 For Authors: August 19, 2015 Issue [#7160] |
  For Authors
This week: The 8 C's of Writing Edited by: Vivian  
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Sometimes when I'm reading a manuscript I know something is wrong, but I can't put my finger on the exact problem. However, once I go over the 8 C's of writing, I discover that one of the components is missing. Let's look at the eight components. Keeping the list close at hand will help us remember all the components we need to include for a well-written work.
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The 8 C's of Writing
Each component listed and explained below must be found in fiction writing. Only the last, characters, may not be found in nonfiction, except for narrative or creative nonfiction.
Clarity: the writing, plot, setting are all clear. Clear writing tends to be elegant, logically arranged, and easy to follow. Clear writing is so easy to read, follow, and digest that most readers won’t stop to think about the writer’s style at all. Clear writing promotes clear images in the mind of the reader. Improve the clarity of your writing by cutting unnecessary words, using action verbs whenever possible, and choosing concrete terms that not only help readers easily comprehend but remember what they are reading.
Conciseness: When you write concisely, you express your opinions, give directions, or explain a scene using the best words, and often the fewest words, possible. Concise writing expresses essential ideas without unnecessary words that don’t add anything important and waste the reader’s time. Concise writing does not contain useless repetitions or wordy expressions, as explained below. Redundancy: Useless repetition weakens your writing and wastes the reader’s time; it may even be insulting. Concise writing is clean writing, using only the words needed to express an idea. When editing your prose for conciseness, aim to cut out words and phrases that are vague, repetitious or pretentious.
Concreteness: Writers can achieve concreteness by choosing the specific over the abstract, the definite over the vague and the distinct over the uncertain. Although concrete writing is crisp, it doesn’t need to seem stilted; concrete writing uses words that paint pictures for the reader, which helps make facts, products, people and places more realistic and memorable. Concrete writing is creative because it shows the reader what is happening rather than just telling them. Concrete language avoids generalities (including clichés), steering clear from general nouns and pronouns that can easily confuse the reader. Granted, concrete writing takes more time and effort than general or abstract writing, but the rewards are worth it. Good writers deliberately steer away from generalities, spending the extra time to make their writing more concrete and authentic. Concreteness favors active, descriptive verbs and modifiers over words that are abstract or passive.
Correctness: Grammar, sentence structure, spelling, and other problems distract from writing.
Coherency: The writing makes sense, is understandable to the reader. The plot progresses logically without holes or unbelievable changes. The characters are consistent. The setting fits without taking over the plot. Everything written moves the plot forward or adds to characterization.
Completeness: Remember the Ws of writing: Who, Where, What, Why, Where, When and How? Before you start writing, you should know where you want to go, how you plan to get there, why you want to write in the first place, and why anyone else (e.g. potential readers) would want to follow you. You want to cover everything needed for readers to understand what you mean.
Research: Research is important with both nonfiction and fiction.
Courtesy: Courteous writing applies to nonfiction writing as well as to fiction. A writer needs not to be preachy or demanding. A writer shouldn’t treat the reader as if he were stupid.
Character: In fiction, writers need to watch that their “people” and/or other characters remain “in character” and don’t suddenly behave in a way that confuses the reader. In an effort to be entertaining and exciting, a budding author might write scenes where professional people are swearing and fighting, throwing punches and using language that’s completely out of character for them. Be sure behavior, speech, actions, and reactions are believable.
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