Best Writing Advice

As I’ve mentioned before in class, my favorite writer is the sports writer Rick Reilly. The man has been voted national sports writer of the year 11 times, so when he offers any sort of advice on writing it’s a good idea to listen. When being interviewed on how an upcoming writer could take his job Rick Reilly said, “[his] No. 1 goal in writing is to never write a sentence you’ve already read.” Now this may seem rather simplistic for such an accomplished journalist, but by following this style he makes outrageously interesting analogies, comparisons, descriptions, and the like that make his writing nearly impossible not to like. In that same interview he went on to say that, “[he sits] there for an hour sometimes trying to find another way of saying 'he beat the crap out of him.” Granted, Reilly is getting paid millions with the sole responsibility of turning in one page long weekly column for the back page of ESPN the Magazine. He doesn’t have guidelines or constraints, but has reserved for him the back page of one of the most widely circulated magazines in the country. Therefore, spending an hour on each sentence still makes for a pretty good work week.

The advice definitely has influenced my writing, especially when the writing is of a similar genre. Clearly there are many scenarios where writing a somewhat bland but succinct and to the point sentence is completely necessary. However, if creativity is involved in the piece I find it incredibly useful when both writing and editing papers to pick apart various things I’ve written and find a way to say a very common phrase in a unique manner.

It may seem strange with all the English classes I’ve taken and grammer I’ve been taught that the one piece of advice that really stuck came while reading about sports. However, this little bit of advice from my favorite author is foremost in my mind while writing any sort of piece requiring creativity.

Writing Tips

When I look back at the teachers that I have had and the advice that I have been given over the years on how to improve my writing style, I realize just how different some of my teacher’s writing advice has been. Because of the wide array of advice I have received from these teachers, I feel that I have benefited largely whether it be from seemingly insignificant advice to important concepts.

The first few lessons I find to be essential to understanding language and how to become a better writer revolve primarily around the conventions of writing. One idea, which one of my teachers required, was to take a piece of your writing and use four different colored highlighters to mark the different sentence styles that you wrote (simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex). This process allows you to adjust your paper to allow for variety in sentence structure, which helps to make your paper flow better. Another idea is to make a list of common overused words and phrases, such as these are, this was, is, etc. These words and phrases specifically often create passive voice phrases which can take away from the messages you are attempting to convey with your writing. By knowing which phrases you, as an individual, overuse, you can go through your paper after the fact and replace these phrases to create a stronger paper.

Other important words of advice are to write your paper, step away from your writing and do something else, and then come back to revise your paper. By doing this, you can clear your head and either get a new perspective when you look back at your paper or possibly rework sections with better and more focused ideas in mind. This piece of advice has help me in particular because when I attempt to write and revise all at the same time, my paper ends up rather choppy sounding because I don’t necessarily revise it as a whole because I’m too focused on the paper I just wrote.

One final piece of advice that I got was that when you begin a paper, you have to first of all know your audience and the hook that audience’s attention. To enforce this concept, this teacher would only finish reading your paper’s if the intro was enticing to the audience in question; this seemed harsh at the time, but now I realize that if you are writing a paper and the person reading it isn’t interested in it from the beginning, either they are going to abandon reading it or their mind is going to wander as they read it. Because of this, and introduction can be one of the most important way to capture the audience’s attention.

Though these pieces of advice only scratch the surface of all of information I have been given over the years about writing, these pieces of advice seemed to stand out in my mind as to what have helped me the most with my writing.

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The Engaging Strategies of Instructors

When considering the question of what engages me, the first thing that came to mind was instructors. Which professors are able to present information in a captivating way and how are the able to do this. Regardless of material, some teachers just seem to have an extra something that keeps my attention.

One of the best teachers I've ever had could have taught a class on toilet plunging and I would have gladly attended. The actual classes I had with him were in highschool called international relations and AP European history. I think the single greatest cause of his success was passion. It is difficult to hear someone speak about a topic that they are extremely and expressively passionate about and not also find it intriguing. By showing this personal interest in the material and letting his audience feed off of his interest, this teacher was able to teach an extremely difficult course while remaining one my favorites.

Another great instructor I had was during my freshman year in a class on American government. The element that he brought to the table was humor. This professor was able to take a topic that was at times dry (even to a person interested in politcs such as myself) and make the class enjoyable through the avenue of humor. He didn't stand up infront of class attempting some sort of standup rutine but rather was able to break up the hour and fifteen minute lecture enough to keep it enjoyable and stimulating. This allowed for him to balance the necessary ethos of a professor with keeping the class interesting.

Yet another individual who fit this mold of a successful instructor, I had for a criminal justice case my sophomore year. Her lecture style was to present information as is fairly standard, but then to always make sure to relate that information back to the audience. Although this seemingly shouldn't be terribly difficult to do I have found that few lecturers make the consistent effort to do so. By making this effort she was able to keep students actively involved in the lecture which encouraged them to pay attention.

