Robert Stewart – Copywriter

This year I’ve volunteered to make some rolls for a Thanksgiving gathering with some friends. If you’ve baked anything from scratch before, you’ll know that it requires pretty precise measurements and timing to ensure the right look and texture.

First, you bloom the yeast and warm water, mix in the flour, salt, olive oil. Then, you let it rest for a while, pull and fold, then let it rest for even more time to let it rise.

It sounds simple enough, but for some reason it’s really hard to get it just right. Did you let it rise too long? Not long enough? Or did you add too much water to the yeast mixture? Or is it dry?

Without a well of experience and knowing exactly how it should look and feel, it can be hard to distinguish what the issue is. It takes a lot of time–and a lot of trial and error–to really understand what makes something good and what makes something bad.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this in terms of writing. What makes writing good? Or more importantly, what makes it bad?

Writing is a skill like anything else, it requires practice and patience. In an online course I’m taking to freshen up on some writing strategies, the instructor preaches that one way to get better at writing good sentences is to read good sentences.

Knowing what makes a sentence good, even at a structural level, can help make your writing clearer and more effective. No matter what the goal is.

Let the form inform.

Kind of like a baker knows what something should feel and look like, writers too can see when a sentence is sound. And that comes with playing around with the measurements of a sentence, one word at a time.

As I sit here typing this, waiting for my dough to rise, I can’t help but think of all the measurement’s I’ve gotten wrong, and how I can do better next time.