Writing skills

[schroodles]

Hey everyone,

This might seem a bit elementary, but here goes.

I've just graduated with a BA in English, but I feel I still haven't managed to tackle the academic difficulties I faced when I started my degree. Basically, I have no problem formulating complex arguments in essays, but I find that my written expression often lets me down. I've been told I write clearly, but what I want is to be able to write more convincingly. I want to pursue my studies in English as far as possible, so I figured I need to get these fundamentals sorted.

So what I'd like to know is:

What makes a a good critical writer?

What steps do I need to take to be able to write at the standard of a respected literary critic?

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Thanks, everyone.

[bluellie]

I'm afraid I can't give you The Answer, as I still haven't found it. I'm sure there are texts and handbooks out there for you to read that can address some of those problems directly. I admit, I'm addicted to the manuals that tell me how I should write; yet every single one gives me the same basic advice: Read what you want to write, then practice writing it yourself.

Studying for the GRE's AW portion reminded me of some of the rhetorical techniques you can use to strengthen your argument--acknowledge the other position; trivialize a weakness in your argument or turn one of the opposing argument's strengths into a weakness, etc.. The example essays were helpful to see how these techniques were put to use.

I'm sorry I can't give you a better answer. Good luck!

[Medievalmaniac]

Read, read, and read some more.

Whose work do you admire? If you don't know, this is a good time to find out - and you do that by finding scholars through your reading.

When I started out in my own reading and writing as a child, I was mostly in love with fiction, and at that mostly anything that had supernatural elements, especially dragons, fairies and elves. I was also fascinated with mythology, especially Ancient Greek mythology. I also loved travel writing, especially books about France and the UK. From these initial loves, it was an easy jump to related nonfiction - from The Hobbit to "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" and "On Fairy-Stories", for example, from the Narnia books to Lewis's The Allegory of Love, from Spenser's Faerie Queene to Rosemund Tuve's incredible work on metaphor in early modern literature, from Bullfinch to Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces, from the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander to the Mabinogion and on to scholarly articles on Welsh medieval literature, and then from those authors I was more familiar with to those I had not yet met. My critical writing is, both consciously and unconsciously, modeled on the writing of scholars I have come to admire as individuals - meeting them at conferences, interacting with them on listservs, and so forth - and also as names over articles and on the title pages of books I admire.

It's difficult to develop a fluid style that is clearly recognizable as your own, but this becomes far easier when you are using as models those writers whose writing suggests the kind of style you, yourself, love to read and hope to achieve. I am fond of the jam-packed sentence, of clearly and forcefully laying forth my arguments, and of incorporating as much evidence/support as I can though examples. I prefer wide, general ideas that spiral into close readings, but I am also adept at the quick point of attack. My style, ultimately, is best-suited to book-length work, but I have learned through imitation to craft decent article-length pieces as well. I prefer writers who don't overclutter their work with academic jargon, who use theory without pointing out that they are so doing, and who are honest in their dealings with a text - they don't try to push the text to offer up what isn't necessarily there, or exaggerate or push to make their arguments; but rather. they sort of sit with the text and let it tell them what it has to say. My preferred scholars are those who develop relationships with the pieces they are writing on, over time, building from one article to the next to a deep and profound respect and love for what they are doing which is evident in their writing. IU also prefer the "Renaissance writers" - those whose knowledge and interests span large areas of time and text, and who are able to draw on a much larger body of evidence as a result, which (to my mind) makes for more interesting arguments.

I am also a "writerly" scholar, in that I am concerned with grammar and syntax as an author might be, owing to my own work as a fiction writer. I craft my sentences, and I am excessively fond of archaic expressions and old-fashioned points of grammar (as is probably evidenced in this very post, lol). This is more than likely due to a childhood steeped in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as so much work with medieval and Renaissance texts, with their use of rhetoric. But I have taken what they did and recast it so it works for a modern audience as well.

So - long story short - you need to find some models of the type of writing you want to do as an academic, read these, parse them out, learn how those writers craft and develop their arguments, and then adapt through practice to suit your own stylistic and academic needs.