Defining good writing
October 14th 2008 00:13
I have struggled to define "good writing". We all know what it is, but can you put it into words?
A Google search on "definition of good writing" offers remarkably few useful results. The first page of offers links to Orwell's five rules for effective writing, to guides on good "content" and "what makes a good writing assignment", to a definition of what makes a good blog ("There are sqillions [sic] of blogs out there and I canot [sic] read them all", it starts, which is where I stopped), and to "Landmark Essays on Bakhtin, Rhetoric, and Writing".
One definition, offered by writing teacher Anthony Juliano, is "Good writing is first precise, but also concise", but this is not a definition so much as a modish rewording of Orwell's second and third rules.
The only legitimate definition which Google threw up for good writing was, "Making what is completely obvious only to you completely obvious to everyone else. With words." That's better. The quote, which has a web page all to itself, is unattributed.
And then yesterday I picked up The Random House Guide to Good Writing, which offers the following definition of good writing.
"It's the novel we can't put down, the poem we never forget, the speech that changes the way we look at the world. It's the article that tells us when, and how, the essay that clarifies what was hazy before. Good writing is the memo that gets action, the letter that says what a phone call can't. It's the movie that makes us cry, the TV show that makes us laugh, the lyrics to the song we can't stop singing, the advertisement that makes us buy."
A Google search on "definition of good writing" offers remarkably few useful results. The first page of offers links to Orwell's five rules for effective writing, to guides on good "content" and "what makes a good writing assignment", to a definition of what makes a good blog ("There are sqillions [sic] of blogs out there and I canot [sic] read them all", it starts, which is where I stopped), and to "Landmark Essays on Bakhtin, Rhetoric, and Writing".
One definition, offered by writing teacher Anthony Juliano, is "Good writing is first precise, but also concise", but this is not a definition so much as a modish rewording of Orwell's second and third rules.
The only legitimate definition which Google threw up for good writing was, "Making what is completely obvious only to you completely obvious to everyone else. With words." That's better. The quote, which has a web page all to itself, is unattributed.
And then yesterday I picked up The Random House Guide to Good Writing, which offers the following definition of good writing.
"It's the novel we can't put down, the poem we never forget, the speech that changes the way we look at the world. It's the article that tells us when, and how, the essay that clarifies what was hazy before. Good writing is the memo that gets action, the letter that says what a phone call can't. It's the movie that makes us cry, the TV show that makes us laugh, the lyrics to the song we can't stop singing, the advertisement that makes us buy."
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Comment by katyzzz
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To follow the 'ultimate' requirements is like looking for a stairway to Heaven and one man's meat is another man's poison.
Do not despair. And a blog is hardly the ultimate test.
Comment by Lady Henrietta Muddling
Potter in a Harry
Random House's definiton is spot on.
There are so many bloggers who refuse to believe that writing is a profession or trade or craft that has to be leant like an apprenticeship in any profession, trade or craft. And so they flounder. They rely on their own 'natural' talent. They come onto a blogging site to teach others how to write without going through the process of learning what writing is about first. What a crock of shit. No wonder I have so many enemies on this site.
Ron Barrassi said talent was something that came out of the eye of your father's cock. He was only interested in footballers who put in the hard yards.
Writing is a profession/trade/craft. Until bloggers realise that and accept it as an immutable truth, they will pull out the cliches ad nauseam.
Once you've learnt the rules, you are entitled to break them. Until you learn the rules? You are just a tinkling cymbal pissing in the wind.
Comment by Chris Champion
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Did Big Bad Ron really say that?
Why is it so many people think they can write well? And why is it that so many people click on "How to write well" posts, and then turn their mind off when they find, rather than a magical grammar wand, rules about apostrophes and redundancies?
I think it's because writing seems a logical extension of speech. If I can say it okay and me mates get a laugh, then I must be a good riter, wright?
That's an extreme, but it makes a similar point to yours: there's a line between effective oral and written communication which is not visible to the untrained eye.
There's a case, however, as I think katy was getting at, that blogging has to some extent its own rules and tolerance levels - as with, say, personal diaries.