What Is Clean Writing?

Do you think best-selling authors like James Patterson, J.K. Rowling, and Jerry Jenkins sit down and produce that best seller with their first draft?

For some reason, many people believe this is how it happens. But that’s a myth.

“Submitting a novel without rewriting is like playing ice hockey naked.” ~Best selling author James Scott Bell in Revision and Self-Editing for Publication

Whether you are a seat-of-the-pants writer or one who plots first, the prevailing advice in writing your first draft is to “vomit on the page.” Sit down and write without editing yourself as you write. Get the words on the page.

So there’s no getting around it—you must ruthlessly revise your draft manuscript, be it fiction or nonfiction.

“But the secret to good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.

Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence.” ~William Zinsser, On Writing Well

Zinsser, who died earlier this month, is best known for his book On Writing Well. He had a long and prolific career as a journalist and nonfiction writer that included feature writer for the New York Herald Tribune and 10 years teaching nonfiction and humor writing at Yale.

Make your writing clean

When I’m revising, I constantly have to remind myself that I’m working on a specific issue, e.g. flow and story progression, rising conflict, etc. Whole scenes get deleted and new scenes added. Therefore, I leave a run-through for clean writing to the very last.

Using Zinsser’s quote, I examine my writing for:

• Every word that serves no function
• Every long word that could be a short word
• Every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb
• Every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what.

A question I ask as I work: “Is this the best word that describes the action or emotion I’m seeking to express?”

I start by

• looking up the word in question in the dictionary to ensure its meaning.
• Then I look up the word in a thesaurus,
• then turn to the dictionary to discover all the definitions of the possible synonyms.

This is my #1 process when I’m not satisfied with a word.

If that didn’t work, I turn to a nifty online tool called OneLook Reverse Dictionary. Here I enter in the concept of what I’m looking for and the tool returns a list of possible words.

Yes, clean writing is hard work. Is it worth it? Yes!

Clean writing can mean the difference between a good book and a best seller.

In conclusion, I’ll let William Zinsser speak. He says it best.

“The English language is rich in strong and supple words. Take the time to root around and find the ones you want.”

Recommended Resources

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (I also subscribe to the online version.)
Roget’s Super Thesaurus
OneLook Reverse Dictionary
*On Writing Well by William Zinsser
Revision and Self-Editing for Publication by James Scott Bell

Also nice is a dictionary of idioms, of which a plethora exist.

Do you have resources to recommend? Put them in the comments.