Developing as an academic writer

Sarah Salway

Gita Subrahmanyam

3 November 2009

Good academic writing

What is it?

Why does it matter?

What is good academic writing?

Good academic writing is about a imparting knowledge and few things are more important.

(Professor, LSE)

What is good academic writing?

It is about creating stimulus, illumination and insight. To achieve this, the writing needs to be clear, well structured and interesting. You want, and need, to hold the reader's full attention from beginning to end.

(CEO – FTSE 100)

What is good academic writing?

Any writing that educates and informs, but also engages. Without the latter there is no learning.

(Editor, Harper Collins)

Where does it go wrong?

Bad academic writing imparts nothing and is merely irritating noise.

(Professor)

Where does it go wrong?

Sentences which have no natural flow and use too much jargon. I lose interest, and also confidence in the writer.

(CEO)

Where does it go wrong?

When it forgets its audience.

(Editor)

Why does it matter?

A good prose style in academic writing

is not merely desirable it is essential. It is not merely about making you ideas clear and intelligible to yourself, it is about conveying their import to others.

(Professor)

Why does it matter?

Academics should be ‘thought leaders’ whose work has as wide an application as possible and helps shape a better society.

(CEO)

Why does it matter?

Because I’m fed up of rejecting manuscripts filled with good ideas but that just aren't written well enough.

(Editor)

Getting your work across

You -------- Message -------- Reader

The Narrative Drive

.. ‘the quest’, Samuel Beckett

or

the logical ordering of evidence and information directed towards the end

The writer as cartographer

1. Exploration

• Scribbling notes

• Reading

• Getting it wrong - missteps, false starts and surprising discoveries

• Discovering your journey

2. Presentation

• Applying your knowledge, skill and talent

• Creating a document that will communicate effectively with others

• The map

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

Some myths about writing

• You can’t learn good writing• Good writers get it right first time• Writing simply = dumbing down• Understanding is the reader’s job• If the ideas are good, then the writing doesn’t

matter• My supervisor/editor/agent/etc will take care

of the editing

The four stages of writing

• Fun

• Drudgery

• Torture

• Waiting

Writing is easy.  All you have to do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

Gene Fowler

Your question:

What does your reader NEED to know in order to understand what you NEED to say?

Good beginnings

• Engage readers’ interest – with an evocative vignette, quote, conundrum, statistic…

• Signal a fresh start (esp middle chapters)• Explain chapter title/focus of book (Chapter 1)• Frame key issues or research questions• First few sentences are carefully crafted –

speak with a clear and confident voice• Provide clear signposts for what’s next• Make readers want to continue reading

Good endings

• Review top-line findings and key arguments• Pull together chapter/book findings and show

how ideas inter-relate• Establish link forward (esp middle chapters)

and/or link back (esp final chapter)• Frame findings in new ways – ‘opening out’• Reinforce readers’ feeling of progression• Enable readers to see a ‘bigger picture’

Good beginnings and endings - award-winning novels

• Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark (Vintage, 1997)

• Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies (John Murray, 2008)

Good beginnings and endings - award-winning academic books• Kathy Davis, The Making of Our Bodies,

Ourselves: How Feminism Travels Across Borders (Duke, 2007)

• Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: knowing about atrocities and suffering (Polity, 2001)

• Nigel Ashton, Kennedy, Macmillan and the Cold War: the irony of interdependence (Palgrave, 2002)

Flip Visit 1 – Beginnings & Endings

• Form a group of three with people on your table

• Visit each other’s flip charts and assess each other’s beginnings/endings

• Use the checklists to spot problems or areas for improvement

Writing Style

A good style should show no sign of effort. What is written should seem like a happy accident.

W. Somerset Maugham

Different needs for academic writing

• Imparting knowledge, not entertainment

• A contribution to scholarship

• Breaking new ground

• Provides documentation of results

• Demonstrates high level of discipline-related expertise

Developing Your Voice

… finding your voice as a writer is in some ways like the tricky business of becoming an adult.

Al Alvarez

How do you do this?

• Know what it is you want to say

• Take responsibility for it

• Strive for precision - the ‘hard, definite word’

• Be clear in your meaning - ‘Good writing is a windowpane.’ George Orwell

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

William Strunk Jr.

Sentence Structure

Subject - verb - object (S-V-O)

so

No sentences like this one in your paper.

Clarity

It is often said that no Sentences, especially if they break the useful rule of being of no longer than 25 words, like this one, or indeed a similar one using the Sentence structure first described by xxx in his Paper xxx, should appear, even if they are in Quotes or form one of the asides that gives this paper its particular Voice, in your paper, or indeed any other Paper that may have been written at a similar time.

(It is often said that) No sentences (especially if they break the useful rule of being of no longer than 25 words,) like this one, (or indeed a similar one using the Sentence structure first described by xxx in his Paper xxx,) should appear(, even if they are in Quotes or form one of the asides that gives this paper its particular Voice,) in your paper(, or indeed any other Paper that may have been written at a similar time.)

Say what you mean (not what you don’t)

I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to

say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become…

Professor Harold Laski(as quoted by George Orwell)

Be Precise

• The British press is the freest in the world

• This experiment led to exciting developments

Who are you talking about?

* We often look at …

* The university leapt into action …

* Bryson once wrote …

Be careful of repetitions

• In other words …

• If we go back to the experiment on…

• A paper we will refer to later explores…

Active - v- Passive

• The paper is filled with Harry’s bad jokes (passive)

• Harry filled the paper with bad jokes (active)

Find - v - Spellcheck

FIND:Search your document for:

* is/are - passive sentences?* that - can the words is in front of ‘that’ be deleted? eg It is often thought

that..//

SPELLCHECK:Read through for MEANING not just the correct

spelling

George Orwell’s Four Questions:

1. What am I trying to say?

2. What words will express it?

3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?

4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

… and two more

5. Could I put it more shortly?

6. Have I said anything that is unavoidably ugly?

From: ‘Politics and the English Language’, 1946

Things to look for:

1. The voice

2. Narrative drive

3. Writing clarity

4. Where do you (the reader) get held up?

5. The style checklist

Writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

Alain de Botton

Flip Visit 2 – Focus on Style

• Again in your groups of 3, visit each other’s flip charts

• Assess each other’s prose styles

• Use the checklist to spot problems or areas for improvement

The next step

• Freewriting

• Planning your writing sessions

• … and your breaks

• Changing/adapting your writing space

• Edging forward inch by inch