The Craft of Writing

Writing is a skill, but the word writing is a verb, an action. To write. One can dream about being a writer, but one must perform the action of writing to be a writer. All of us write. Sometimes we actually write letters, though it seems that advent of email is going to kill letters eventually. We write book reports in grade school. We write essays about what we did on our summer vacation. As we move up to higher grades, we begin to write papers. We could possibly call them research papers though that may be a bit of aggrandizement. We write essay answers on tests all the way up through college and generally by the end of our college years we have written at least one paper that deserves the research paper title.

But, there is more to writing. We blog, and we visit forums and though we may not think of it, we are honing our writing skills, or at least we are if we care about our writing. Maybe we take another step, and write fiction. More likely is that we get a job and do more writing. We write reports. We write emails and memos. Once again, most people don't really consider the craft of writing. It is just something that they do.

For a time, I earned my daily bread with my writing. I was doing email technical support for Dell, and then later graduated to working on the Dell Forums. Technical writing is a skill on its own, but I learned a few things that have helped me across all of my writing. These are two things to consider when writing.

First, you must consider your audience. When I was working on the Dell Forums, I was writing to the general public. I had to assume that my audience knew nothing about computers, except how to buy one from Dell. The problem is that some of those Dell customers are extremely knowledgeable about computers. I had to avoid any hint of condescension in my tone. I had to walk a line between giving the novice all the information he needed, and making the expert feel like I was talking down to him. It was also extremely important to say exactly what you needed to say, and no more. I got very good at stating the facts in a way that did not allow for alternate interpretations.

The second is voice. Voice in writing can be a little hard to explain, but it is easy to show what is meant by examples, though I am not sure that I have any handy, as I am writing this. I will see what I can do. Now the viewpoint taken in fiction has something to do with voice. When an author writes in first person, he writes as the character in the story, and he must fit the writing to the character, he must give the character a voice. One can hardly imagine the same story being told by Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, even if it were the same story that involved both of them. Now, that may seem a strange example, but I hope that you see my point.

But voice can even carry over into non-fiction writing. Imagine writing a how-to manual. If any of you have ever read a …for Dummies book, then you know that even a dry subject had be handled in a witty and humorous manner, but for every subject handled this way as part of the …for Dummies series you can find a hundred dry and mostly boring texts.

Some may confuse voice with tone. This is understandable, and they are related. Voice can certainly convey tone, but voice is both less and more than tone. The tone may be conveyed through other means, and the voice can present more than just the tone. I am trying to think how to explain that better, or provide examples, and I am drawing a blank. I will just have to ask you to accept this…or at least accept that this is my opinion.

Because this writing has drawn to a close.