Good Writing

Having good writing is more than just having words on a page that are grammatically correct. One can write a grammatically sound paper, and yet have an uninteresting or even unreadable paper. While it is good to have a grammatically sound paper, good writing is purposeful, organized, and creative.

Good writing is purposeful, meaning that one through good writing will be able to bring across what they want the reader to obtain. This could be the argument in a research paper or the ability to bring out the hopeless romantic in a person, the way Nicholas Sparks does for many. Writing without a purpose is not only boring, but has no benefit for the reader. A purposeful work will enlighten readers to an argument or idea; this enlightenment being the reason we write.

While purpose is very important to good writing, the purpose of the argument must be displayed in an organized way. A poetry teacher once told me that good writing is sexy. S.E.X.Y is an acronym for sentence structure that means: state your purpose, explain your purpose, give an example, and give your analysis. While some were quick to point out that example did not start with an “x,” I was amazed. This simple acronym helped me organize my thoughts, and organization is essential for good writing. Without organized writing, the reader will not be able to clearly see the intended purpose of the work, which disrupts the core argument that the writer is attempting to make. Once the writer disrupts this core argument, one can say that he or she no longer has a paper with credibility.  

One should desire to be organized, but nobody wants to come off as computerized. Creativity is essential to writing, because how can one distinctive without it? The ability to make an idea one’s own is how I would define creativity in writing. How can one state an idea, which has probably been brought up before, in a new and innovative way? This is the question that one has to wrestle with when trying to make a work creative. It should be clear that creativity is not being able to string a line of big words together, but more like the ability to string a line of words in a way that people have not seen before.