Before I start, I may be late with the blog over the next few weeks. Those of you who’ve looked at my website have seen our dog Baxter, who died in December. I didn’t mention this when it happened, because it was sad and I was sad. But now we have a new puppy, eight-week old Reggie. When things calm down, my husband will post pictures on the website, but now it’s puppy all the time and I’m having trouble getting anything done. We think he’s going to be worth it.

On January 21, 2011, Susan Lee wrote, Do you have any tips on writing. As in making sure people who read it will understand what you wrote?

Unless you’re writing experimental fiction, clarity is the primary objective, ahead of plot, characterization, setting – any of the elements of story telling. Clarity isn’t even an element! It’s the air a reader breathes.

Being clear doesn’t mean we can’t be complex. We can suggest something that will be more fully explained later. Our reader doesn’t have to understand what we intend at exactly the moment we suggest it. Realization can be delayed. Mysteries delay understanding constantly. That isn’t lack of clarity, that’s simply interesting storytelling.

But we don’t want to confuse the reader accidentally, and we can do so especially effectively by making technical mistakes. In dialogue, for example, the reader needs to know who’s speaking, and this isn’t the place to delay understanding. Each speaker should have her own paragraph, along with any body language. When two people speak in a single paragraph, even if the speech is attributed (using said or asked or the like), the reader has to work too hard.

You don’t always have to attribute speech. If only two people are present, you don’t need to name the speaker every time. In fact, you shouldn’t or the writing won’t flow. But don’t wait so long that the reader has to go back and count, as in, that was June speaking, now it’s Jake, June, Jake, June, Jake, June. Ah, Jake said this. I hate that.

I’ve written about dialogue in more detail in previous posts and in Writing Magic, so I won’t repeat it all here, but dialogue often makes the reader muddled.

So do loose pronouns. If I write, The food was overcooked and everybody was arguing. It made me sick. the reader doesn’t know what it refers to – the meal or the arguing or both. And sick is vague, too, although it’s not a pronoun. Heart sick or stomach sick? Explaining in later sentences helps, but being specific from the beginning is even better.

When two men or two women are together in a scene, or two distinct groups are together, clarity can be hard to achieve, as in, Jack waited an hour for Justin to show up. When Justin finally arrived he was very angry. Well, who was angry? Jack for having had to wait or Justin for some other reason? And yet When Justin finally arrived Justin was very angry. sounds terrible. What to do?

Recast it. Jack waited an hour for Justin to show up. New paragraph. Justin entered the restaurant pale with anger. “If I have to sit through another three-hour meeting about the wording of a mission statement, I’m going to…” No confusion.

In A Tale of Two Castles the dragon character makes the pronoun business easier. Masteress Meenore is an IT because dragons rarely reveal their gender, so IT can be in a scene with a male character and a female character and, unless another dragon is present, confusion is impossible, and since IT is capitalized IT can’t be confused with an inanimate object, like a bowl of soup or a shoe.

Finnish, I’m told, has no masculine and feminine pronouns. A man is an it and a woman is an it. I don’t know if this creates a problem for writers writing in Finnish, but I’m told it makes translation difficult, and examples of sentences like the one above, When Justin finally arrived Justin was very angry. are sometimes unavoidable.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White is a slim book about style and English usage. For a guide to clear writing it can’t be beat, in my opinion. I recommend it for middle school and above. Children of any age can read it, but I don’t think it will be helpful at a much younger age.

It’s a good idea to make friends with an English usage book. Usage means the way a word is used, and a usage books explains how a word should or shouldn’t be used. The usage issue that gets me into trouble every time is the difference between take and bring. The examples that a usage book provides makes me understand for at least five minutes. Often – almost universally – people misuse lay and lie, a pet peeve with me. I’ve recommended Garner’s Modern American Usage before. Some readers on the blog are reading from outside the States, and you may find Fowler’s Modern English Usage more helpful. Usage books are arranged alphabetically, dictionary-style, a cinch to figure out.

Misplaced or wrong punctuation can also make trouble for the reader. A book has been written on this subject, which I confess I haven’t read. I know it’s for adults, but I can’t assess the level. Still, it might be worth picking up: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. If anyone reading this post has read the book, I’d welcome your comments.

In A Tale of Two Castles there is what seems like an addition mistake. (If you read the book see if you can find it.) The people who were recording the audio version called me to ask if they should change it. I panicked because it’s too late to fix the book, and I told them to make the correction. Then I emailed my editor, and she said I had made the mistake intentionally to provide a little subtext between two characters, and she had noted it in one of her edits and she likes it and hopes I won’t change it for the second printing. I thought, Whew! At least we all know how to count. But, alas, I don’t remember what I intended. So that’s muddiness I inflicted on myself. I guess the lesson is to try to know what you’re doing!

Loose pronouns and sloppy usage and incorrect punctuation are micro problems, but there can be macro ones as well. If I’m reading and I can’t see where the characters are in the setting I get confused and start having trouble following the plot. When I’m writing and the locale is complicated, I often draw a chart. Sometimes I worry that including setting slows down the action, but we have to put it in, although we probably want to establish the place before a crisis hits.

Too many subplots can make a story hard to follow and even dull. My husband and I started out as fans of the TV series Lost, but when back stories and new directions started to pile up, we both lost track and stopped caring. We never watched the last season.

When characters abruptly switch their natures I feel at sea and I don’t know what the author intends. In general, character is particularly tricky because everybody sees people differently. A few years ago, one of my critique buddies was writing a family story. She thought the mother was loving, but I saw her as harsh. I was able to point out why, and she softened the mother’s interactions with her daughter. I’ve mentioned in other posts that I sometimes have trouble making my main characters likable even though I want them to be. I’ve needed my editor to point out the spots where my main is unsympathetic.

So it often helps to have other eyes on a story or just on passages that you think may not do or say what you want them to. I’ve written about writers’ groups in other posts, but for getting clarity all you really need is  a good reader who can say where he got confused.

Speaking of confusion, life with a puppy is full of it. I don’t know what he wants, what he needs, what would be best for his growth into a happy, responsive dog. Sometimes he might as well be a Martian for all I understand him. So for the prompt, an alien encounter. Your main character seeks out another creature, could be a Martian or an elf or a dog, whatever. Each needs something from the other, but they don’t speak the same language, or maybe they do but the cultures are so different the meaning is quite different. They may not even think the same way. Write their meeting and their attempts to get what they want. See if you can work the story around so they are able to figure each other out, but don’t make it easy.

Have fun and save what you write!