AP

WRITING AN ARTICLE

            Here is some advice from an editor who does not quite fit E. B. White’s double-sided definition: ‘An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.’ What follows is just some thoughts about escaping the desire to write terribly.

Context

            Your aim is to write an article for your monthly parish paper, or for AP, or for your local newspaper, or even for your own website. The length might be about 1000 words. How do you go about it? J. I. Packer called himself ‘an accidental author’.[1] He was never taught how to do it. He was asked to do it, and he kept doing it.

Have something to write about

            Douglas Wilson says: ‘A writer should have some kind of real life ballast.’[2] One needs more than to read books in order to write books – or articles. ‘Interesting people are interested people.’[3] People who just want to write are bores, on par with those who get worked up over trivia such as the dispute in Russian Orthodoxy in the eighteenth century which often seemed to be reduced to Old Believers’ crossing themselves with two fingers, while other Orthodox with two fingers plus the thumb. In modern military practice, Americans salute with the palm down, the British with the palm out. One needs to know what is interesting and important.

            Writers and preachers both need to remember that content trumps style, for faith rests not on the wisdom of men but the power of God (1 Cor.2:1-5). This does not excuse careless writing or speaking, but keeps first things first.

Writing is not the same as preaching

            Preaching and writing should not be viewed as either/or, but both/and, with proportion and balance being key issues. Preaching mostly relies on simple sentence structure, with many sentences following a subject-verb-object pattern, e.g. ‘For God so loved the world’. There has to be repetition which does not sound like repetition, as though the preacher was just treading water. Hearers cannot rewind the tape; readers can reread the paragraph.

            Writing has more need of variation in sentence structure e.g. ‘But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him’ (Luke 15:20). Most of the sentence has a simple structure, but the adjectival clause at the beginning is important for setting the mood and avoiding the monotony of always following the subject-verb-object pattern.

            F. F. Bruce was a fine writer, but tough going as a preacher. John Murray had a very crabbed style of writing. I never heard the ancient historian, A. H. M. Jones, but he had the same reputation re. his writing and lecturing. John Owen, Richard Baxter, and Jonathan Edwards wrote in sentences that were often too long and involved. Leland Ryken comments that ‘The Puritans had a way of talking things to death.’[4] They could be prolix, with little idea of style. John Milton wrote magnificent blank verse, but Owen, for example, seems to have no idea and no interest in such things. His nineteenth century editor, W. H. Goold, even says that Owen ‘perhaps prided himself on the studious rejection of literary elegance.’[5] An exception was Owen’s Duties of Christian Fellowship: A Manual for Church Members, of which Goold wrote: ‘John Owen is here, for once, a master of the art of concise writing.’[6] So at times Owen was capable of putting in paragraphs and full stops!

Read and take note of effective writers.

John Henry Newman wrote wonderful English prose: ‘I may say truly that I have never been in the practice since I was a boy of attempting to write well, or to form an elegant style. I think I never have written for writing sake; but my one and single desire and aim has been to do what is so difficult – viz. to express clearly and exactly my meaning.’[7] Jonathan Swift, Dean of Dublin and author of Gulliver’s Travels, used to read his work to his servants. If they did not understand anything, he deleted it.[8]

The author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, was an unbeliever, but he said he perused Blaise Pascal’s Provincial Letters almost every year ‘with new pleasure’ in order to ‘manage the weapon of grave and temperate irony, even on subjects of ecclesiastical solemnity.’[9] Pascal’s Pensées are even worthier of study – for the penetrating exposure of the human condition, the brilliant defence of the Christian faith, and the clear and memorable writing style. Not bad for a scientist!

Here is some sage advice from C. S. Lewis. In 1956 Lewis gave this advice to a schoolgirl in America:

(1) Always try to use language so as to make quite clear what you mean, and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

(2) Always prefer the plain direct word to the long vague one. Don’t ‘implement’ promises, but ‘keep’ them.

(3) Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean ‘more people died’, don’t say ‘mortality rose’.

(4) In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was ‘terrible’, describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was ‘delightful’, make us say ‘delightful’ when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only saying to your readers ‘Please will you do my job for me’.

