Advice to a Young Writer

A Letter from C.S. Lewis

Two excerpts from On Writing (and Writers) a miscellany of advice and opinions from C.S. Lewis.

Excerpt one, a letter to Joan Lancaster, June 26, 1956:

You describe your Wonderful Night very well. That is, you describe the place and the people and the night and the feeling of it all, very well—but not the thing itself—the setting but not the jewel. And no wonder! Wordsworth often does just the same. His Prelude (you’re bound to read it about ten years’ hence. Don’t try it now, or you’ll only spoil it for later reading) is full of moments in which everything except the thing itself is described. If you become a writer you’ll be trying to describe the thing all your life: and lucky if, out of dozens of books, one or two sentences, just for a moment, come near to getting it across. . . .

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “more people died,” don’t say “mortality rose.”

4. In writing, don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”: make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words, (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”: otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Excerpt two, a letter to Thomasine, December 14, 1959:

It is very hard to give any general advice about writing. Here’s my attempt.

1. Turn off the radio.

2. Read all the good books you can, and avoid nearly all magazines.

3. Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye.

4. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again.

5. Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about.)

6. Take great pains to be clear. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn’t, and a single ill-chosen word may lead him to a total misunderstanding. In a story it is terribly easy just to forget that you have not told the reader something that he needs to know—the whole picture is so clear in your own mind that you forget that it isn’t the same in his.

7. When you give up a bit of work, don’t (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the rewriting of things begun and abandoned years earlier.

8. Don’t use a typewriter. The noise will destroy your sense of rhythm, which still needs years of training.

9. Be sure you know the meaning (or meanings) of every word you use.

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