Many Can Write, Only Few Can Excite

WRITING, whether for fun or for enhancing one’s funds, is sometimes simple but more often a little bit complicated. First, you have to have a good vocabulary and a working grammar. Second, a combination of both should be able to create a good prose, following good usage of the figures of speech. Third, select a good subject. Fourth, follow a style that best suits the subject. Then, off you go hitting the letter keys and creating ideas you hope would massage your ego or fill your pocket.

But most writers, particularly those who believe more themselves to be than they really are, are hampered by the Confucian story of the overflowing teacup. They tend to overrate themselves and feel that a 25,000-word vocabulary is enough to put into words whatever they have in their heads. Moreover, being able to recognize a dangling modifier and knowing how to cut prosaic deadwoods are not license enough in putting together a readable paragraph.

Indeed, other writers, remembering of having made a good grade in elementary English composition, would have more in temerity than in objectivity. Driven by this tendency, they seem to self-fulfill in putting words together, wracking up sentence after sentence, and imbibing on the impressiveness of monosyllables without regard to the effectiveness of 18-word-and-below statements.

It is totally different to have made an A in elementary English composition than in continuously honing one’s stock of verbs and adjectives over the years. Getting away with an A is eon apart from getting your way through a cornucopia of information, digesting it and tempering it against other readers, even writers. The first could be done through rote (parental coaching is more like it), while the latter is learning and enriching one’s stock knowledge and putting it into good writing use.

Writing, for the most part, is impressionism. However, instead of using an admixture of colors, a writer uses words to create colors. So, how can a writer render color to his paper of a canvas if his vocabulary is limited to basic colors and he has no brush to impart strokes or a palette to create a combination of hues?

This is the essence of writing that can put across exciting prose. Remember, hardly are there new and worthy topics to write about. So, you can always write about dogs and roses, and get a huge readership. Roses without thorns would make an interesting read, so do dogs that mew.

Also, the next time you choose a topic to write about, be sure to make your adjectives create a rainbow and implant a paw on a flower. Don’t forget that verbs are important too. But the element in writing you cannot do without is a good balance between form and substance, with a sprinkling of wisdom and good doze of syntax.