Clearly there are many different strategies for keeping people engaged and inherently some people will be better than others at this. However, each of the aformentioned instructors do an exceptional job at demonstratting one way to do this. Passion, humor, and relation to the audience were each particularly successful at keeping me engaged.

Presentation Tips

Oral presentations can be very effective when presented in a way that engages the audience. How does the presenter do this; is there a set way to make the audience interested in your presentation? I feel that there is no one answer to these questions. There are several techniques one might use in order to help their presentation go smoothly and be heard by members of the audience. What I feel are some of the most important of these are to actively promote participation, to depict data and facts in a visually appealing way, and to relate the presentation to the audience on a personal level.

In order to actively promote participation, the presenter can use many techniques. One of these might be to ask questions to the audience in order to create a response to data presented. This not only forces the audience to look at data being presented but also causes them to actively think and process the data being presented as well. Also, I think that it helps if the person giving the presentation makes it known that he or she can answer questions; this way, if someone in the audience is confused about the topic or information, that person can clear up that confusion before listening to new information that might rely on what they are confused about.

Second, by using tools such as Power Point, information is presented in a logical and organized fashion. This helps the audience to follow along with the presentation. This does not mean that all information being presented should be put on a presentation and simply read from the screen, but by including a basic outline of ideas presented, the audience gets an idea of what the presentation will cover. Also, using graphs and charts when presenting data allows the presenter to draw conclusions. Instead of simply rattling off numbers with little to no significance to the audience, a pie chart or bar graph might help to show trends and differences between groups.

Finally, if the presenter can find a way to relate their topic to the audience, they will get a much more engaged audience. This often depends on the topic being discussed. How the information pertains to the audience? Does it, or will it, affect the audience in some way? Is the issue pressing and in immediate need of attention? Why did you choose this as a topic? These and several other questions similar to these can help to find a way for the presenter to peak the audience’s interest in their topic.

Experience unique to those who experience it

Can language capture the enormity of experience? The answer to this question has to be no. Experiences, especially enormous ones, are unique to those who experience them. You cannot capture the enormity of a jaw-dropping experience with words, that’s what makes the experience so powerful. Language can give the audience some idea of the experience, but ultimately the experience belongs to the people who were there.

Look at the difference between going to a playoff football game and reading about it, listening to it, or watching it. Reading about the game after it happens gives the reader no idea about what happened. Sure they have the outcome and a few important plays, but they can’t experience the game like those who were there. Listening to the game gives the audience a better idea of the experience, but it is still not close to the real thing. The audience depends on the reactions of the commentator to visualize the events. Watching the game on television gets the audience closer to experiencing the real thing because they can now see and hear the events. Still, watching the game is different from being there. In the end, the only way to capture the enormity of an experience is to be there in person. Language can bring the audience closer to an experience, but there is no substitute for being there.

Using a football game is a simple way to look at this issue, but the same principles apply to any experience. For an experience to be real it comes down to the five senses: see, hear, feel, smell, and taste. There is no way to truly experience something without all of these. The problem with language is that the audience has to use their imagination because they are not present for the experience. The audience will have their own experience but it won’t be the same as the writer or speaker. There is nothing wrong with this though. In the end the enormity of an experience is unique to those who experience it.

Language Can Never Fully Capture Experience

Just a few short weeks ago I was in Cancun, Mexico for spring break. I was staying in an all inclusive resort located right on the beach. The first morning there I awoke much earlier than I had planned. I threw the covers off, rose to my feet, and walked out onto my fifth floor balcony. Never have I seen a more beautiful sight. The sun was beginning to rise out over the Gulf of Mexico lighting up the sky in bright oranges and golden yellows. The waves were crashing elegantly into the beach. I could practically feel the mist from the ocean spraying on my face. It was gorgeous.

I called my grandmother later that morning to tell her how the trip had been going. I tried to explain to her the beauty I had seen that morning, but I could not find the words to explain that sight in as much detail as I wanted. I don’t believe there are words that would do such a sight justice. I explained the view to the best of my ability, and she seemed to understand, but I knew I had only scratched the surface. There seemed to be an infinite amount of detail that I was leaving out and nothing I could do about it. It was my own experience and no one would be able to fully understand the feelings and emotions I had at that particular moment in time.

Personally I believe language will never have the ability to capture the enormity of experience. It gives an audience a vague understanding of the situation, but will never truly capture the feelings and emotions of the author. Words only allow a reader to understand certain sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures, but there is no way for them to completely recreate every emotion or though running through a person during his or her own experience. You can listen to a basketball game on the radio, but no broadcaster will ever be able to give you the exact feeling of sitting courtside at that very same game. Reading or hearing about some experience is often a very good start or a gesture towards an experience, but personally I feel there are no words that have the power to recreate the enormity of a person’s experience. I’m not sure if there is some set of vocabulary, tropes, and schemes out there that has the capability of expressing one’s experience in full. Maybe there is, who knows, but I’m sure of one thing, I don’t know it.

S.T.L.