How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times

Clark’s subtitle for How to Write Short is “Word Craft for Fast Times” so you know it’s current. His two sections are the how and the why of paying attention to the length and impact of your writing. Clark’s research is impressive, for he gives examples from many and varied sources. Too often in reading I pass over any list of examples, but these were attached too neatly with his lessons. For the applications at the end of each chapter―his title is Grace Notes―he encourages writers to keep a daybook for a collection of short writing. These applications I want to return to later. I also noticed his titles for chapters are sentences with periods at the end, whether that’s seven, four, three words or one word such as “Sell.” After all, Clark also wrote a book on grammar: The Glamour of Grammar. That is now on my list to buy.

Reading How to Write Short by Roy Peter Clark gave me stage fright. Or, I suppose, blog fright. How could I live up to his excellent examples? Lucky for me, he includes clear advice on how to sharpen short writing, and I’m happy to follow it. Most everyday writing is 300 words or less–unless your job is, well, a writer. We text and tweet and email a lot more than we write novels. (Even those who write novels, I bet.)Short writing is often overlooked for its novel-length counterpart. After all, tweets don’t win Nobel Prizes–at least, not yet. But short writing has value. And an aspiring writer can learn from every kind of writing, Clark says. Like the back of cereal boxes, or OKCupid profiles, or–my fave–fortune cookies.For those quick to say texting, tweeting, and other short writing is ruining our language, we went through this recently with telegrams and turned out ok. People were charged by the word, so abbreviations and crafty cutting were the norm. And now we’re doing it again–but digitally in tweets and emails. (I used to scoff, but now I’ve embraced abbreviations. They can be useful, especially in a tweet, and they can also be sort of hilar.)Some short writing is both storytelling and communication. After all, letters tell a story. Clark says early novels used letters to tell important parts of the tale. I just finished Where’d You Go Bernadette, composed almost entirely in messages–updated with emails and faxes, of course. Our current family book club book House of Leaves is made up of documents and journal entries. These long stories are told through short writing, just like much of our own life.My friends and I have an ongoing group text. That communication, made up of bursts of texts, abbreviations and inside jokes, tells a beautiful story. Clark’s more serious example is of mom and daughter texting during a shooting. Those texts kept a family in touch, helped a girl stay safe, and later told a story to us with much more directness and immediacy than 30,000 of the killer’s own words from his manifesto.Clark also talks about the newsworthiness of Twitter. Short, to the point, continuous updates can place us directly in a story. His example comes from tweets on the ground after an earthquake. An example in my own life comes from Hurricane Sandy. I learned so much more about what neighborhoods were safe and where damage occurred than I could have from more traditional (and longer) news sources. Tweets like “just saw the lights go out on Water St.” (a made up example based on a real event) are just a few words long but communicate critical information.You don’t need a lot of words to create a powerful piece of writing. In fact there’s a genre of stories only six words long. You may remember Hemingway’s “For sale: baby shoes, never worn,” which I love not only for its emotional impact but also its clever use of punctuation. Larry Smith, editor and publisher of SMITH Magazine and founder of Six-Word Memoirs, championed these short stories. I think mine would be “Girl with plan finds new adventure.” (A close second was “Left-handed editor who writes alright.”)To me, the why of writing matters much more than the length. Long or short–and long writing sprouts from short writing after all–good storytelling matters. Communication matters. Ideas matter. And all can be told with just a few words.

This is a substantial book, and not exactly short. It covers a lot of ground.A general assumption seems to be that most of us, most of the time, are writing for Twitter or for Twitter-besotten audiences. (Hence the "Fast Times" in the subtitle.) The author has a PhD in medieval literature and confesses to reading dictionaries for pleasure, but, at least according to what he wrote here, aphoristic writing enchants him most. Given these parameters, the book fulfills its mission: It essentially tells us how to write good tweets.Some genres--technical documentation or Gothic novels, for examples--might require lots of words. This is addressed somewhat in Chapter 19, "Cut it short," in which the author cuts a 386-character paragraph to 137 characters and comments sadly: "But at what cost?" Writers must bring their subjective judgment to the challenge of deciding which words are necessary, he says, because of course some words do serve a purpose.In Chapter 27, "Entice," he suggests that good short writing can work like a personal ad: You say something catchy, provide credible details, and end with a call to action. (This is the traditional academic "five-paragraph essay" structure, minus the turgidity of the "introduction" and "conclusion," as I see it.)I was, for a while, surprised to encounter little or no direct mention of how values are embedded and conveyed in our word choice, but this important lesson was indeed delivered in the 35th and final chapter, "Protect against the misuses of short writing" (i.e. don't write propaganda).To make a meta-comment: While it's hard to say if I liked the style the book is *teaching* (as those future passages haven't been written yet), I liked the style of the book itself.

I write for young adults and, for those who are growing up in the text age, I know it's often easier to get a message across by short, sharp injection. This book has an abundance of ideas about how to do that. It does exactly what it says it will.

Am still crazy about Clark's "Writing Tools - 50 essential strategies..." This one is much like it in form and function -- but I've not been quite as pulled in. Still, some great things to work with and think about here.

Nell'era di internet rispolverare le abilità storiche di scrivere brevità sui registri delle navi, sui telegrammi, gli haiku. In questo libro Clark spiega come scrivere titoli, saggi, presentazioni di vendita, post funzionali per twitter in modo brillante, anche entro un numero limitato di caratteri.

If you want to start writing (especially short) texts, dont hesitate and buy this. Not only gave me useful tools, but also sparkled a bit my creativity.

Bought it for a class am taking but really enjoyed the book, great ideas