Thirty-six simple rules that transform worthy sentences into memorable ones
Write With Your Verbs
An editor once pulled Neal Allen aside and said something that changed his entire writing career: “Neal, it’s all about writing with your verbs.”
Flabby verbs lose readers. Vivid verbs grab them and keep them reading.
“I walk to the store” versus “I trudge to the store.” Same action. Completely different picture. The second one puts you right there, feeling the heaviness of each step.
Your verb is the engine of your sentence. When you write with strong, specific verbs, you create motion. Energy. Life. You give readers something to see, feel, experience.
Weak verbs make readers work harder to understand what’s happening. Strong verbs do the work for them. They paint the picture. They create the scene. They make your writing vivid instead of vague.
“These rules economize, favor the plainspoken and the specific, keep the reader’s attention sharp, and in other ways show respect for the audience’s time and desire for novelty.”
Every sentence is a chance to choose power over laziness. Every verb is an opportunity to be specific instead of general. Every word is a decision between vivid and forgettable.
Choose vivid. Every single time.
Research shows: Short sentences improve readability and promote social justice through accessibility and inclusiveness. Studies using Signal Detection Theory found that participants achieved high speed, high precision sentence-length judgments by heuristically counting text lines. The practical advice? When copy editing, quickly identify long sentences via a line-counting heuristic—a 17-word sentence spans about 1.5 text lines.
Remove the Boring Stuff
Anne Lamott’s second rule might be the most important one in the entire book: Take out the boring stuff.
You know what’s boring. You feel it when you’re writing it. That paragraph where you’re explaining something you already explained. That description that goes on three sentences too long. That qualification that adds nothing but words.
Cut it. All of it. Ruthlessly.
Your first draft is supposed to be messy. That’s where you figure out what you’re trying to say. Your second draft is where you remove everything that dilutes what you’re actually saying.
Boring dilutes. Boring buries your good ideas under unnecessary words. Boring makes readers work harder than they should. Boring shows disrespect for your reader’s time.
Anne writes about real stuff—compassion, loss, survival, families. Neal writes about structure, clarity, precision. They agree on this: remove the boring stuff.
Your reader’s attention is precious. Their time is limited. Their patience is finite. Honor all three by cutting everything that serves your ego instead of their understanding.
If it’s boring, it goes. Period.
Give Your Sentence a Finale
Great sentences build to something. They earn their ending. They give you a payoff for reading all the way through.
Think about music. A song builds to the chorus. The verse sets it up. The bridge elevates it. The finale delivers the emotional punch.
Your sentences can do the same thing.
Save your strongest word for the end. Put your most important idea in the final position. Give your reader something to land on that makes the whole sentence worth reading.
“These essential rules for persuasive language work on any type of writing, and anyone can learn them quickly.”
The power word? Quickly. That’s your finale. That’s what makes the whole sentence feel accessible and achievable.
Weak finales deflate sentences. Strong finales elevate them. End with impact. End with specificity. End with something worth remembering.
Your finale is your last impression. Make it count.
Draw on All Five Senses
Most writing lives entirely in the world of sight. People see things. They look at things. They watch things happen.
Meanwhile, smell, taste, touch, and sound sit unused. Wasted. Available but ignored.
Writing that engages multiple senses creates richer experiences. More vivid memories. Deeper engagement.
The smell of coffee brewing. The texture of rough bark under your palm. The taste of salt air. The sound of gravel crunching under tires. These details transport readers into the scene instead of leaving them watching from outside.
Engaging more parts of the mind can make a message more understandable and memorable. Cognitive science research shows that using a pleasing mix of sentence lengths and creating little cognitive breaks with phrasing and paragraph breaks improves readability.
Your brain processes sensory information faster than abstract concepts. When you write “the acrid smell of burnt rubber” instead of “there was smoke,” you activate different neural pathways. You create a more immersive experience.
Pull readers into the scene. Let them smell, taste, touch, hear. Give them the full sensory experience, the flat description.
Life happens in five senses. Your writing should too.
Twist Clichés
Clichés are comfortable. Familiar. Easy. And completely forgettable.
“Avoid clichés like the plague” is itself a cliché. So is “thinking outside the box” and “at the end of the day” and “it is what it is.”
You can spot a cliché instantly. It’s the phrase that showed up in your head fully formed. The expression that requires zero thought. The saying everyone’s heard a thousand times.
Kill it. Or better yet—twist it.
Take the familiar phrase and bend it. “Avoid clichés like the plague” becomes “Avoid clichés like a Monday morning meeting.” Same structure. Fresh insight.
Original language requires original thinking. When you twist a cliché, you’re forcing yourself to think about what you’re actually trying to say. You’re finding your own way to express the idea instead of borrowing someone else’s.
Fresh language creates fresh thinking. Borrowed phrases create borrowed thoughts.
