For William Zinsser, the writing process is really about solving a series of problems about what to say and how to say it. While most writers rightfully focus on refining their style and finding a compelling story, Zinsser thinks that few pay enough attention to how their books and articles should be structured. In fact, Zinsser argues that structure is the most “untaught and underestimated skill” in the writing profession, so he dedicates plenty of attention to it in On Writing Well. At the beginning of the writing process, he argues, writers should make key organizational decisions about their project’s scope, main point, and “unities”—or the stylistic patterns (tone, tense, and narrator) that tie it together. Since the key to writing well is developing good habits, writers can significantly improve their work—and save themselves time, energy, and stress—by learning to treat organizational decisions as a key step in the writing process.
Just like a piece of writing has to have a compelling story and interesting style, it also has to have the right structure in order to attract and hold reader’s attention. The most important part of any article is the lead, which has to introduce its key themes while entertaining the reader. However, Zinsser explains that many different kinds of leads can be successful, depending on the material they need to cover. (For instance, in an article about the poultry industry, he leads with a joke about hot dogs.) Writers should choose approaches that fit their distinctive voices and material.
But to keep readers going past the lead, a piece of writing also needs to have a logical structure. Zinsser points out that many otherwise excellent writers can’t figure out how to organize their ideas, so their books and articles fizzle out halfway through. Therefore, he tells writers to have a plan when they start drafting. For instance, he advises memoirists to spend several months collecting memories and then arrange them all on the floor. Only then will they find their overarching narrative arc. Without some plan, writers are bound to confuse—and lose—their readers partway through the story. In fact, they can even lose their readers at the very end, so conclusions are almost as important as leads. Zinsser suggests ending on a funny or interesting note: the reader should initially be surprised to see the piece end, but once it does, they should appreciate the writer’s clever craftsmanship.
Finally, Zinsser emphasizes that writers should establish unity to tie a piece together. This means that they should stick to the same style, voice, pronouns (first, second, or third person), and tense (past, present, or future). This brings coherence to the reader’s experience. In contrast, disunity ruins it. To illustrate how, Zinsser quotes a travel article that switches from first-person travelogue to a third-person brochure and back again. It’s jarring, confusing, and unpleasant, which shows that unity is essential to giving a piece of writing a solid structure.
Zinsser concludes that if writers want to structure their work better, they should devote more time to planning. In fact, big-picture planning should start even before the research—writers should carefully ask themselves what they want to write about and why. Writers often try to do too much: they want to interview dozens of people, explain everything that happened on their trip, or tell their entire family history. This won’t work. The piece will be confusing and stressful to write, and when it’s done, it’ll be too confusing to hold a reader’s attention. Over-researching is helpful, but only within the scope of a manageable project. Instead, Zinsser thinks, writers should “think small.” They should try to convey one “provocative thought”—and only one—with each piece. In travel articles, they should try to convey one idea about a place, and in memoirs they should focus on one specific period from the past. This makes the project more manageable for both the writer and the reader. Another way that writers can clarify their work is by defining their quest and their intention. Their quest is what are they trying to find out (and in their writing, they have to figure out how to bring the reader on this quest along with them). Their intention is what they want to do with their writing—namely, if they want to “affirm and celebrate” something or “debunk and destroy” something. By determining what they’re trying to do, writers can give themselves a sense of direction throughout the writing process.
Finally, after writers have finished the bulk of their research, but before they start writing, Zinsser believes that they should set aside some time to organize their work on a smaller scale. They should think about how to lead, how to conclude, and what unities to use. They should also decide what persona to adopt, what their piece’s main idea is, and what pronouns and tense to use. Together, this keeps writing coherent and unified. This planning is one of the most important habits that turn aspiring writers into masters of the craft.
While Zinsser strongly defends planning, he also thinks that writers should be flexible later on. For instance, a writer might decide to switch their article’s tense to the first person or rewrite it in a different voice—and if these changes will improve the work, the writer should absolutely make them. But Zinsser’s main point still stands: the more a writer plans ahead, the less they’ll have to redo later on, and the more likely their work will be unified and compelling to their reader.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Process and Organization ThemeTracker
Process and Organization Quotes in On Writing Well
You learn to write by writing. It’s a truism, but what makes it a truism is that it’s true. The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.
