How To Be A Better Writer: Use This 10-Word Secret Formula
by Audie Metcalf
I’ve been making a living as a writer for 16 years. A pretty good living.
When I tell people I’m a writer many of them say:
That’s my dream job!
I assume the reason so many people want to be writers but don’t actually do it is that they have no idea where to start. There’s also something complex about taking an art form you love and turning it into commerce, but that’s an article for another day.
I can’t fully help with the how of getting writing work (although we’re always hiring) but I can help with the what of what makes writing compelling.
I’ve reduced it to 5 ideas, 10 words.
They’re simple concepts. But executing them? Harder. It will take practice, and it will require a constant willingness to be able to part with what might feels comfortable and natural. (That’s my edit of my original, shitty sentence. It’s not part of the formula, but another little pro-tip is to always chop out words that are redundant)
So here’s my 10-word formula, in no particular order.
1. Shared experiences.
Possibly the hardest idea to execute, because you need to untangle what is unique to you, versus what is unique to the human experience. When you write for the internet in particular, readers don’t care about you. You are a stranger. So if your writing is basically a personal journal entry, save it for your journal.
Readers care about how you make them feel. So if you reveal thoughts and ideas they’ve always had, but have never fully been able to express, you’ve just reached your hand out to theirs and given them something they didn’t have before.
Here is an ESSAY I wrote about not seeing my mother during covid. It was all specific to my life, but I think it succeeded mostly because I thought about the ways in which my experience was so much like so many other people’s experiences.
What do you think?
2. Plain language.
This is also hard. Listen, they’re all gonna be hard. But doing things really well is hard, and most of us think good writing is fancy writing. But it isn’t. Good writing is clear writing. Because clarity makes us feel things and making people feel things is essentially what good writing, at its core, is. Big words do not make people feel anything, and that’s usually because if you use a big word, the reader is suddenly taken out of the moment, either because they don’t know what that word means, or because their focus has shifted onto you, the writer. Just like when a scene in a movie is too self-aware or the camera move is too pretentious, you are taken out of the film and are now thinking about the dumb director and his “choices.”
If you can use a simpler word, use it.
3. Specifics, always.
Don’t say “breakfast” when you can say “slightly underdone scrambled eggs and some limp, rye toast.” It always paints a more vivid picture. Also how good is rye toast?
4. Nouns > adjectives.
Adjectives can get flowery and predictable and the mind wanders. Nouns create a visible place in the reader’s imagination. Nouns make things real. The first time I ever thought about this was while listening to “The Last Time I Saw Richard” by Joni Mitchell, and it was because of this line:
He put a quarter in the Wurlitzer and he pushed
Three buttons and the thing began to whirr
And a bar maid came by in fishnet stockings and a bow tie
And she said "Drink up now it's getting' on time to close
Has anything ever been more vivid? NOUNS.
5. Reject cliché.
I saved the best for last, but you need to avoid this like the plague, or getting your reader to feel all the feels will be an uphill battle.
How many clichés did you just count in that sentence? I counted 17 thousand. And even though I wrote it for effect, I’m already getting a few hives.
You might really hate this part (me) because you use these phrases. But I’m willing to absorb your hatred, because it’s the single most important idea on this list. Clichés are boring. Clichés make us sound mindless. Clichés mean that what you’re writing could be written by anyone, so because of their ubiquity, your voice has no tone.
Find a way to use steps 1-4 that will ensure that when you’re talking about joining your life with another, emotionally, financially, spiritually, from now until the day you leave this world, you don’t describe it as “finding your person.” There’s just a better way. A new way.
A way only you can say it.
Ps: See? Wasn’t “ubiquity” a stupid word to use? And I know it took you out of it.
Audie Metcalf is the Editor-in-chief of The Candidly, and lives in LA with her family. You can find more of her articles here.
