The Seven Beacons of Excellent

March 1984

id you ever sit down to write, and get the feeling that things
would go fine if you could just keep in mind 543 principles
of good writing?
I did. A lot.
It seemed that the writing waters were pretty treacherous, and often
while I kept busy watching for rocks I forgot to sail forth. I needed some
lighthouses, a few beacons to lead me safely into port. I needed to reduce
all that I knew about good writing to a handful of concepts, few enough
that I could see them all at once. So I made a iist. I came up with . . or
perhaps down to . . seven. I call them my seven beacons of good writing. They are Brevity, Clarity, Precision, Harmony, Humanity, Honesty
and Poetry, and they are posted over my desk. I suggest that you post
them over your desk too, and when the seas get rough and the sky
grows dark look ahead at them and steer a steady course.
The seven beacons guide me through everything I write. They once
led me through an article, called "Apple Harvest," that I wrote for The
Boston Phoenix. My home area has many apple orchards and the maga-,
zine wanted an article about who picks apples and why. I decided the
best way to write about the pickers was to be one.
And to use the seven beacons of good writing:

1. BREVITY
Brevity, we know, is the soul of wit. It is also the soul of good writing.
When you write and rewrite, don't think about what you can put in.
Think about what you can leave out.
Editors want tight writing. They want it short. They want every word
to be doing some work. Columns rarely run longer than 750 words, and
more and more there is a demand for articles in the 1,000- to 2,000word range.

The Seven Beacons of Excellent Writing

267

To the uninitiated it might seem that writing it shorter is easier. But

it's not. Someone (the quote has been attributed to people ranging from
Mark Twain to Abe Lincoln to Pascal) once wrote to a friend, "I would
have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have time." Writing shorter
doesn't mean saying less. It means saying as much, but with fewer
words.
Here are a few tips for keeping your good writing in a small package.
Find a slant, a specific aspect of your subject, and include only information that is appropriate for the slant. If you're writing "Ten Tips for
the Bike Buyer," direct at least 90 percent of your words toward those
ten tips, and spend relatively few words on generalized information such
as the rising interest in bicycling, the health benefits of bicycling, and
the number of bicycles sold last year.
Begin at the beginning. Many writers work their way into a story as
if they're feeling their way into a dark house. It's not unusual for editors
to cut the first five paragraphs from a story without anybody noticing.
Save them the work. Look at your first sentence. Is it doing any work?
Is it part of your story or is it merely about your story, which you haven't
yet begun? Cut every sentence until you come to the one that must be
there.
The original opening paragraph of my apple-pickingarticle was a typical unnecessary opening paragraph. It began, "I had decided to spend a
day picking apples for a day's pay. I wanted to find out what it felt like."
The paragraph goes on with a long explanation of why I had decided
to spend a day picking apples. It was unnecessary. The article would
eventually show all of that. 1 got rid of the paragraph. Instead of beginning with a paragraph about my decision to do something, I began with
the something itself:
I reached the apple orchard at nine on a brisk Wednesday morning.
No form of logic had influenced my choice of orchard. I'd simply
opened a phone book and picked out an orchard in Harvard. I knew
that all the orchards were looking for pickers.

Eliminate unnecessary words. One of the most painful lessons we

learn as writers is that a word, a sentence or a paragraph, no matter
how beautifully crafted or carefully chosen, is not a good word, sentence
or paragraph if it is not necessary. One way to eliminate unnecessary
words is to keep your eye on that beacon called Precision, which we'll
discuss soon. Remember that a word is unnecessary if it does no work,
if it does work that doesn't have to be done, or if it does
that's

268

The Writer's Digest Guide to Good Writing

being done by another word or phrase nearby. For example, "Tuesday

is Ms. Coronoa's day off, and she always goes to the video game arcade.
Every Tuesday she scoops up a fistful of quarters from her jar and drives
over to the video arcade in Elgin. She doesn't have to work on her arcade
days so sometimes she stays until supper time."
Also, look out for unnecessary words that you write habitually. Many
of my students use proceed a lot. Don't write, "Daniel proceeded to open
his letters." Write "Daniel opened his letters." Write "I think" instead
of "it is my opinion that." Also avoid "I would like to say" (just say it)
and "It has come to my attention." (Obviously it has come to your attention, or you couldn't bring it to our attention.) There are dozens of these.
Find them and eliminate them.
So write short. Fewer trees will have to be slaughtered, less ink will
be used, and more checks will be sent to your address.

