As a writer, I highly recommend Ann Handley’s Nine Qualities of Good Writing. As an editor, I can’t resist the urge to distill writing advice even more. Whether it’s a limerick or a novel or a State of the Union address, all writing needs these overlapping, interwoven qualities:
Clear: Above all else, you must make sense. Even science fiction and fantasy require internal logic and consistency to maintain the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief. The key to clarity is flow; your plot, in fiction and narrative nonfiction, or your argument, in persuasive writing, has to unfold coherently, building from one event or point to the next. You can mess around with chronology for dramatic purposes (the movie Memento unfolds in two directions at once), as long as the reader can follow.
LeBron James and I arrived in Cleveland the same year, 2003. That’s where the similarities end, but his recent career choices have helped mine too. I’ve now scored three assignments from The New York Times related to him. My favorite is still the first one, from May, when fans were grieving over the Cavs’ shocking playoff performance and bracing for what come to be known, for better or worse, as The Decision (TM). The night of the big announcement, I filed this from the Winking Lizard in LeBron’s neighborhood. Driving home that night I learned of Dan Gilbert’s now infamous response, and this article resulted.
