On Writing Well — William Zinsser and his Guide to Nonfiction

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On Writing Well - William Zinsser - A Guide to Nonfiction

On writing well

From emails to essays, we spend much of our lives writing. So it seems most wise to hone our craft. While few of us can write like Hemingway or Shakespeare, each of us can improve as writers. In my pursuit of the basics, I share here the big lessons that I took from journalist William Zinsser and his book, On Writing Well — A Guide to Nonfiction.

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Clutter is the disease of writing

Clutter, Zinsser says, “is the disease of American writing”. Bad writers hope to impress with verbosity. Consumed by rank and status, they avoid simple sentences as if it implies something about their ideas and cognition. Good writers, by contrast, know that simplicity is “hard work and hard thinking”. They seek clarity and economy because they value their readers’ time.

“Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon. … Look for clutter and prune it ruthlessly.”

William Zinsser. (1976). On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.

Plain talk and economy

Writing isn’t a mysterious art. It’s simply “talking to someone else on paper”. “Humanity and warmth”, Zinsser says, are two important qualities. Writing, after all, is a “personal transaction”. Can you imagine a world where “plain talk” is the norm? Shareholders might understand management. Homeowners might trust their bankers. And non-experts might listen to academics. Zinsser preaches “clarity, simplicity, brevity, and humanity”. It is the antidote to “suffocating language”.

“Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes. When the Digital Equipment Corporation eliminated 3,000 jobs its statement didn’t mention layoffs; those were “involuntary methodologies.” When an Air Force missile crashed, it “impacted with the ground prematurely.” When General Motors had a plant shutdown, that was a “volume-related production-schedule adjustment.”

William Zinsser. (1976). On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.

Convenience, bracket and declutter

Zinsser suspects that “most first drafts can be cut by 50 percent without losing any information”. On decluttering, he offers two tips. The first is to apply Theodore Bernstein’s test of convenience: to ask ourselves whether each word or sentence is useful. If the answer is no, we throw it out. The second trick is bracketing. This involves “[putting] brackets around every component in [our] piece of writing that [isn’t] doing useful work”. The goal is to cultivate a distaste for fillers and jargon.

“Still, plain talk will not be easily achieved in corporate America. Too much vanity is on the line. Managers at every level are prisoners of the notion that a simple style reflects a simple mind. Actually, a simple style is the result of hard work and hard thinking; a muddled style reflects a muddled thinker or a person too arrogant, or too dumb, or too lazy to organize his thoughts.”

William Zinsser. (1976). On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.

Imitating the masters

When it comes to writing, there’s no “style store”. You can’t choose to write like someone right away. Even the greats, like Tom Wolfe or Norman Mailer, took decades to master their craft. Style “is organic to the person”. It comes with time and practice. With that said, imitation can aid the learning process. After all, to “cultivate the best models” for writing, we have to study great writers and books.

Zinsser himself spoke highly of Theodore M. Bernstein (The Careful Writer), E.B. White (The Elements of Style), and George Orwell (Politics and the English Language). And if I could add one more, it’d be: Stephen King (On Writing). It’s also helpful to read well-written non-fiction. Here, Zinsser shares some examples (which make a fine reading list in its own right):

  • Rachel Carson (Silent Spring)
  • Charles Darwin (The Voyage of the Beagle)
  • Peter Medawar (Pluto’s Republic)
  • Primo Levi (The Periodic Table)
  • Oliver Sacks (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat)
  • Freeman Dyson (Weapons and Hope)
  • Stephen Jay Gould (The Panda’s Thumb)
  • S. M. Ulam (Adventures of a Mathematician)
  • Paul Davies (God and the New Physics).

“Good writing rests on craft and always will. I don’t know what still newer electronic marvels are waiting just around the corner to make writing twice as easy and twice as fast in the next 25 years. But I do know they won’t make writing twice as good. That will still require plain old hard work — clear thinking —and the plain old tools of the English language.”

William Zinsser. (1976). On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.

Seek warmth and humanity

In the end, readers want genuine writers. It goes without saying that to be genuine, you have to be yourself. Here, Zinsser encourages non-fiction writers to use the first person. “I” and “we”, for example, make our writing more natural. “It retains [our] humanity”. Zinsser is also a fan of contractions like I’ll and can’t — they make our writing “warmer and truer”. Sometimes, our genuine self appears only several paragraphs down the piece. Maybe that’s when we finally get into rhythm. When the introduction feels cold and robotic, Zinsser wonders if it’s even necessary at all.

“Don’t ever become the prisoner of a preconceived plan. Writing is no respecter of blueprints.”

William Zinsser. (1976). On Writing Well: The Classic guide to Writing Nonfiction.

Unity, nuts, and bolts

Unity “is the anchor of good writing”. It consists of three elements: pronoun, tense, and mood. Jumping from first person to third person, for example, is jarring. In most cases, it’s best to pick an anchor for each element and stick to it. But unity isn’t enough. We have to get the nuts and bolts of writing right, too.

Go active, not passive

Where possible, use active verbs, not passive verbs. Zinsser asks readers to compare, for example, the difference between “Joe saw him” and “he was seen by Joe”. The former is “short and precise”, while the latter is “longer” and “insipid”. It is also for this reason that we should avoid using nouns where verbs will do. Compare, for instance, “she consulted them” with “she ran consultations with them”.

“Verbs are the most important of all your tools. They push the sentence forward and give it momentum. … Don’t say that the president of the company stepped down. Did he resign? Did he retire? … Be precise. Use precise verbs.”

William Zinsser. (1976). On Writing Well: The Classic guide to Writing Nonfiction.