2. CLARITY
I don't know where we acquire our early ideas of what constitutes good
writing. But there must be some common fountain of misinformation
because most of my students make the same mistakes that I made when
I was a few years younger. One of the most common and erroneous
ideas is that the clever writer hides his meaning. In fact, the good writer
makes his meaning as clear as possible. He leaves no room for doubt
about what is being read and he is not vague except when he has a good
reason.
I have read hundreds of unpublished stories that begin something
like this: "The package arrived at 2 A.M. Sammy opened it in a frenzy,
He stared at its contents and smiled." The story goes on and we hear
alot about "it" or "the contents of the package" and so forth. If we stick
around long enough we discover in the last paragraph that the package
contained an adorable little beagle puppy. This is the way children write,
not professionals.
A similar common mistake is the use of a mysterious pronoun long
before the noun has been introduced. The writer begins, "He hobbled
into the church, his heart full of shame. He looked about, saw no one,
and moved slowly toward the altar." Then "he" lights a candle, "he"
prays. After a while "he" starts to feel better. Then around the seventh
paragraph, "Thomas trembled at the thought of seeing Anna again," and
the first questions that go through the reader's mind are "Who the hell
is Thomas and where did he come from?" After a few more sentences
we begin to realize that Thomas is the mysterious "he" whose identity

The Seven Beacons of Excellent Writing

269

has been withheld from us for no good reason. Be clear.Begin with

"Thomas hobbled into the church, his heart full of shame,"
Though you should never repeat information unnecessarily, it is better to be repetitive than unclear. If you wrote, "Jefferson and Mitchell
met in Troy, New York. He was working as a waiter in a pancake house,"
the reader could become confused about which "he" was delivering
pancakes. Write, "Mitchell was working as a waiter in a pancake house."
Also, in dialogue, if you're not positive that you've made it clear who is
speaking, write "Diane said," or "Vandenburg said," as often as you
must.
Your writing is often robbed of clarity when you get lazy. You're tired,
perhaps distracted, you don't know quite what to say, so your writing
becomes vague, wishy-washy and you create paragraphs like this:

Soon I was apple-picking. Despite the normal problems, I found

there was a certain joy and calmness about it, though of course there
were some discomforting aspects of it, but nothing much to be really
concerned about.
That's all very vague. What exactly is the narrator doing? What problems? What is he talking about? Go back through your story and get
rid of these vague sentences that seem to bounce around looking for
somewhere to land. Clear it up. What are you trying to say? In my applepicking piece what I really wrote was:

I crawled in under the tree, found a place for my knees in the deep
grass, and began quite merrily to pick apples. Now and then I'd grab
an apple and from the quivering branch would come a cloud of tiny
white bugs. They didn't buzz, sting,or deposit larvae on my shirt, so
I didn ' t worry about them.
To be clear usually means to be direct. Get right to the point in
simple, unambiguous language. One useful tool is pyramid slyle; tell the
reader immediately what you're writing about, who's involved, when it
happens, where and how.
John Bierman began a Boston Globe story on termite chemicalswith
this clear and direct pyramid-style sentence:

Jeffrey Lever had his split-level ranch house in East Islip, Long
Island, bulldozed to the ground with all its contentslast week after it
was discovered the house's interior had been sprayed with a potentially
lethal chemical.

One more tip for clarity. Keep related words together. If you write
"The streets of London had been very crowded and Jason found that his
wallet had been stolen in Paris," a Frenchman is going to get blamed
for something an Englishman did. If the theft occured in London, then
put it near London. For example, "When he got to Paris, Jason discovered that his wallet had been stolen on the crowded streets of London."

3. PRECISION
Precision and Clarity are closely related. To be clear is to say what you
mean. To be precise is to say exactly what you mean. Precision is also
related to brevity. A precise word often replaces a few words that are
not so precise. A precise word etches a sharper picture on the reader's
brain and eliminates the possibility of misunderstanding.
Try to make your writing more precise without making it wordier.
Don't make a sentence more precise by hooking up a freight train of
details to it. Make it more precise by whittling all the possible word
combinations to those few that say exactly what you want to say. Go
through your manuscript and change the general word or phrase to the
precise word or phrase. Change"They won by a large margin" to "They
won by forty-two points." If you've written "Various ethnic groups have
settled in Newark," change it to "Greeks, Italians and Puerto Ricans
have settled in Newark."
You'll find that precision in writing increases believability. If I tell
you that some people are out to get me, you're skeptical. If I tell you
that three Turks have threatened to garotte me, you begin to think
maybe there's something to it.
Also, use a thesaurus to help you find the word that means precisely
what you want to say.
In the following example from my apple-picking article, I have made
a job, an age, an appearance, a machine and a motion all more precise.
In some cases I saved a few words. In others I spent a few more. But
in every case I improved the writing.
I changed:

"I'mlooking for work Picking apples,"I culled to the guy in charge.

He was a large, balding older man, rough-hewn and no pleasure to
bok at. He looked down at me from his noisy machine which he was
driving around the apple trees.
To:

"l'm looking for work picking apples," I called to the foreman. He

was a husky, balding man of about sixty, every bit as weathered us
the trees he tended. He had a fist for a face and it studied m e from
atop a yammering forklift which he jockeyed around the apple trees.

