What Is Good Writing?

What is Good Writing?
At the Writing Center, we’re often asked “What makes good writing?” or “What makes someone a
good writer?” Instructors wonder whether anyone can really be taught to write and why their students
don’t know how to write by now. To begin to understand what makes writing, and writers, “good,” we
need to ask the larger question “What is writing?”
It’s easy to agree on the definition of writing if we limit it to something like “putting pen to paper” or
“typing ideas into a computer.” But if we look more closely at the elements of the act of writing, the
definition comes to life. The following paragraphs might prompt your thinking about how writing
happens for your students and for you.
Writing is a response.
We write because we are reacting to someone or something. While writing can feel like an isolating,
individual act—just you and the computer or pad of paper—it is really a social act, a way in which we
respond to the people and world around us. Writing happens in specific, often prescribed contexts.
We are not just writing—we are always writing to an audience(s) for some particular purpose. When
we write, we do so because we want, need, or have been required to create a fixed space for
someone to receive and react to our ideas. Understanding this social or rhetorical context—who our
readers may be, why they want to read our ideas, when and where they will be reading, how they
might view us as writers—governs some of the choices we make. The writing context requires
writers to have a sense of the reader’s expectations and an awareness of conventions for a
particular piece of writing. The context of the piece further determines the appropriate tone, level of
vocabulary, kind and placement of evidence, genre, and sometimes even punctuation.
Writing is linear.
In order to communicate effectively, we need to order our words and ideas on the page in ways that
make sense to a reader. We name this requirement in various ways: “grammar,” “logic,” or “flow.”
While we would all agree that organization is important, the process of lining up ideas is far from
simple and is not always recognized as “writing.” We assume that if a person has ideas, putting
them on the page is a simple matter of recording them, when in fact the process is usually more
complicated. As we’ve all experienced, our ideas do not necessarily arise in a linear form. We may
have a scattering of related ideas, a hunch that something feels true, or some other sense that an
idea is “right” before we have worked out the details. It is often through the act of writing that we
begin to create the logical relationships that develop the idea into something that someone else may
receive and perhaps find interesting. The process of putting ideas into words and arranging them for
a reader helps us to see, create, and explore new connections. So not only does a writer need to
“have” ideas, but the writer also has to put them in linear form, to “write” them for a reader, in order
for those ideas to be meaningful. As a result, when we are writing, we often try to immediately fit our
choices into linear structures (which may or may not suit our habits of mind).
Writing is recursive.
As we write, we constantly rewrite. Sometimes we do this unconsciously, as we juggle words, then
choose, delete, and choose again. Sometimes we do this rewriting very consciously and
conscientiously as we reread a paragraph or page for clarity, coherence, or simply to see what we’ve
just said and decide whether we like it. Having read, we rewrite the same phrases or ideas to make a
closer match to our intentions or to refine our discoveries through language. The process of writing
and then reviewing, changing, and rewriting is a natural and important part of shaping expression for
an anticipated audience. So while we are trying to put our words and ideas into a logical line, we are
also circling round and back and over again.
Writing is both subject and object.

We value writing because it reveals the personal choices a writer has made and thereby reveals
something of her habits of mind, her ability to connect and shape ideas, and her ability to transform
or change us as readers. We take writing as evidence of a subject or subjective position. Especially
in an academic environment, we read written language as individual expression (whether or not
multiple voices have informed the one voice we privilege on the page), as a volley from one
individual mind to another. That said, writing also serves as an object for us, a “piece” or a “paper”
whose shape, size, and function are determined by genre and conventions. While we don’t think of
writing as technology, it is also that; it allows us to remove a person’s ideas from the confines of her
head and fix those ideas in another place, a place where they will be evaluated according to
standards, objectively. Here is where our sense of what counts as “good” writing develops. We have
created objective (although highly contextualized) ideals for writing that include measures of
appropriate voice, vocabulary, evidence, and arrangement. So while writing is very personal, or
subjective, it creates an objective space, a place apart from the individual, and we measure it against
objective standards derived from the context. It creates space both for the individual (the subject)
and the idea (the object) to coexist so that we can both judge the merits of the individual voicing the
idea and contend with the idea on the page.
Writing is decision making.

It may seem obvious, but in order to get something on the page, a writer chooses the words, the
order of the words in the sentence, the grouping of sentences into paragraphs, and the order of the
paragraphs within a piece. While there is an ordinariness about this—we make choices or decisions
almost unconsciously about many things all day long—with writing, as we have all experienced, such
decision-making can be a complex process, full of discovery, despair, determination, and deadlines.
Making decisions about words and ideas can be a messy, fascinating, perplexing experience that
often results in something mysterious, something the writer may not be sure “works” until she has
auditioned it for a real reader.
Writing is a process.
Contending with the decision-making, linearity, social context, subjectivity, and objectivity that
constitute writing is a process that takes place over time and through language. When producing a
piece of writing for an audience, experienced writers use systems they have developed. Each writer
has an idiosyncratic combination of thinking, planning, drafting, and revising that, for him, means
“writing” something. No matter how an individual describes his process (e.g., “First I think about my
idea then dump thoughts onto the computer,” or “I make an outline then work out topic sentences”),
each person (usually unconsciously) negotiates the series of choices required in his individual
context and produces a draft that begins to capture a representation of his ideas. For most people,
this negotiation includes trial and error (this word or that?), false starts (beginning with an example
that later proves misleading), contradictions (I can’t say X because it may throw Y into question),
sorting (how much do I need to say about this?), doubt about how the idea will be received, and
satisfaction when they think they have cleared these hurdles successfully. For most people, this
process happens through language. In other words, we use words to discover what, how, and why
we believe. Research supports the adage “I don’t know what I think until I read what I’ve said.”
Altogether these elements make writing both an interesting and challenging act—one that is rich,
complex, and valuable. What else is writing for you? Think about what the definitions discussed here
miss and how you might complete the sentence “Writing is like…” From your experience as a writer,
what else about writing seems essential? How is that connected to what you value about the
process of writing and the final pieces that you produce?

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What is Good Writing?

Writing is both subject and object.

Writing is decision making.

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