(5) Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.[10]

In 1959 he provided this advice, also to a schoolgirl in America (some of what he wrote has been omitted):

Read all the good books you can, and avoid nearly all magazines.

Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again.

Take great pains to be clear. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn’t, and a single ill-chosen word may lead him to a total misunderstanding. In a story it is terribly easy just to forget that you have not told the reader something that he wants to know – the whole picture is so clear in your own mind that you forget that it isn’t the same in his.

When you give up a bit of work don’t (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.

Be sure you know the meaning (or meanings) or every word you use.[11]

Lewis was a master of a simple style, and the use of compelling illustrations. As one who was very influenced by Lewis, J. I. Packer gave similar advice:

There are four rules. First, have something clear to say. Second, keep it simple. Third, make it flow. Fourth, be willing to redraft as often as is necessary to meet these requirements.’[12]

Elsewhere, Packer wrote: ‘I love pregnant brevity, and some of my material is, I know, packed tight (Packer by name, packer by nature).’[13] He was, in my view, a better writer than he was a preacher. As a writer, Martyn Lloyd-Jones was more a speaker whose words were written down – it is very capable, but not succinct. Charles Spurgeon was both a writer and a speaker. J. C. Ryle too mastered the art of writing and preaching simply yet with depth. All preachers ought to try to be more effective writers. All gifts can be sharpened.

Ovid said that it is art to conceal art. J. I. Packer said: ‘Writing is both an art and a craft, and you learn it by doing it.’[14] Expository preaching is mostly more systematic than writing in terms of subject matter. Writing is broader in scope, but still constrained by biblical truth. Learn how to scavenge for material; it can be found in strange and unexpected places.

What to avoid and what to develop

(a) A pedestrian style does not captivate the reader.

            Writers, especially those who write on the run, as it were, run the risk of simply getting information down on paper, or on the computer. Writing requires more polish than preaching. An unimaginative way of preaching is not to be commended but it probably is not as fatal as an unimaginative way of writing. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says we are not to let our left (hand) know what our right (hand) is doing. It is a picturesque way of saying that we are not to be self-conscious about our acts of mercy.

(b) Cliches indicate lazy thinking.

Beware of expressions like ‘lie through one’s teeth, down on their luck, free as a bird, miles from nowhere’. When used of moral issues, ‘ahead of his time’ is vacuous, and assumes a naïve belief in moral progress. ‘Love is love’ is mindless, apart from anything else. Words like ‘get’ and ‘went’ should be rarely used. ‘Absolutely’ is absolutely overdone, as are ‘amazing’, ‘perfect’, ‘beautiful’, and ‘brilliant’; while ‘iconic’ has become unusable. Other words to avoid on most occasions are ‘really’, ‘incredibly’, and the expression ‘to be honest’. In my view, too much use of the first person should be avoided.

            Policemen giving reports to the media, for example about a fire, suddenly cease to speak in comprehensible English. A medical joke is that ‘This man has pholenfrometry’ which means he fell out of a tree. When rugby league players recently threatened to go on strike and not give media interviews, it was a mercy because they were all the same anyway, with the same rehearsed cliches. Musicians and writers have inflated egos, so develop a thick hide. Apparently J. R. R. Tolkien used to respond to criticism by rejecting it completely or tearing up his manuscript. There is, in this regard at least, a via media.

(c) An inflated, unduly combative, or dismissive style is usually off-putting.

George Orwell disliked competitive sport as something which promoted nationalism and what he called ‘the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige.’ He wrote: ‘Instead of blah-blahing about the clean, healthy rivalry of the football field and the great part played by the Olympic Games in bringing the nations together, it is more useful to inquire how and why this modern cult of sport arose.’[15] The jarring word is ‘blah-blahing’. It sweeps the reader along without trying hard to convince him.

G. K. Chesterton makes a somewhat similar point in his ‘Patriotism and Sport’ in a more appealing way: ‘The typical Jingoes who have admired their countrymen too much for being conquerors will, doubtless, despise their countrymen too much for being conquered.’[16] That is a gentler, but more incisive, way of saying that sport needs to maintain its place and not be overrated.