Writing a story is not a visual art, any more than composing music is a
visual art.
When you write, you create music, and when you write well, you
create music that is pleasant to the ear. It is harmonious. It doesn't
matter whether your writing sounds like Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto
No. I or Elton John's "Crocodile Rock," but it shouldn't sound like both.
The music should flow, not leap. There should be no electric guitars
shrieking amid the whispers of the flutes and violins. So read aloud
everything that you write. Listen to the sound it makes. Listen for dissonance. Listen for sour notes.
A sour note in writing can be an obscure and pretentious word set
down in a paragraph that is otherwise simply written. A sour note can
be a humorous phrase in a somber story, or a grave comment in a story
which is written in a frivolous style. A sour note could be an unintended
change in tense or person, or a sudden switch in viewpoint. A sour note
can even be a change in the way you punctuate certain phrases. Generally you create harmony in your writing by maintaining consistency in
mood, reading level, style, paragraph size and punctuation.
Here are a few tips for creating harmonious music with your words:
Use a variety of sentence lengths. Mix short, medium and long sentences. Too many sentences of similar length create a drone; they bore
the reader.
Use a variety of sentence constructions. Don't always use the subjectpredicate-object form (Dick and Jane saw the dog). However, don't vary
from that form at the expense of clarity.
Here is an example of a paragraph which is boring because the sentences are of similar length and similar construction.

An apple is very real. It is very colorful. It has a reassuring heft,

like a baseball. It smells sweet and fresh. It is not easily forgotten. An
apple tree is shady. It is also bountiful. It puts dozens of apples in
easy reach. It makes you feel secure.
That, of course, is not what I wrote in my apple-picking article. I
wrote:

There is something very real about an apple. It is a colorful little

item that has the reassuring heft of your first spring baseball, and the
aroma that rises from its flesh is a nectar not soon forgotten. And
when you can sit serenely under a shady tree and know that fifty or
sixty of those sparkling red beauties are just within your reach, it
makes you feel as if Mother Nature is going to take care of things,
after all.
Also, write complete sentences most of the time. There's nothing
wrong with an occasional partial sentence. Like this. But partial sentences get their strength and their meaning from the complete sentences
that surround them, so use partial sentences sparingly.
And, finally, listen for the word that "just doesn't sound right," and
ei7en if you don't know why it doesn't sound right, get rid of it.
5. HUMANITY
Don't write about crop failures. Write about farmers in crisis. Don't
write about romance. Write about people in love.
Put humanity into everything you write. Write about people. Even a
how-to article like this one should be largely about a person called "you!'
Every short story, novel and dramatic script ever written (including the
ones that appear to be about talking bunnies or grumdocles from the
planet Zoop) is about people. The endless interest that each human
being has for all the others is reason enough for you to populate your
nonfiction also with living, breathing people.
If you are writing about the state's welfare crisis, begin with an anecdote about one family that lives in a car because they cannot pay rent.
If you are writing a brochure to attract new members to your church,
don't write about the beautiful steeple and venerable organ. Write about
the people who come to church suppers, the people who volunteer for
committees, and the people the reader will meet if he shows up on
Sunday morning. Humanity.
In my apple-picking piece I did not write:

There are a lot of spiritual reasons for spending a day picking

apples and it is, as Bonnie said, "a way to get in touch with things. "
But the tough economic times and the high rate of unemployment
accounted for the presence of most apple pickers.
I wrote:
I ate lunch in a clearing with Bonnie, Roy, and two black guys

who had come up from Boston. The guys from Boston were unemployed. They had kids. They weren't picking apples for religious reasons. One of them, Sam, told me the forty-fivedollars a day he was
making would help to stretch his unemployment check. He ate lunch
quickly so he could get back to picking and "put some bread on the
table."
One human being who will appear in much that you write is you.
Putting yourself into your writing is neither good nor bad. It depends
on the nature of the work. But nothing should be put into any story for
no good reason, and that includes you. Ask yourself what you gain by
putting you into the story. If you have a good answer, put yourself in.
But if you don't put yourself into a story, put somebody into it. Don't
write: "The glow from the fire could be seen against the night sky and
the sound of sirens could be heard for miles. Smoke could be smelled
from across the river, and a tremor in the Earth was felt every time
another building toppled."
Who saw? Who heard? Who smelled? Who felt? Human beings, that's
who! Get them in there.