Unity is the anchor of good writing. So, first, get your unities straight. Unity not only keeps the reader from straggling off in all directions; it satisfies your readers’ subconscious need for order and reassures them that all is well at the helm. Therefore choose from among the many variables and stick to your choice.
Therefore your lead must capture the reader immediately and force him to keep reading. It must cajole him with freshness, or novelty, or paradox, or humor, or surprise, or with an unusual idea, or an interesting fact, or a question. Anything will do, as long as it nudges his curiosity and tugs at his sleeve.
Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it’s where the game is won or lost.
What’s wrong, I believe, is to fabricate quotes or to surmise what someone might have said. Writing is a public trust. The nonfiction writer’s rare privilege is to have the whole wonderful world of real people to write about. When you get people talking, handle what they say as you would handle a valuable gift.
What McPhee has done is to capture the idea of Juneau and Anchorage. Your main task as a travel writer is to find the central idea of the place you’re dealing with.
Think narrow, then, when you try the form. Memoir isn’t the summary of a life; it’s a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It’s not; it’s a deliberate construction.
For the principle of scientific and technical writing applies to all nonfiction writing. It’s the principle of leading readers who know nothing, step by step, to a grasp of subjects they didn’t think they had an aptitude for or were afraid they were too dumb to understand.
Criticism is a serious intellectual act. It tries to evaluate serious works of art and to place them in the context of what has been done before in that medium or by that artist.
Humor is the secret weapon of the nonfiction writer. It’s secret because so few writers realize that humor is often their best tool—and sometimes their only tool—for making an important point.
Humor is not a separate organism that can survive on its own frail metabolism. It’s a special angle of vision granted to certain writers who already write good English. They aren’t writing about life that’s essentially ludicrous; they are writing about life that’s essentially serious, but their eye falls on areas where serious hopes are mocked by some ironic turn of fate—“the strange incongruity,” as Stephen Leacock put it, “between our aspiration and our achievement.”
If you master the tools of the trade—the fundamentals of interviewing and of orderly construction—and if you bring to the assignment your general intelligence and your humanity, you can write about any subject. That’s your ticket to an interesting life.
This fixation on the finished article causes writers a lot of trouble, deflecting them from all the earlier decisions that have to be made to determine its shape and voice and content. It’s a very American kind of trouble. We are a culture that worships the winning result: the league championship, the high test score. Coaches are paid to win, teachers are valued for getting students into the best colleges. Less glamorous gains made along the way—learning, wisdom, growth, confidence, dealing with failure—aren’t given the same respect because they can’t be given a grade.
What struck me most powerfully when I got to Timbuktu was that the streets were of sand. I suddenly realized that sand is very different from dirt. Every town starts with dirt streets that eventually get paved as the inhabitants prosper and subdue their environment. But sand represents defeat. A city with streets of sand is a city at the edge.
At such moments I ask myself one very helpful question: “What is the piece really about?” (Not just “What is the piece about?”) Fondness for material you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to gather isn’t a good enough reason to include it if it’s not central to the story you’ve chosen to tell. Self-discipline bordering on masochism is required. The only consolation for the loss of so much material is that it isn’t totally lost; it remains in your writing as an intangible that the reader can sense. Readers should always feel that you know more about your subject than you’ve put in writing.
Getting on the plane has taken me to unusual stories all over the world and all over America, and it still does. That isn’t to say I’m not nervous when I leave for the airport; I always am—that’s part of the deal. (A little nervousness gives writing an edge.) But I’m always replenished when I get back home.
As a nonfiction writer you must get on the plane. If a subject interests you, go after it, even if it’s in the next county or the next state or the next country. It’s not going to come looking for you.
Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
That’s a highly specialized subject for a piece of writing; not many people owned a mechanical baseball game. But everybody had a favorite childhood toy or game or doll. The fact that I had such a toy, and that it was brought back to me at the other end of my life, can’t help connecting with readers who would like to hold their favorite toy or game or doll one more time. They don’t identify with my baseball game; they identify with the idea of the game—a universal idea. Remember this when you write your memoir and worry that your story isn’t big enough to interest anyone else. The small stories that still stick in your memory have a resonance of their own. Trust them.
