THE FIFTH RULE OF GOOD WRITING: BUILD WITH HARD FACTS

Only facts can tell your reader which Hepburn's beauty you're describing: Katharine's or Audrey's.

  

   I have written previously on this blog about the first four of my Five Rules of Good Writing:

1. Be as specific as you can usefully be, and provide specific examples for general statements.
2. Use concrete language when you can, and provide concrete illustrations of abstract ideas.
3. Use language precisely, and don’t warp the meaning of words.
4. Most of the time, choose active-voice verbs over passive-voice verbs.

     Today I write about Rule Number Five:

     Make hard facts the backbone of your writing.

     Consider the following:

     “Genevieve was tall, beautiful, and popular. She had a devastating effect on men.”

      This is not bad writing. It’s clear and grammatical. The problem is, it doesn’t contain any persuasive information. All it contains are vague, unsubstantiated claims. At best, these are “soft” facts. For example, what, exactly, do you mean by “tall”? What’s tall to my 5-foot-0 friend Wanda may not be tall to my 6-foot-3 friend Weston. Likewise, “beautiful.” Is she Katharine Hepburn beautiful or Audrey Hepburn beautiful? Maybe Marilyn Monroe beautiful? Or Venus Williams beautiful? And what, precisely, is a “devastating effect,” anyway? Phrases like that are too vague to be of much use. They also lack authority. As I said, they’re just claims. Any good reader, like a good judge, expects you to prove your claims. Hard facts do that.

     The following paragraph gives factual substance to those claims about Genevieve:

      “Genevieve was 5-10, with violet eyes, lightly freckled skin, and shimmering auburn hair that hung to her shoulders. She had been voted homecoming queen twice and class president three times, and her classmates named her ‘Most Likely to Break Your Heart’ in the high school yearbook. When she strode through the door, every man stopped what he was doing, his mouth hanging open as he watched her out the next door. Her exit was often followed by an audible masculine sigh.”

     

     Every sentence here has the power of hard fact. A hard fact, as opposed to a “soft” claim, is objectively verifiable: Either Genevieve is 5-10 or she’s not. Either she has freckles or she doesn’t. Either she was voted homecoming queen twice or not. And so on. Certainly the sentence about every man stopping what he was doing when she walked in is an exaggeration, but, written assertively, it has the prose force of objective fact. This is a persuasive—indeed memorable—description of the lovely Genevieve.

     True, the factual version requires more words, but it has informative and persuasive words, and that’s the real definition of “concise” writing. 

Good writers harvest fresh facts.

     Please notice that to write a good “hard fact” paragraph also requires the writer to have researched and observed in order to harvest those facts. A good writer can’t be lazy in digging up the facts.

     It also needs to be said that a mere list of dry data—“Genevieve is 5-10, 130 pounds, blue eyes, light complexion, goes by the nickname ‘Baby Face’”—can sound like a police report. That’s probably not what you’re shooting for. Well-chosen, well-observed, fresh facts are one of the marks of a good writer. 

     The good description of Genevieve is an example of the kind of writing you might find in a novel, short story, or magazine profile, but the same rule of hard facts also applies to the world of corporate writing and politics. Writers in those worlds often hide behind piles of soft facts. For example:

“Our department has yet to meet the challenge of our expectations. Our bottom-line planning has proved to be something other than effective, and personnel issues have made our future progress problematic. We shall look to improve our near-term results.”

      This, of course, is an example of the weasely, imprecise writing you often find in the corporate world when someone is actually trying to hide the facts rather than reveal them. There’s nothing to hold on to in the paragraph. Even a more direct and precise statement—“Our department has planned poorly, failed to meet its goals, and will try to do better”—requires hard facts to explain itself. Here’s a more meaningful paragraph on the same subject:

“Our department came in $38,000 under budget in the quarter ending December, 2010. Although our 2009-2010 planning report projected us to increase sales at least 15 percent in the first half of 2010, in fact our sales were down 5 percent. Beyond that, we have lost 30 percent of our staff since July 2010, and a recent employee survey indicates that the average employee in our department works 48 hours per week and has just 64 square feet of personal office space. Our goal for fiscal year 2011-2012 is to increase sales from $300,000 per quarter to $350,000 per quarter, to add an extra floor to our department office space, and to increase our staff size from 10 to 12 people.”

      Not everyone will read all those facts—your CEO may just read a one-sentence summary at the end—but without the facts available, your writing lacks substance and authority.

     As for politics? Well, read the quote from George Orwell at the top of the right-hand column of this blog. Without facts, political writing is pure wind.

Without hard facts, your writing is pure wind.