The One Book I Tell All Writers to Read
I have been writing for over 15 years, professionally for 5, but skillfully for only 1. What happened a year ago that upped my game? I read a book.
Granted, a year ago I read a lot of books, particularly those pertaining to writing. Since my company (Write It Great) tripled its rates, I needed to improve the quality of my writing to justify our new place in the market. So, I devoured as much wisdom as the published world had to offer.
My reading list included the well-known essentials:
- Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
- Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark
- Stein On Writing by Sol Stein
- On Writing by Stephen King
- The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Each of those books improved my will to write, as well as my finesse with the pen (or, more accurately, keyboard), but none of them had the impact of the book I’m about to tell you about:
The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker.
Yes, another Steven for the list.
Pinker’s Sense of Style offers a fun and practical guide to optimizing sentence structure. The subject may sound boring, but the result of reading is game changing. Because while Clark, Stein, and King can beat the nuances of adverbs to death, Pinker provides a framework for how to give your writing life.
Pinker isn’t the first author to teach sentence structure in written form. He regularly calls upon The Elements of Style, informally known by the names of its authors, “Strunk & White.” However, Strunk & White is over a century old. Hence, the need for a revised examination of the English language.
And not just a revised examination, but framework that sticks in your brain long after reading. After all, while the five books above are all packed with wisdom, none really have any lasting terminology—or, as we like to call it at Write It Great, Sticky IP.
Sticky IP is what gives the best nonfiction books their value. This is the story or phrase that your readers will remember months and years after reading. And since readers only refer what they remember, writers must do everything they can to make their material memorable.
Pinker not only uses Sticky IP, but he uses it to create memorable frameworks for improving your writing. And in Sense of Style, Pinker has two pieces of Sticky IP that are unforgettable:
“The Curse of Knowledge” & “The Tree”
These aren’t the only two pieces of Sticky IP in Sense of Style. but they are by far the most impactful. The Curse of Knowledge is the phenomenon that happens when experts on a subject try to write about that subject: their wires get crossed and most of what they write is incomprehensible to the average reader. The Tree is the way knowledge looks in written form when it is organized into its proper branches.
Good writers know how to deal with The Curse of Knowledge and organize information into a properly formed Tree. Great writing gives that tree a name readers can remember—Sticky IP. And this kind of writing is exactly what we do at Write It Great. Heck, it’s the whole reason we came up with the term “Sticky IP,” which is in-and-of-itself a form of Sticky IP.
Great nonfiction writing requires information to be thoughtfully organized into digestible chunks, and then given lasting terminology so that readers can easily recall those chunks of information later.
Learning how to write skillfully in this matter takes time and practice, just like any other trade. Anyone can read Pinker’s book and get to work improving their writing. But most people won’t.
Still, everyone has ideas to share. If you have a Big Idea you want to write into a book, but don’t have the time or skill to do so, there are a number of services you can go to for help—namely ghostwriting.
If you are interested in having a ghostwriter help you with your book, there are tons of resources. Reedsy & Scribe are the two big ones. However, if you want a team of writers specially trained to overcome The Curse of Knowledge and structure stories and ideas into neat little Trees, you could do worse than work with our team at Write It Great.
In the meantime, give Sense of Style a read. If anything it will be an engaging read. Because as surprising as it may sound—and you’ll excuse my use of repeating adverbs for the purpose of eased alliteration—this book on how to write really well is really well written.
I love writing. For me, writing is one of the greatest joys in life, which is why I’m so thankful to work for a company like Write It Great.
At Write It Great, I work with a team of top-calibre writers to help get other people’s ideas out into the world. I do this by ghostwriting books.
Thoughtful, well-written books have the power to change the world. At Write It Great we take pride in producing as many books for positive change as humanly possible.
If you have an idea that you think can change the world, we’d love to hear about it! Connect with us at hello@writeitgreat.com, and we’ll tell you how we can ghostwrite your book in 25 weeks, or help you get a book deal! You can also visit our website to learn more.
