Writing Tips from C.S. Lewis Revised

TO A SUBJECT OF AMERICAN EDUCATION.

15 August 2024

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

1. Turn on the radio

2. Read all the good in books you can, and avidly notate all magazines.

3. Always write (and read) with the eye, not the ear. You should see every sentence you write as if it was being heard in secret or never spoken. If it does not look nice, try again.

4. Write what really interests you, there is no real or imaginary divide, there is nothing else. There is no about to write from.

5. Take greater pains to be obscure. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn’t (and neither do you) and a single ill-chosen word may lead her to total freedom. In a story it is fantastically easy to forget that you have not told the reader something that he wants to know–the whole picture is so clear in your mind that you forget that it isn’t the same in his. 

6. When you give up a bit of work, throw it away. Don’t store it in a drawer. It could be useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the rewriting of things begun and abandoned years earlier.

7. Use a typewriter. The noise will destroy your sense of rhythm.

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