During the covid lockdowns, one blogger pointed to the number of businesses that were closed, the deterioration in mental health, the number of suicides, the cases of domestic violence, and child abuse. He then added: ‘Yet our one-eyed politicians and “health officers” do not give a rip about any of this.’ Disregard the point being made, the issue for us is that this is a case of poor writing. Guessing motives is not usually something to be recommended.

Gary North too can be finely satiric at times, but just cranky at other times. This bulldozing style is found in many crusaders in any number of causes. Regard it as a temptation to be avoided in most writing. Jerome and even Luther could resort at times to what was simply coarse abuse. Use vehemence sparingly. Do not ‘brabble’, as Richard Sibbes put it.[17]

(d) Exposure to good writing is one of the best ways to develop your own style and to avoid a less than impressive style.

There are obvious cases of writing that falls short. A parent from Cherrybrook in Sydney wrote into Column 8 of the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘Teenage son is doing his homework. He has to give an example of a simile. He writes: “the rock is like … huge.”’ Some actual analogies used by high school students in English essays include: ‘When she tried to sing, it sounded like a walrus giving birth to farm equipment’ and ‘The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.’ These would work in a whimsical article, but out of place in more sober works.

Beware of trying too hard when the foundation is not secure. The Irish politician, Boyle Roche, was renowned for wafty rhetoric: ‘Mr Speaker, I smell a rat; I see him forming in the air and darkening the sky; but I’ll nip him in the bud.’

Understand something of grammar. Douglas Wilson cites Justin Taylor who tells of one writer who wanted to thank ‘my parents, Jesus and Ayn Rand’. The lowly comma can be crucial.[18] Another one is ‘I like cooking my family and my pets.’ In the previous two examples, the order is unnatural – there is no crescendo, nor a deliberate anti-climax. Many writers – especially these days – mix up singular and plural pronouns e.g. ‘If anyone is listening, they should put their hand up.’ Adjectival clauses are another case where the grammar is mangled or at least ambiguous e.g. ‘Running down the street, the robber was captured by the policeman.’ As it stands, the robber was running, but sometimes the context makes it clear that the policeman is running, which makes the sentence misleading.

Word studies can be overdone. The context will often tell you more than the word. For example, ‘grass’ is a sign of flourishing in Isaiah 66:14, but in Isaiah 40:6 (the same book and the same author!) it represents frailty. Literary devices are not well understood today. It is common to argue that every part of a simile must fit, but if I say: ‘He played like a tiger in the second half’, I am not saying that he had stripes on his tail, and he ate his opponents.

Even the greatest writers can slip up Here is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, which falls over in the last line:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me prov’d,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

The climax needs to be appropriate. This simply asserts; it does not demonstrate.

Here are the last two lines of Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn, which suffers from a similar defect:

                Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

That is too direct.

Add some salt

Paul writes: ‘Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person’ (Col.4:6). Do not be afraid of a bit of salt or even ginger in your writing. This is not the same as hammering away to the point where it becomes tiresome. Learn how to ‘sting’ without unduly annoying your readers. Sometimes this can be severe (e.g. Isa.44:9-20 on the folly of idolatry; Amos 4:1 on ‘you cows of Bashan’; George Bernard Shaw to Churchill: ‘I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.’ Churchill: ‘Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second … if there is one.’)

Familiar sayings can be twisted as when academics are described as ‘the bland leading the bland’. This can be very effective. Charles Spurgeon told of Thomas Adams who was a conforming Puritan after 1662, and who told of a husband who informed his wife that he had one ill quality – he was given to be angry without cause. She replied that she would give him cause.[19] But humour is not readily repeatable, so that is a consideration to be thought through.

