How to write well

On the evidence that I’ve seen, the Ingenious Women don’t need much advice from me about how to write. But Ruth has asked me for some tips, so here are a few garnered from 30 years of writing and editing scientific articles and books for different audiences. I apologise if some of this seems blindingly obvious.

Start by asking yourself three key questions. Who am I writing for? What do I want to tell them? And how do I want them to respond?

Let’s assume that you are writing for a broad, general audience with no background in your subject.  You need to find a starting point where you share common ground. As engineers you have a distinct advantage  over pure scientists, who will often struggle to find a point of intersection between their work on string theory or molecular genetics and the everyday lives of their readers. Everyone has a central heating system, even if they don’t know how it works.

Keep technical language to a minimum, explain any terms you do use, and try to use vivid analogies to illustrate unfamiliar concepts or ‘wow factor’ statistics on scales beyond the everyday. Be aware that most people don’t use common terms such as ‘radiation’ in their strict scientific sense. And remember that your writing is competing for attention with the whole gamut of the entertainment industry. So it is not enough just to be clear and comprehensible: you need to be attractive and intriguing as well.

Good style is hard to pin down, but you can’t go far wrong if you follow the age-old precepts of Fowler’s King’s English and keep it simple. I believe my own writing was transformed by working in radio. If every sentence you write sounds good when you read it aloud, then those natural speech rhythms will also work well for your readers.

Next question: what do I want to say? Whether you are writing an opinion piece or a piece of factual news reporting, you should be able to summarise your key message in a single sentence.  Everything else in the article is only there to support that message. Digressions are fine, but only if eventually they lead you back to the main point. If you have three stories you are burning to tell, then write three articles.  The point itself should appear early on, preferably in the first paragraph. However  clever your argument, most readers will give up if they have to wait to the end to find out what the punchline is.

Finally, how do I want my readers to respond? The answer to this question will affect the style you adopt. Blogging is a great opportunity to make a personal contribution to an online debate, or to say something provocative that will start a new debate.  If your aim is a more general desire to engage the public with your subject,  then storytelling is the key. As a biographer I favour stories with people in them – not just their names, but lively quotes and brief pen portraits.  If your purpose is any form of corporate persuasion, remember that pages of hyperbole without a concrete noun in sight are not convincing – good stories and impressive facts are.

Above all, develop your own voice and don’t be afraid to break the rules!