Avoid useless adverbs and qualifiers

Zinnser tells us that “most adverbs are unnecessary”. “Quietly” in “whispered quietly”, for example, is redundant. Readers know what whispering entails. There’s no need to repeat the obvious. Adjectives, likewise, often fall into the same trap. “Red” in “red dirt”, Zinsser says, is helpful. But “yellow” in “yellow daffodils” is not. The same is true of qualifiers like “quite” in “quite nice” — they dilute our writing. Decorative words are powerful when used with care.

Reach for stops & change earlier

In Zinsser’s view, most writers “don’t reach [the period] soon enough”. We try to do too much in a single sentence. The solution, of course, is simple: just break it down into two or three sentences. Additionally, we should let our readers know upfront when we’re changing the direction or mood. Words like “but”, “however”, “instead”, “yet”, and so on, should come earlier rather than later in the sentence.

“An occasional short sentence can carry a tremendous punch. It stays in the reader’s ear.”

William Zinsser. (1976). On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.

Balance your paragraphs

When it comes to paragraphs, Zinsser says to keep it short. A balance between character and whitespace will make your writing more “inviting”. In On Writing, Stephen King similarly describes his attentiveness to the length, frequency, and look of paragraphs. To King and Zinsser, paragraphing is a “subtle”, “visual” and “important” part of good writing.

Rewriting is the essence of writing

Nobody gets the piece right on their first draft. Often, the words just don’t flow. Even the masters “rewrite their sentences over and over”. And rarely does good writing come from sudden inspiration. Like any other profession, good writers “establish a daily schedule and stick to it”.

“Good writing doesn’t come naturally, though most people seem to think it does. Professional writers are constantly bearded by people who say they’d like to “try a little writing sometime” — meaning when they retire from their real profession, like insurance or real estate, which is hard. Or they say, “I could write a book about that.” I doubt it. Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.”

William Zinsser. (1976). On Writing Well: The Classic guide to Writing Nonfiction.

Love rewriting

Not many students, Zinsser says, “share [his] love of rewriting”. He encourages writers to see rewriting and editing as an opportunity to reshape and tighten a piece. I’d also add that it’s an opportunity to reinforce our learning. It’s a marker of understanding when we communicate nuanced ideas with clarity and economy.

With each revision, Zinsser seeks to make his draft “tighter, stronger, and more precise”. He reads his piece aloud to test for rhythm and clarity, removing everything “that’s not doing useful work” — practical advice, I think, both in writing and business. Every writer, he says, should ask themselves the following three questions: (1) “what am I trying to say?”, (2) “have I said it?” and “can they understand it”?

“Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it’s where the game is won or lost. You won’t write well until you understand that writing is an evolving process … Nobody expects you to get it right the first time, or even the second time.”

William Zinsser. (1976). On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.

Compress and sequence

Another “untaught and underestimated skill in nonfiction writing… is how to organize a long article”. The first problem is “compression”. How do we extract coherence and economy from chaos? There’s no easy solution to this. Zinsser reminds us that “writing is linear and sequential”. So “logic is the glue that holds [everything] together”. In other words, our article dies when it fails to push our readers forward. Remember also that our audience’s time is precious. Whether it’s novelty, humor, or something else, we should let them know “what’s in it for them” as soon as possible.

Focus, quest and intent

Another problem is “focus”. Too often we lose ourselves in a sea of ideas. Relatedly is the issue of “quest” and “intention”. What do we hope to achieve with our piece? Do you want to educate your readers or delight them, or both? You mustn’t be afraid to scrap sentences and sections that dilute your focus, quest, and intent. “Fondness for material”, Zinsser says, “isn’t a good enough reason if it’s not central to [your story]”.

Fear of failure and disapproval

To write well with consistency, we must overcome the fear of failure, disapproval, and disappointment. Zinsser himself is “often dismayed by the sludge [he sees] appear on [his] screen”. Some sentences can take him up to an hour to correct. But “[he doesn’t] begrudge a minute of it”.

“You learn to write by writing. It’s a truism, but what makes it a truism is that it’s true. The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.”

William Zinsser. (1976). On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.

It doesn’t help that schools today reward conformity and perfectionism in writing. As a result, many students come to loathe writing — an aversion that often carries into adulthood. We must remind ourselves (and children) that writing, much like everything else in life, is imperfect and iterative. Nobody gets it right.

Passion, however, is a source of resilience. It helps us to push through setbacks and discouragement. What’s more, passion manifests in our words. It is infectious. It delights the reader. So it’s important to write about topics that interest us. We have to “follow [our] nose” and “trust [our] curiosity”. This is fundamental to genuine writing.

“Some days will go better than others. Some will go so badly that you’ll despair of ever writing again. We have all had many of those days and will have many more.”

William Zinsser. (1976). On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.

It’s not a contest

Finally, Zinsser reminds us that “writing is not a contest”. We should “forget the competition and go at [our] own pace”. Many nonfiction writers, however, suffer from a “definitiveness complex”. In pursuit of finality, they remain forever displeased with their research and writing. Such perfectionism, when taken too far, can destroy the joy of process. Zinsser encourages us to “think small”, “decide [on our] corner”, and “be content to cover it well and stop”. But if something in your bones compels you for more, Zinsser has this to say:

“The final advantage is the same one that applies in every other competitive venture. If you would like to write better than everybody else, you have to want to write better than everybody else. You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And you must be willing to defend what you’ve written against the various middlemen—editors, agents and publishers—whose sights may be different from yours, whose standards not as high. Too many writers are browbeaten into settling for less than their best.”

William Zinsser. (1976). On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.

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