft.

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Kurt Vonnegut

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing.   If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your reader will surely feel that you care nothing about them.  They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead — or, worse, they will stop reading you.

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Eight rules for great writing:

• Find a Subject You Care About

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about.  It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

• Do Not Ramble, Though

I won’t ramble on about that.

• Keep It Simple

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound.  ‘To be or not to be?’ asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story ‘Eveline’ is just this one: ‘She was tired.’  At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.

• Have the Guts to Cut

It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak.  But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head.  Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

• Sound like Yourself

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child.  English was the novelist Joseph Conrad’s third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish.

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am.  What alternatives do I have?  The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

• Say What You Mean to Say

… I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more.  I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say.  My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine.  The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all.  They hoped that I would become understandable — and therefore understood.  And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music.  If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledly-piggledy, I would simply not be understood.  So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.

• Pity the Readers

Readers have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately.  They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school — twelve long years.

So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists.  Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient teachers, ever willing to simplify and clarify, whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.

• For Really Detailed Advice

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, a more technical sense, I commend to your attention The Elements of Style, by Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White. E. B.  White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.

You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.

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Stephen King

The adverb is not your friend.

Adverbs … are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs.  They’re the ones that usually end in -ly.  Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the timid writer in mind.  … With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn’t expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across.

Consider the sentence He closed the door firmly.  It’s by no means a terrible sentence (at least it’s got an active verb going for it), but ask yourself if firmly really has to be there.  You can argue that it expresses a degree of difference between He closed the door and He slammed the door, and you’ll get no argument from me … but what about context?  What about all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose which came before He closed the door firmly?  Shouldn’t this tell us how he closed the door?  And if the foregoing prose does tell us, isn’t firmly an extra word?  Isn’t it redundant?

Someone out there is now accusing me of being tiresome and anal-retentive.  I deny it. I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.  To put it another way, they’re like dandelions.  If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique.  If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day . . . fifty the day after that . . . and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions.  By then you see them for the weeds they really are, but by then it’s — GASP!! — too late.

I can be a good sport about adverbs, though.  Yes I can.  With one exception: dialogue attribution.  I insist that you use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special of occasions . . . and not even then, if you can avoid it.  Just to make sure we all know what we’re talking about, examine these three sentences:

‘Put it down!’ she shouted.
‘Give it back,’ he pleaded, ‘it’s mine.’
‘Don’t be such a fool, Jekyll,’ Utterson said.

In these sentences, shouted, pleaded, and said are verbs of dialogue attribution.  Now look at these dubious revisions:

‘Put it down! she shouted menacingly.
‘Give it back,’ he pleaded abjectly, ‘it’s mine.’
‘Don’t be such a fool, Jekyll,’ Utterson said contemptuously.

The three latter sentences are all weaker than the three former ones, and most readers will see why immediately.

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Anais Nin

To achieve perfection in writing while retaining naturalness it is important to write a great deal, to write fluently, as the pianist practices the piano, rather than to correct constantly one page until it withers.   To write continuously, to try over and over again to capture a certain mood, a certain experience.  Intensive correcting may lead to monotony, to working on dead matter, whereas continuing to write and to write until perfection is achieved through repetition is a way to elude this monotony, to avoid performing an autopsy.  Sheer playing of scales, practice, repetition — then by the time one is ready to write a story or a novel a great deal of natural distillation and softing has been accomplished.

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E.B. White

Often a word can be removed without destroying the structure of a sentence, but that does not necessarily mean that the word is needless or that the sentence has gained by its removal.

If you were to put a narrow construction on the word ‘needless,’ you would have to remove tens of thousands of words from Shakespeare, who seldom said anything in six words that could be said in twenty.  Writing is not an exercise in excision, it’s a journey into sound.  How about ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’?  One tomorrow would suffice, but it’s the other two that have made the thing immortal.

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Ernest Hemingway

A good writer should know as near everything as possible.   Naturally he will not.  A great enough writer seems to be born with knowledge.  But he really is not; he has only been born with the ability to learn in a quicker ratio to the passage of time than other men and without conscious application, and with an intelligence to accept or reject what is already presented as knowledge.  There are some things which cannot be learned quickly and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring.  They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.  Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total knowledge which is there at the disposal of the next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is available as his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure from.

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In any art you’re allowed to steal anything if you can make it better, but the tendency should always be upward instead of down.   And don’t ever imitate anybody.  All style is, is the awkwardness of a writer in stating a fact.  If you have a way of your own, you are fortunate, but if you try to write like somebody else, you’ll have the awkwardness of the other writer as well as your own.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Use familiar words

You ought never to use an unfamiliar word unless you’ve had to search for it to express a delicate shade-where in effect you have recreated it.   This is a damn good prose rule I think…. Exceptions: (a) need to avoid repetition (b) need of rhythm (c) etc.

• Use verbs, not adjectives, to keep your sentences moving

About adjectives: all fine prose is based on the verbs carrying the sentences.  They make sentences move.  Probably the finest technical poem in English is Keats’ “Eve of Saint Agnes.”  A line like “The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,” is so alive that you race through it, scarcely noticing it, yet it has colored the whole poem with its movement–the limping, trembling and freezing is going on before your own eyes.

