{"id":1065,"date":"2015-05-13T16:58:30","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T04:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1065"},"modified":"2015-05-13T17:56:55","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T05:56:55","slug":"the-value-of-a-well-written-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=1065","title":{"rendered":"The value of a well-written sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Brain\"<\/a>Going through some old papers, I recently came across a note from a writer friend who died at a relatively young age.<\/p>\n

She had trained as a journalist and then tried her hand (unsuccessfully) at novel writing.\u00a0 While waiting for a publisher to recognise her genius as a novelist, she became an advertising copywriter before, eventually, establishing herself as a reasonably successful dramatist, writing mainly for radio and TV.\u00a0 But perhaps her most interesting writing was the writing that she did to \u2013 in her own words \u2013 \u2018try to work out what I think.\u2019<\/p>\n

The note I found was written on the back of part of one of her \u2018think\u2019 pieces.\u00a0 And what was striking about the think fragment was the fact that, despite being written solely for her own benefit (and in fat black pencil on a sheet of A4 lined paper), it was very carefully crafted.\u00a0 Many \u2018initial choice\u2019 words had been changed.\u00a0 And many sentences had been revised three or four times in what appeared to be an effort to get it \u2018just right\u2019 \u2013 not just in meaning, but also in style.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t help but contrast this with a conversation I had recently with a young media studies graduate.\u00a0 \u2018The thing is,\u2019 the grad said, \u2018nobody really needs to know how to write a \u2018proper\u2019 [she did the bunny ears thing] sentence anymore.\u00a0 Text and Twitter, that\u2019s how people communicate.\u00a0 And in five years\u2019 time it will be something else, something that we haven\u2019t even thought of yet.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018But you wouldn\u2019t want to read a whole book of text speak,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n

\u2018I don\u2019t need to read a book,\u2019 she replied.\u00a0 \u2018There are so many better ways to get in touch and stay in touch.\u00a0 Spend some time on YouTube,\u2019 she advised.<\/p>\n

Our writer friend died a couple of years before YouTube and Twitter were invented.\u00a0 But, had she survived a little longer, I wonder if either would have helped her to work out \u2013 with the clarity of a few well-written sentences \u2013 what she thought.<\/p>\n

As another friend suggested recently: \u2018In order to write well, you must be able to think well.\u00a0 And in order to think well, you must learn to write well.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Going through some old papers, I recently came across a note from a writer friend who died at a relatively young age. She had trained as a journalist and then tried her hand (unsuccessfully) at novel writing.\u00a0 While waiting for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1065"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1068,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065\/revisions\/1068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}