Ratika Deshpande
In the kind of short fiction I write, there are clear starting and ending points. However, these markers are almost always absent when I’m writing nonfiction. I’m not even clear about what it is I’m talking about until I’m a few paragraphs in, let alone where I’m taking the reader with me. This lack of structure helps me clarify my thoughts as I dump them on paper, but it also makes editing a painful process.
Over time, though, I’ve learned to make my nonfiction writing less messy by asking a few questions and looking at my work from a different angle, as detailed below:
Write a pitch about your essay
As a freelance writer, I have to write a lot of pitches to editors to get work. For essays, this means describing what I want to talk about, why it’s important, why I’m a good candidate to explore that topic, and how I will go about doing so—will I write in response to a book or a movie? Will I compare and contrast two pieces of media on the same theme? Will I talk to experts or bring in my own experiences?
And I have to do it all in around 250-300 words. Such brevity helps me more than the editor—because when I’m composing a pitch, I’m making a case. I’m putting forward my best points and getting to the core directly. When I do that, then I know what it is that I really want to say.
So every time I have an idea for an essay, I first write a pitch (I do refer to notes if needed), even if the publication I’m aiming for accepts only completed pieces—the pitch is for me.
Redraft around the core
Writing the draft is easy once I’m clear on the core of my topic and the shape of my argument. Every time I get stuck and don’t know where to go next, I refer to my pitch, and that gets me back on track.
Sometimes, this is reversed: you may already have a first draft that you’re struggling to edit. You can write a pitch about it, then edit with the pitch in mind.
What would such editing involve?
Identify and remove repetition of meaning
Our core is often a revelation or a pattern that we have learned or noticed repeatedly, in multiple contexts, and the essay is where everything is combined to create a bigger picture. This can often lead us to say the same thing in different ways—often literally, on a sentence-level.
Identifying the core helps me spot and delete the dozen or so sentences throughout the draft that aren’t saying anything that I haven’t already said in the piece.
Any essay, regardless of its perspective or the rigour of its research, is a narrative, in that it starts with a question or a point of curiosity, and then weaves its way through your experiences or thinking process to arrive at a point where the question has been answered, the curiosity (to some considerable degree) satisfied.
In other words, you’re going from one place to the next. Every sentence is a step towards that end point. And so, any sentence that does not do that work should be removed.
Ask: What sounds good but doesn’t support the core?
The above tip also applies to style. I’m way too fond of my pretty sentences, but I realised recently that a lot of them were empty. There was nothing in them. And so as much as it hurt, I had to delete them. (The pretty sentences also tend to be repetitive, so removing them helps reduce that redundancy, leading to tighter drafts.)
You don’t have to say everything in this one piece
At the drafting stage, doing a brain dump helps. But when we’re editing, we have to remember that we cannot say everything in an essay (as opposed to a book). Things may seem as if belong because they are related to the core, but it might be that 1) they are nothing more than interesting tidbits, or 2) they have a depth that demands to be explored in a different essay. You don’t need to erase these parts; instead, take them to a new document to write about later.
Reading to deconstruct
Other than (re)drafting your essay as a pitch, what else can you do to identify the core of your essay? The most helpful thing I’ve found is to read and analyse other writers’ essays.
I usually look at the kind of pieces I wish I’d written. If I can, I print them out then reread them with a pencil in hand.
The first read has already told me what happens in the piece. The second time around, I’m able to spot the details–how the writer opens the essay, how the different sections are braided together, the kind of examples that are cited and what components of that example (a dialogue or a soundtrack from a movie, for example) support the writer’s narrative.
Every essay is unique, but the more pieces you read this way, the more you understand the subtle techniques used by writers to stay on track, avoid messiness and tangents, and drive each sentence towards a satisfying, inspiring, or thoughtful end.
Ratika Deshpande is a writer from India. Her work has appeared in Authors Publish, Reactor Magazine, the Brevity Blog, and other platforms. You can support her writing here.