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H.P. Lovecraft

No aspiring author should content himself with a mere acquisition of technical rules.  All attempts at gaining literary polish must begin with judicious reading, and the learner must never cease to hold this phase uppermost.  In many cases, the usage of good authors will be found a more effective guide than any amount of precept.  A page of Addison or of Irving will teach more of style than a whole manual of rules, whilst a story of Poe’s will impress upon the mind a more vivid notion of powerful and correct description and narration than will ten dry chapters of a bulky textbook.

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It is also important that cheaper types of reading, if hitherto followed, be dropped.  Popular magazines inculcate a careless and deplorable style which is hard to unlearn, and which impedes the acquisition of a purer style.  If such things must be read, let them be skimmed over as lightly as possible.  An excellent habit to cultivate is the analytical study of the King James Bible.  For simple yet rich and forceful English, this masterly production is hard to equal; and even though its Saxon vocabulary and poetic rhythm be unsuited to general composition, it is an invaluable model for writers on quaint or imaginative themes.

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Jennifer Egan

Read at the level at which you want to write.  Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do.  If what you really love to read is y, it might be hard for you to write x.

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Exercising is a good analogy for writing.  If you’re not used to exercising you want to avoid it forever.  If you’re used to it, it feels uncomfortable and strange not to.  No matter where you are in your writing career, the same is true for writing.  Even fifteen minutes a day will keep you in the habit.

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You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly. You can’t write regularly and well. One should accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.

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John Steinbeck

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

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Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.  Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.  Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.  It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

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If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on.  When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.

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Ray Bradbury

The time we have alone, the time we have in walking, the time we have in riding a bicycle — [these] are the most important times for a writer.  Escaping from a typewriter is part of the creative process.  You have to give your subconscious time to think.  Real thinking always occurs on the subconscious level.

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Ann Patchett

Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration? Chances are, any child who stays with an instrument for more than two weeks has some adult making her practice, and any child who sticks with it longer than that does so because she understands that practice makes her play better and that there is a deep, soul-satisfying pleasure in improvement.  If a person of any age picked up the cello for the first time and said, “I’ll be playing in Carnegie Hall next month!” you would pity their delusion, yet beginning fiction writers all across the country polish up their best efforts and send them off to The New Yorker.  Perhaps you’re thinking here that playing an instrument is not an art itself but an interpretation of the composer’s art, but I stand by my metaphor.  The art of writing comes way down the line, as does the art of interpreting Bach.  Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art you must master the craft.  If you want to write, practice writing.  Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say.  Write the story, learn from it, put it away, write another story.  Think of a sink pipe filled with sticky sediment.  The only way to get clean water is to force a small ocean through the tap.  Most of us are full up with bad stories, boring stories, self-indulgent stories, searing works of unendurable melodrama.  We must get all of them out of our system in order to find the good stories that may or may not exist in the freshwater underneath.

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Umberto Eco

You are not Proust.  Do not write long sentences.  If they come into your head, write them, but then break them down.  Do not be afraid to repeat the subject twice, and stay away from too many pronouns and subordinate clauses.

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Begin new paragraphs often.  Do so when logically necessary, and when the pace of the text requires it, but the more you do it, the better.

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We either use rhetorical figures effectively, or we do not use them at all.  If we use them it is because we presume our reader is capable of catching them, and because we believe that we will appear more incisive and convincing.  In this case, we should not be ashamed of them, and we should not explain them.  If we think that our reader is an idiot, we should not use rhetorical figures, but if we use them and feel the need to explain them, we are essentially calling the reader an idiot.  In turn, he will take revenge by calling the author an idiot.

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[Avoid] the exclamation point to emphasize a statement.  This is not appropriate in a critical essay… It is allowed once or twice, if the purpose is to make the reader jump in his seat and call his attention to a vehement statement like, “Pay attention, never make this mistake!”  But it is a good rule to speak softly.  The effect will be stronger if you simply say important things.

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William Zinsser

• Don’t make lazy word choices:  “You’ll never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive.   The English language is rich in strong and supple words.  Take the time to root around and find the ones you want.

• On the other hand, avoid jargon and big words:  “Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other.  It’s impossible for a muddy thinker to write good English.”

• Writing is hard work:  “A clear sentence is no accident.  Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair.  If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.”

• Yes, the thesaurus is your friend:  “The Thesaurus is to the writer what a rhyming dictionary is to the songwriter–a reminder of all the choices–and you should use it with gratitude.  If, having found the scalawag and the scapegrace, you want to know how they differ, then go to the dictionary.”

• Read everything you write out loud for rhythm and sound:  “Good writers of prose must be part poet, always listening to what they write.”

• And don’t ever believe you are going to write anything definitive:  “Decide what corner of your subject you’re going to bite off, and be content to cover it well and stop.”

