George Orwell’s 6 Rules of Writing

Gluplock Advice for new writers, pulp fiction

I’ve been on a bit of a roll lately, posting tips on writing from world class writers. I’m doing this mostly for myself and the few writing friends I’ve managed to collect over the years as a way to keep these tips always easily accessible for them and myself. I have no illusions that these posts are reaching many others, as my website gets very little internet traffic. (I’m too cheap to pay the ridiculous costs to boost my Google rankings.) But if you are lucky enough to be one of the few who happen upon my little website, I hope you will find them helpful.

So here’s the next installment in my “Advice for Writers” series. Today I’m sharing some tips from George Orwell.

George Orwell, of course, needs no introduction. His classics, “1984” and “Animal Farm”, defined an entire literary genre. He gave these writing tips in an essay he wrote in 1946, “Politics and the English Language.”

So here they are, unedited and unadulterated:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

  1. What am I trying to say?
  2. What words will express it?
  3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
  4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

  1. Could I put it more shortly?
  2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

  1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
  2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
  3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
  4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
  5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
  6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

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From Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language.” As always, I do my best to give credit where credit is due. I discovered these wonderful tips on The Gotham Writers website.

As always, have a wonderful day.