H. P. Liddon wrote one dark Christmas: ‘London is just now buried under a dense fog. This is commonly attributed to Dr Westcott having opened his study-window at Westminster.’[20] That is more memorable than saying: ‘Westcott was a confused thinker.’ Look at how Psalm 139 says that ‘God is omniscient” (Ps.139:1-6) and omnipresent (Ps.139:7-10)

Tertullian in Against Marcion wrote: ‘If I should offer you a rose, you will not scorn its Maker. You hypocrite’.[21] That would have been more effective if Tertullian had contented himself with the barb that the dualist (who believed that spirit is from God, and the creation not from Him) had no right to admire a rose. The point is not complicated. ‘You hypocrite’ detracts from a telling criticism. All the monotheist has to do is find traces of the good Creator in the good creation (Ps.19:1; Rom.1:20).

A. J. P. Taylor had a lively writing style, as when he wrote that the communists take you by the hand before they grab you by the throat. He had a flair for paradoxes, which are most stimulating precisely because they are unexpected. Sometimes these can be overdone, as in some of the writings of Chesterton and Kierkegaard.

G. K. Chesterton wrote of his forthcoming work in five volumes, The Neglect of Cheese in English Literature, only to lament that it was such a labour that he might not live to finish it.[22] That is an example of good humour, which immediately gets the reader onside. Learn how to understate a case. A good orchestra is not all trumpet.

C. S. Lewis pointed out that Elizabethan writers who wrote on death and friendship, and pigs and boats: ‘They talk something like angels and something like sailors and stable-boys; never like civil servants or writers of leading articles.’[23]

The Roman Catholic Church was discussing the place of a synodal approach to church polity in September 2023. Synod Organizers tried to make their point by saying:

Synodality denotes the particular style that qualifies the life and mission of the Church, expressing her nature as the People of God journeying together and gathering in assembly, summoned by the Lord Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit to proclaim the Gospel. Synodality ought to be expressed in the Church’s ordinary way of living and working. … it is the specific modus vivendi et operandi of the Church, the People of God, which reveals and gives substance to her being as communion when all her members journey together, gather in assembly and take an active part in her evangelizing mission.

It almost makes one open to papal infallibility.

Some Biblical Examples of Literary Devices

            Luther affirmed: ‘I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure.’[24] The literary style of the Bible is both plain and high.

(a) Chiasm e.g. ‘Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed’ (Gen.9:6).

(b) Apostrophe and personification e.g. ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ (1 Cor.15:55)

(c) Hyperbole e.g. ‘If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off’ (Mark 9:43).

(d) Bizarre and humorous imagery e.g. ‘Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel’ (Matt.23:24).

(e) Metaphor e.g. ‘The tongue is a fire’ (James 3:6) or Herod as ‘that  fox’ (Luke 13:32). God is portrayed as the Shepherd  in Psalm 23, not by means of a collection of ideas but by means of a poem. Psalm 46 says that ‘God is our security in times of calamity’, but it says this through a series of images – God is our strength and refuge.

(f) Paradox e.g. ‘Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it’ (Matt.16:25).

(g) Parallelism e.g. ‘Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers’ (Psalm 1:1). Also the asking, seeking and knocking in Matthew 7:7-8.

(h) Simile e.g. ‘His countenance was like lightning’ (Matt.28:3). See too James 1:23-24. Jesus’ parables begin with ‘The kingdom of heaven is like …’

(i) Word play e.g. Peter as the rock of the church (Matt.16:18).

(j) Antithesis  e.g. the two men in the temple (Luke 18:9-14).

(k) Rhetorical questions e.g.  Job  38. 

(l) Idioms e.g. ‘The lamp of the wicked will be put out’ (Prov.24:20). The fact that the hairs of our head are numbered is not really meant to teach us much about hair (Matt.10:30). Something similar can be said for Jesus’ saying about the camel going through the eye of a needle (Matt.19:24). He is not addressing the subject of camels nor of needles.

(m) Sarcasm e.g. Jesus in Mark 7:9; John 4:17-18; Luke 15:7; the man born blind in John 9:27, 30. Job told his three friends: ‘Truly, then, you are the people, and with you wisdom will die!’ (Job 12:2) Paul can be sarcastic when he wants to be (e.g. 1 Cor.4:8-10). Winsomeness is not necessarily a fruit of the Spirit.

(n) Argument from the lesser to the greater e.g. God’s care for the birds and for His people (Matt.6:26). Or from the greater to the lesser (e.g. Rom.5:9-10; 8:32).