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Annie Dillard

The reason to perfect a piece of prose as it progresses — to secure each sentence before building on it — is that original writing fashions a form.  It unrolls out into nothingness.  It grows cell to cell, bole to bough to twig to leaf; any careful word may suggest a route, may begin a strand of metaphor or event out of which much, or all, will develop.  Perfecting the work inch by inch, writing from the first word toward the last, displays the courage and fear this method induces.

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The reason not to perfect a work as it progresses is that, concomitantly, original work fashions a form the true shape of which it discovers only as it proceeds, so the early strokes are useless, however fine their sheen.  Only when a paragraph’s role in the context of the whole work is clear can the envisioning writer direct its complexity of detail to strengthen the work’s ends.

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George Orwell

“Bad habits” responsible for the “mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence” that poisons the English language:

1. Dying metaphors:  A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically “dead” (e.g., iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness.  But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.  Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed.  Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a “rift,” for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying.

2. Operators, Or verbal false limbs:  These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry.  Characteristic phrases are: render inoperative, militate against, prove unacceptable, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, serve the purpose of, etc., etc.  The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs.  Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purposes verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render.  In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining).  The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ise and de-formations, and banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation.  Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, the fact that, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved from anti-climax by such refunding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, etc.

3. Pretentious diction:  Words like phenomenon, element, individual(as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual basic, primary, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments.  Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid processes of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on anarchaic color, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, trident, sword, shield, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, status quo, gleichschaltung, Weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance.  Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g. and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in English.  Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, clandestine, subaqueous and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers.  The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, lackeys, flunkey, mad dog. White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words and phrases translated from Russian, German or French;  but the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize formation.  It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentatory) than to think up the English words that will cover one’s meaning.  The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

4. Meaningless words:  In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.  Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly even expected to do so by the reader.  When one critic writes, “The outstanding feature of Mr. X’s work is its living quality,” while another writes, “The immediately striking thing about Mr. X’s work is its peculiar deadness,” the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion.  If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way.  Many political words are similarly abused.  The word fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.”  The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.  In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides.  It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it:  Consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.  Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.  That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.  Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot.  The Soviet Press is the freest in the world. The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with the intent to deceive.  Others words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

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W.H. Auden

Sincerity in the proper sense of the word, meaning authenticity, is, however, or ought to be, a writer’s chief preoccupation.  No writer can ever judge exactly how good or bad a work of his may be, but he can always know, not immediately perhaps, but certainly in a short while, whether something he has written is authentic — in his handwriting — or a forgery.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

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Anne Lammot

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day.  We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.  Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

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Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.

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Arthur Schopenhauer

There is nothing an author should guard against more than the apparent endeavour to show more intellect than he has ; because this rouses the suspicion in the reader that he has very little, since a man always affects something, be its nature what it may, that he does not really possess.  And this is why it is praise to an author to call him naïve, for it signifies that he may show himself as he is.  In general, naïveté attracts, while anything that is unnatural everywhere repels.

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If a man has something to say that is worth saying, he need not envelop it in affected expressions, involved phrases, and enigmatical innuendoes; but he may rest assured that by expressing himself in a simple, clear, and naïve manner he will not fail to produce the right effect.  A man who makes use of such artifices as have been alluded to betrays his poverty of ideas, mind, and knowledge.

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Obscurity and vagueness of expression are at all times and everywhere a very bad sign.  In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they arise from vagueness of thought, which, in its turn, is almost always fundamentally discordant, inconsistent, and therefore wrong.  When a right thought springs up in the mind it strives after clearness of expression, and it soon attains it, for clear thought easily finds its appropriate expression.  A man who is capable of thinking can express himself at all times in clear, comprehensible, and unambiguous words.  Those writers who construct difficult, obscure, involved, and ambiguous phrases most certainly do not rightly know what it is they wish to say: they have only a dull consciousness of it , which is still struggling to put itself into thought; they also often wish to conceal from themselves and other people that in reality they have nothing to say.

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True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations of things which everyone can think out for himself; that is, it consists in his correctly distinguishing between what is necessary and what is superfluous.  On the other hand, one should never sacrifice clearness, to say nothing of grammar, for the sake of being brief.  To impoverish the expression of a thought, or to obscure or spoil the meaning of a period for the sake of using fewer words shows a lamentable want of judgment.

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William Faulkner

Ninety-nine percent talent . . . ninety-nine percent discipline . . . ninety-nine percent work.  A writer must never be satisfied with what he does. It never is as good as it can be done. Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.   Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.  Try to be better than yourself.  An artist is a creature driven by demons.  He doesn’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why.  He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

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Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique.  There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut.  The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory.  Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.  The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice.  He has supreme vanity.  No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

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Ursula K. Le Guin

Beginners’ failures are often the result of trying to work with strong feelings and ideas without having found the images to embody them, or without even knowing how to find the words and string them together.  Ignorance of English vocabulary and grammar is a considerable liability to a writer of English.  The best cure for it is, I believe, reading.  People who learned to talk at two or so and have been practicing talking ever since feel with some justification that they know their language; but what they know is their spoken language, and if they read little, or read schlock, and haven’t written much, their writing is going to be pretty much what their talking was when they were two.