Ten Writing Principles

By Greg Dittman

1. Humility: To be an effective writer, the reader must feel as if the author is human in order to form correlations to the rhetoric that the author hopes to convey. That being said, the author must be humble and be easy to relate to.

2. Honesty: Honesty is crucial to increase credibility of the book. Lies and dishonesty turns away an audience. Trust me (pardon the sarcasm).

3. Passion: Passion always comes out of an authorial works and can be easily displayed when reading. Too little passion makes reading boring and unappealing. However, too much passion can negative affect credibility or the author’s honesty of a piece of writing.

4. Clarity: Writing clearly and using words the average human can understand is a must. There is no reason to impress people using fancy sentences and, thus, vaguely clarifying your point in which you hope to convey. After all, don’t use a 10 dollar word if a 10 cent word will suffice.

5. Brevity: I will use brevity. Don’t waste my time and don’t waste yours.6. Sound and Rhythm: This is crucial for the rhetorical appeal of writings. Having effective

rhythm and sound makes everything easier to read and, quite frankly, more fun.7. Revision: As easy as it is to think that your first draft is perfect, it’s not. Going back to

humility, get down into the writing trenches to revise, revise, and revise some more.8. Communication: This is HUGE for me! I really enjoy reading if the author can effectively

communicate to me. I hope to read a book that includes me as the audience and correctly entertains what I would like to read.

9. Read: You may be an amazing writer but you can always get better by reading better works. Not all ideas are supposed to spring out of your head. Read and get ideas from other books. Trust me, it helps!

10. Live: As ironic as this may seem, but by living a little and not being a book worm, your writings are far more interesting! By doing so, you can communicate with broader audiences and add passion to spice up your writing!

I hope I effectively used these crucial writing principles in my pieces to follow. Please enjoy!