4. HONESTY
The easiest way to achieve honesty in your writing is just to be yourself.
Don't glut your prose with literary references that are new to you, so
that you'll appear learned when you are not. Don't try to write as if you
are hip, when you are square. Don't try to bulldoze your way into a
personal writing style that simply is not you. Don't try to write like
Hunter Thompson or Erma Bombeck if such styles don't come easily
to you. Try to write like you. Don't use the thesaurus to find words you
never saw before; use it to find words that you already know. That's
honesty.
Don't write damaging opinions without taking title to them. Don't
write, for example, "Mayor Randolph is widely regarded as incompetent." Write, "I think Mayor Randolph is incompetent," or "City Councilman Ray Turi says, 'Mayor Randolph is incompetent.' " But never
hide behind "It is widely believed . . . " or "Most people think . . . . "
There's nothing wrong with being opinionated, but make it clear that
you are. There's nothing wrong with reducing a forty-two-word unintelligible quote to eight words that make sense, but be certain you are true
to the spirit of what was said, if not the form. There's nothing wrong

with using fiction techniques to improve the telling of nonfiction as long

as you don't tamper with significant truths.
However, honesty in writing cannot be measured by some outside
yardstick. Ultimately the only measuring tool of honesty in writing is
your own conscience. Read each sentence and ask of it, "Is this me?'
and "Is this true?" and finally, "Is this fair?"
My apple-picking piece might have been more positive, uplifting and
idealistic if I had written: "There is nothing quite so perfect as a day ir
an apple tree, picking your way to heaven," and gone on to describe a
wholly invigorating and untarnished apple-picking experience. But that
would have been dishonest and anybody who has spent much time in
an apple orchard would spot it. So I wrote, honestly:

I had picked 6,000 apples. My hands were as dry as blotters. My

trapezius muscles had been stretched like taffy. My shoulders throbbed.
The straps had been damn near grafted into my skin. My legs ached
and my knees felt like a pair of bricks. I felt pretty good. But it was
time for me to split.
I tell you to be honest in your writing not because I want to improve
your morals, but because I want to improve your writing. It feels soft
weak and unconvincing, and if you are dishonest it will usually take a
good editor about twenty-three seconds to spot it. And if he doesn't
your readers certainly will.
7. POETRY
Writing should be, first of all, clear. A good word is not a good word
if it clouds your meaning. And, of course, it should be brief, precise
harmonious, human and honest. Writing should be functional. Beautiful
prose is not beautiful prose if it sabotages the job you are trying to do
Good writing entertains, informs, advises, illuminates. It cannot simply
be. It must do.
Often, after we have done the job by writing clearly, there is little
room left for what is commonly called art, though writing simply and
clearly is itself an art.
But in much that you write there is the opportunity to do more than
tell the reader what will happen or when or how or even why. There is
the chance for you to lift him a few feet off the ground, to slip between
him and the earth a layer of wonder and imagination. There is the chance
for you to pull him beyond the content of your story and lead him wit
your words into a realm of thought that is alive with energy and inspira-

tion. This is poetry, and it can happen in a sentence or it can happen in

a word. It can happen when you neither expect it nor intend it. It can
happen that you bring beauty into the reader's day.
Is there a figure of speech that will enhance your meaning, as well
as etch across the reader's mind a vision that will endure beyond the
last page? Write it. Can you choose words with such care and arrange
them in such a way that reveals not just your point, but also a point
about life?Do it. Can you tell an anecdote that will peel away one more
layer of falseness and bring the reader an inch closer to the truth? Tell
it. If you can turn an essay into a prayer, do it. If you can use words to
crown a newspaper article with nobility, use them. And if you can bring
your own deepest emotions to bear on a story in a way that is important
not just to the story, but also to the reader, do that.
I attempted to put poetry into my apple-picking article by measuring
the experience against a traditional fantasy of young men. Early in the
article I planted the idea. I described the unfulfilled fantasy that my
friend Clifly and I had in 1962 when we got out of high school. I wrote:
We wanted to cut cane in Louisiana, harvest lettuce in California,
pick apples in New England. Move. Just like Tod Stiles and BUZZ
Murdock on Route 66, tooling down the highway, rubbing our way
into people's lives between odd jobs.
In my final paragraph I didn't want to simply end with something like,
"I left the apple orchard and went home." I wanted to lift the piece into
the poetic realm if I could do so legitimately. I wanted to make it something more than just a piece about a day of apple picking. I wrote:
My wife picked me up at the end of the day. Wisely, she parked the
car across the highway from the orchard. She knows a thing or two
about me and she gave me some time to walk, some space to think.
For there is something about the feel of gravel underfoot and the taste
of sweet air seeping out of the cool green orchard that lets aguy think
for a moment that he is Tad Stiles. And i f the world is gentle for a
minute, he can be almost certain that Buzz is waiting in the Corvette
around that next bend in the road.
And that i f the two of you can just peel off another three hundred
miles from the nearest highway, you will most certainly get in touch
with things.
It made me feel good to write that. And it made the piece better. If
you imbue your writing with humanity and poetry and love, you will
enrich both the reader and yourself.