Clarity in Writing

Look at the glass of water in the photo. You see right through it. Nothing obscures it. It's plain for all to see.

How nice it would be if our writing had the same kind of clarity. As writers, we know what we're attempting to convey, but the reader doesn't always get it because of the way we write.

In our head, it's perfectly clear, but once we write the words, it might be just plain cloudy.

If I'm writing about my great-aunt's farmhouse, I know exactly what it looks like. I've been there. I can see it in my mind's eye. To convey the picture of that house to you, the reader, I need to be quite explicit. To tell you about the time Aunt Jane killed a rattler by the cellar door, I need to let you know that the door was outside and only inches from the ground on a slant. Once opened, you needed to go down a flight of steps to reach the cellar itself. If I didn't explain that, the reader might consider a door in her kitchen leading to the cellar. A strange place to kill a rattlesnake. I can see it, but my job is to make sure you, the reader see it, as well.

Using too many pronouns leads to confusion, as well. It may not be clear which him, her, they the writer is referring to. One way to fix that is to use the person's name and the pronoun when writing in the same paragraph. It's boring to constantly use the actual name, and it's confusing and also repetitive to use the same pronoun over and over. Intersperse them and make sure your pronouns are clear in which noun they are replacing or referring to.

One of the problems with readers getting confused is that many writers tend to write overly long sentences. The reader is then left to sort it out. Sometimes they do, and other times, it's a muddle. A simple fix is to put the same information into two or three shorter ones. The reader's brain can absorb those three short sentences more easily than an exorbitantly long one.

I was recently critiquing a submission in my online writing group. The paragraph opened with two sentences both using the word 'man.' But, it was not referring to the same man. I read it twice feeling confused, then realized what the writer was saying. A simple fix was to use 'artist' in the first sentence and 'man' in the second one which showed she was referring to two different men.

When you edit your drafts, ask yourself if you have made things clear to the reader. Or are you taking too much for granted that they know what you're talking about? If you have let your draft sit and rest for several days, then read through it, you are more likely to see places where clarity is a problem.

Clarity is every bit as important as grammar and description and sensory detail and all the other things that go into our writing. Yet, clarity is not an issue I see addressed very often. Be aware of it. N