If you were to ask most people who have some expertise in writing style what they prefer to read, you would most likely hear that they want “tight” writing.
I’ve never been able to write tightly. I can’t do it.
I’ve given up on that endeavor long ago.
I’ve decided to work harder on clarity instead.
Clarity is the key. If a person cannot understand what you’re writing, it doesn’t matter what your style is.
Perhaps I would be able to write in that tight style if I had a different brain.
For me to have clarity in my writing, I have to use lots of verbage. My rough drafts are always full of extraneous words, but when I go to hacking away at the sentences, I always feel that my syntax starts to confound the reader.
Now, I am good with sentence structure. If you like compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences, I’ve got lots of them.
But waiting for me to write like Ernest Hemingway is a bit like waiting for cat to bark.
It ain’t gonna happen.
I don’t mind your style of writing. Besides, you’re not writing to an English professor…you are writing to fellow dog and nature lovers. Generally I have no problem following the flow of your writing. Keep up the good work :)
That’s because I try to make my sentences clear. Whenever I try to make them tight, they become very confusing.
Oh crud – we’re supposed to EDIT?!
I make a half-baked attempt with most posts.
what are you trying to say?
I can’t write a bunch of choppy ass sentences.
Keep the length and analysis, your blog is a resource, not a listing of talking points.
I think I have the same issue with writing: it needs to be a complete argument, not just a drive-by commentary. I often wonder if I shut down comments because I try to address “well, what about __” the first time through.
I think our typical style stands in contrast to, say, Terrierman, who often does bullet point posts with single sentence paragraphs. It’s very effective on a slogan/propaganda level since a complete argument can be read and processed in under a minute; I think it fails on the larger level because brevity often means over-simplification and absolutism.
Still, I’d like to be good at both forms, I just have no idea where to learn to write short and tight.
It’s one of those things you learn by doing.
But the more I do it, the worse the writing becomes.
I do nuance. That might be my problem.