(o) Faith is defined in Hebrews 11:6 but illustrated hundreds of times in the Bible.

Some suggestions for starting off

(a) Be on the lookout for possible topics, but do not write simply for the sake of writing.

(b) Write something each week. Do not spuddle – a seventeenth century word which means to appear to be extremely busy while achieving nothing. Save your collections where you can find them later. An unfinished article may provide the basis for a future one. Keep a file with possible references and points to be made. Do not use shorthand, unless your memory is truly elephantine.

(c) For something like AP, it might be best to begin with book reviews. These are simpler, shorter, and yet force one to read a text closely.

(d) Keep your audience in mind. To my horror, the principal of the Presbyterian Bible College in Vanuatu in the early 1980s allowed a wandering American evangelist of sorts to speak to the students. He spoke so quickly that the students – who all had English as a second, third or fourth language – could not keep up with him. In addition, he kept on saying that it was ‘a dog-eat-dog world’. The students could only understand that literally.

(e) Work hard at it. ‘The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth’ (Eccles.12:10). Words are, said Augustine, ‘precious cups of meaning’[25], yet rhetoric for its own sake is ‘so much smoke and wind’.[26] Finally, ‘A word fitly spoken {or written} is like apples of gold in a setting of silver’ (Prov.25:11).

[1] J. I. Packer, Pointing to the Pasturelands, Bellingham: Lexham, 2021, p.22.

[2] Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy, Moscow, Idaho: Canonpress, 2011, p.13.

[3] Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy, Moscow, Idaho: Canonpress, 2011, p.23.

[4] Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Were, Michigan: Academie Books, Zondervan, 1986, p.193.

[5] Owen, Works, vol X, p.4.

[6] John Owen, Duties of Christian Fellowship: A Manual for Church Members, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2017.

[7] Eamon Duffy, John Henry Newman, London: SPCK, 2019, p.78.

[8] Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, Introduction by Michael Foot, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1726, reprinted 1971, p.7.

[9] cited in Jaroslav Pelikan, The Excellent Empire: The Fall of Rome and the Triumph of the Church, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 1987, p.38.

[10] W. H. Lewis (ed.), Letters of C. S. Lewis, .San Diego: Harvest/HBK. 1966, p.271.

[11] Adapted from W. H. Lewis (ed.), Letters of C. S. Lewis, .San Diego: Harvest/HBK. 1966, pp.291-292.

[12] J. I. Packer, Pointing to the Pasturelands, Bellingham: Lexham, 2021, p.23.

[13] J. I. Packer, God’s Words, Leicester: IVP, 1981, p.7.

[14] J. I. Packer, Pointing to the Pasturelands, Bellingham: Lexham, 2021, p.23.

[15] George Orwell, ‘The Sporting Spirit’ in Harold Gardiner (ed.), Nine Twentieth-Century Essayists, Sydney: Australasian Publishing Company, 1972, pp.137-138.

[16] G. K. Chesterton, ‘Patriotism and Sport’ in Harold Gardiner (ed.), Nine Twentieth-Century Essayists, Sydney: Australasian Publishing Company, 1972, p.23.

[17] Richard Sibbes, Works, vol. 5, p.85.

[18] Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy, Idaho: Canon Press, 2013, p.51.

[19] C.  H.  Spurgeon,  Lectures  to  My  Students,  Michigan:  Zondervan,  1977, p.368.

[20] cited in James S. Stewart, Heralds of God, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1949, p.152.

[21] Tertullian, Against Marcion, 1.14.

[22] G. K. Chesterton, ‘Cheese’ in Harold Gardiner (ed.), Nine Twentieth-Century Essayists, Sydney: Australasian Publishing Company, 1972, pp.19-22.

[23] C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964, p.62.

[24] Cited in Douglas Sean O’Donnell and Leland Ryken, The Beauty and Power of Biblical Exposition, Wheaton: Crossway, 2022, pp.15-16, 153.

[25] Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, London: Faber and Faber, revised edition 2000, p.23.

[26] Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, London: Faber and Faber, revised edition 2000, p.25.