For Example (Part 1)

So … Writing and editing are easy – especially if you pay close attention to “writing for the ear”  … and if you write what you know …  and if you make the effort to know a lot.

I made those overly simplistic assertion to illustrate a point (well, several).  We all know that great writing is tough – damnably tough, else more of us would do it. 

But good writing is easy, and “good” is “good enough” for most of us, most of the time.  So then, it follows logically to ask: What makes for good writing?

Justice Potter Stewart famously said about pornography, “I know it when I see it.”  Similarly, my ear knows good writing when it “sounds” right coming off the page.

See whether this sounds right:

          There was a fight.

Perfectly fine English.  States a fact.  Doesn’t break any rules that I know of.

But neither does it break any ground.

My first formal step on the road to becoming a Writer (taken as a sophomore in Eileen Ghering’s senior English class, shortly after cracking Strunk & White’s Elements of Style for the first time) was to trash “There is” constructions.

          There was a fight.

          There is a meeting at 7:30 a.m.

          There is an answer to the question.

Let those sentences whisper to your inner ear.  Not so sexy, huh?  But what do you do when you see the words “There is,” or “There were” and variants?  The answer is as simple as the Drop the ‘y’ and add ‘es’ adage we all learned as kids: Drop “There is” and add a verb.

There was a fight, was there?  Well, strip that four-word construction to its core: “A fight.”  Now, just find the appropriate action verb, and you’ve taken your first step to better writing … “A fight erupted” was the best option offered up by Messrs. Strunk & White, if I recall the days of my youth with felicity.  But a fight “broke out” or even “A fight was” are improvements.

There also are better ways to have written those last two sentences:

          The meeting begins at 7:30 a.m.

          There is an answer (no redundancy – what, other than a question, has an answer?) – or “An answer presents itself …” or “The Answer? Don’t do that!”

Got it?  Good.  Now there is a homework assignment: Fix my phrasing a couple lines previous: “There also are better ways to have written those last two sentences.”  (Surely there’s a better way to have constructed that sentence, right?)

There are no right answers.  There is just some probing thought to be performed on the structure of your writing.  There are times, after all, when a “there is” construction is perfectly OK to use.  But there is a limit to how many times you can tolerate its presence, once you know it’s there.

There is, isn't there?

NEXT: For Example, Part 2

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