The essence of good writing

Last week I had a really lovely conversation with a potential client in the museum design sector about working with them on an upcoming project. It was the kind of conversation that as a freelancer gives you that warm and fuzzy feeling: an instant rapport with people who share your creative approach, an exciting project that I know I can deliver well, a real willingness from all sides to collaborate to get the best outcome, and a genuine interest in what I can offer to the project. What more could I want? Although I'll say no more in case I jinx it!

At one point the conversation veered into my process for writing and I’ll admit I found that difficult to articulate. Writing is something I’ve done professionally for a long time and as a hobby for even longer, and has always come quite naturally and intuitively to me. So I had to ask myself, what exactly IS my process? How do I write?

For me any piece of writing is storytelling. Like any story it has to grab the attention of the reader, engage them with the narrative and stir some kind of emotion in them. Hopefully they go away having learned something new, found a different perspective, or been motivated to action. So I always start with three questions; what is the story I want to tell? Who am I writing it for? And why am I writing it?

When I know the answer to those questions I can find the right tone of voice and craft the story in the most appropriate, engaging and relevant way that I can. And…that’s it. No counting adverbs or adjectives. No hunting down every instance of passive voice. No worrying about the odd long sentence. Just an intuitive feel that tells me when I have something right. Or, just as often, when it’s not quite there.

Does that sound too simplistic? Look online and you’ll find a host of technical tips for good writing, and not one of them says “just go with how you feel”! That’s not to say that I ignore these technical aspects because I certainly don’t. No copywriter could. I can agonise over finding just the right word, or spend forever trying to find the perfect opening line, or pore over a sentence structure until I can make it pop. (And as a grammar nerd, a misplaced apostrophe can spark an existential crisis.) It’s more that these technical skills are embedded in my thinking as a way (but not the only way) of making a piece of copy work for the audience, rather than a conscious checklist to be gone through every time.

Perhaps it comes down to whether you consider the creative side of writing more important than the technical. Personally, give me imagination, creativity and personality over technically perfect copy any day. When it comes to stories people remember how they made them think and feel, not whether they spot the odd split infinitive. And I just love being able to work with amazing clients who think the same.

I would love to hear your perspective. What do you think is the essence of good writing?