The write stuff

In Competition No. 2846 you were invited to invent the six rules for writing of a well-known author of your choice.

Honourable mentions go to Hugh King, whose Revd W.A. Spooner urges writers to ‘be sure to merge all pisstakes’, and to J. Seery, who reckons Hemingway’s sixth rule would be: ‘It is you or the reader. Only one of you is going to walk away from this alive. Make sure it is you.’ I was prompted to set this task by a tweet that reminded me of George Orwell’s famous six rules, and W.J. Webster earns the bonus fiver for crafting an eloquent riposte to Orwell on the part of Henry James. The rest take £25 each.

1. Do not think that using three words where one will do is a cardinal sin. To produce what ‘will do’ can never be an artist’s aim.
2. Precise punctuation brings order to a necessary complexity: master the use of the comma and the semi-colon. Also consider how inverted commas may be used to ‘check the credentials’ of a word or phrase.
3. Do not abjure the use of foreign words: judiciously employed, they add nuance while making a civilised nod towards other cultures.
4. The adverb is a part of speech to relish: know it for what it beautifully is!
5. Heighten the apparently commonplace by the generous use of such words as ‘wonderful’ and ‘magnificent’: they raise the reader’s expectations to a loftier plane.
6. State little, imply more: intimation is all but everything. Half the author’s art lies in framing the unseen and the unsaid.
W.J. Webster/Henry James
 
1. No word can have too many consonants: the tongue loves to feel their thickness.
2. There is only one theme and it is the elements — if there is no element in your writing, then it will be weak, flaccid, disposable, scran.