5 Reasons Everything That’s Easy To Read Involves Some Hard Writing

The famous saying goes: “Easy reading means hard writing.” But why is that? If you have always wondered that, take a look at some of the things that you have to master before being successful at making your work easy to read:

You have to master the flow

Writing is more than just placing one word after another. Writing is creating music with words. Your story, no matter how long, has to have some flow. Simple, short sentences. Medium sentences that pop off the page and add meaning. And finally, long, detailed sentences—those that require a maximum focus on the reader`s part —that reveal secrets and mysteries.

It’s all about that flow that you can create by varying sentence lengths, emotions and meanings within a text. If you just start writing sentences of the same length one after another, it can be boring and repetitive.  So flow is an important technique to master.

You have to write vividly

Vivid writing doesn’t come easy either. It’s a tricky blend between being clear and imaginative. As a tool, writers use vivid writing to immerse the readers into their work completely. But, no matter how good it may sound, description has many pitfalls. For example, you could make the mistake of over-describing things—like nature, a person or a creature—and end up boring the reader.

The trick here is not to be too in love with your words. Sounds impossible, right?

Well, you can at least try to be sensible enough to know which parts to remove — long-winded, flowery descriptions and anything that doesn’t move the plot forward, reveal a part of the character arc or a piece of mystery. This is a good rule of thumb and it will help you to create more vivid sentences rather than boring ones.

You have to be humble

“So, it took you six months to finish that first draft, then another six to edit, proofread, edit again and revise everything. Then you had to flesh it out some more and so on. This is all amazing but the reader doesn’t have to know that,” says Alison Austin a contributor at Paper Fellows.

Create your best work and offer it humbly to your readers, as a gift. There is nothing worse than a writer trying to tell people how they should perceive something or feel about something, yet you see it so many times in books. It’s your job to tell the story, not to make decisions for your readers.

You have to be clear

Clear writing is also incredibly hard because we are so used to the notion that good writing means metaphors and thesaurus words, jargon words, long, flowy chapters and so on. However, good writing is nothing like that.

You have to be clear and, as mentioned, remove your own vanity from your writing. Be clear about what you have to say – no cliches or metaphors that you are used to seeing so often in books and written pieces. Use simple but strong words in your writing and make sure that your point is clear with each new paragraph.

You have to tell a good story

Good storytelling is never easy. You have to come up with a captivating plot that will make the readers turn the pages in the desire to read and learn more. Use your imagination, develop a somewhat logical sequence of events and use all of the elements previously mentioned to create a tale that will have something meaningful to give to the readers. Don`t forget about your characters either— they need to have a story and a development arc as well. Help them grow and learn together with the readers.

There are many reasons why easy and engaging writing means hard and long writing with many revisions and edits. These are some of them. If you really want your work to be impressive, follow these tips and continue working on making your writing better.

Ellie Coverdale is a creative writer and a blogger. She loves reading, yoga, and sharing her stories at online magazines and blogs.