Reforming my Writing, Part 2

Changing from academic writing, as I wrote last week, involved picking the best, the most interesting parts of experiences, places, etc. and bringing them to the front. I've had to learn to turn amorphous experiences into stories, especially in the case of travel writing.

Another big part of changing my writing has been to carry out the similar changes at the level of sentence structure. In academic writing and writing for my classes, I was accustomed to writing long, Thoreau-esque sentences. Perhaps I think in longer sentences; whatever the reason, it's been hard to streamline my sentences.

I remember being slightly disappointed in my first and only journalism class, back at East Lansing High School, where I learned that newspaper writing was basic, to-the-point, no frills, or, in other words, aimed at a third grader. Of course, not all newspaper writing is like this. Students studying for the vocab portions of the GRE are often encouraged to read The New York Times.

Yet the majority of writing is meant to be simple and understandable. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. A major goal of a newswriter should be to communicate information effectively and clearly.

Even after paying attention to this problem with my writing, the second piece of feedback I got from the editor who looked over my first story draft told me clearly: you need to cut down on the long sentences. They're confusing.

So I've been trying to limit the number of dependent clauses and make sure my dog could follow my work. At least my audience is widening.