Find your own words. Say it your own way. Make readers see something they’ve seen before in a way they’ve never seen it before.
Surprise them. Delight them. Make them feel something new.
Economize
Every word should earn its place. Every phrase should pull its weight. Every sentence should accomplish something specific.
Economize means cutting the fat. Trimming the excess. Removing every word that serves you instead of your reader.
“In order to” becomes “to.” “Due to the fact that” becomes “because.” “At this point in time” becomes “now.”
You’re showing respect for your reader’s time and attention. You’re acknowledging that they could be doing anything else with their minutes. You’re making it easy for them to extract your meaning quickly.
Writers should distinguish between real information and the other stuff that’s repetition or fluff. Research shows that the ideal readable text is in a Goldilocks zone—using a pleasing mix of sentence lengths while being concise.
Clarity comes from economy. Impact comes from precision. Memorability comes from saying exactly what you mean in exactly as many words as necessary—and zero more.
Your reader’s brain is working hard to extract meaning. Make the job easier. Remove obstacles. Cut everything that stands between your idea and their understanding.
Economize. Every single sentence.
Favor the Plainspoken and Specific
Big words impress nobody. Complicated sentences confuse everybody. Academic language alienates most people.
Plainspoken wins. Specific wins. Clear beats clever every single time.
You’re writing to communicate, to demonstrate how smart you are. When you choose simplicity over sophistication, you’re choosing your reader over your ego.
“Utilize” becomes “use.” “Facilitate” becomes “help.” “Implement” becomes “do.” Same meaning. Half the syllables. Twice the clarity.
Specific beats vague always. “A large dog” tells me little. “A Great Dane” paints a picture. “A Great Dane the size of a small horse” puts me right there.
The plainspoken and specific show respect. They say: I value your understanding more than I value sounding impressive. I care about communicating clearly more than I care about seeming educated.
Readability formulas fail to account for the interaction between written documents and readers’ cognitive processes. Research using neuroimaging studies maps out the cognitive reading process to establish guidelines for writing documents which readers can read quickly and efficiently.
Write like you talk. Be specific. Say what you mean. Mean what you say.
Your reader will thank you with their attention.
Know When to Break the Rules
Neal and Anne wrote thirty-six rules. Then they told you when to break them.
Because rules serve your story. Your story serves the rules.
Sometimes the best choice is the long sentence that winds and builds and carries readers along on a journey. Sometimes the right move is the fragment. The one-word paragraph. The intentional cliché that lands differently in your hands.
Rules give you structure. Breaking them gives you style.
The key is knowing why you’re breaking the rule. What effect you’re creating. What experience you’re crafting for your reader.
Random rule-breaking is chaos. Intentional rule-breaking is art.
Learn the rules deeply. Master them completely. Then bend them beautifully.
As the authors write: Good Writing addresses practicalities such as finishing projects despite challenges, trusting editors, and knowing when to break the rules to serve your story.
Your story is the boss. The rules are the tools. Use them when they serve. Break them when they hinder.
Just know the difference.
Trust Your Editor
You wrote the sentence. You love the sentence. Your editor suggested cutting the sentence.
Trust your editor.
Writing is personal. Editing is objective. You’re too close to see clearly. Your editor has distance, perspective, fresh eyes.
When your editor says something is unclear, believe them. When they suggest cutting a paragraph, consider it seriously. When they question your word choice, examine it honestly.
Your ego will resist. Your attachment will protest. Your pride will argue.
Ignore all three. Listen to your editor.
The best writers are the ones who welcome editing. Who seek feedback. Who value the perspective of someone who cares about the work but has zero attachment to preserving every word.
Your editor is your ally, your adversary. They want your writing to be better. They’re invested in your success. They see what you can’t see because you’re standing too close.
Trust them. Thank them. Apply their suggestions.
Your writing will improve dramatically.
Finish Projects Despite Challenges
You started strong. Wrote the first chapter. Outlined the book. Mapped the essay. Then life happened. Doubt crept in. Resistance arrived. Progress stalled.
Finish anyway.
Every writer faces challenges. Every project hits walls. Every creative endeavor encounters obstacles that make quitting feel reasonable.
The difference between published writers and unpublished writers? The published ones finish.
They write through doubt. They push through resistance. They show up when inspiration is absent. They finish despite challenges, because of perfect conditions.
Anne Lamott and Neal Allen address this directly in their book: the practicalities of finishing projects despite challenges. Because knowing how to write beautiful sentences means nothing if you quit before you’re done.
Finishing requires:
- Showing up consistently (even when you’re uninspired)
- Lowering your standards for first drafts (perfection kills completion)
- Setting deadlines (external or internal)
- Finding accountability (partners, groups, coaches)
- Remembering why you started (your original motivation)
Finishing is a skill. Practice it. Honor it. Celebrate it.
Your finished imperfect work beats your abandoned perfect vision every single time.
The Authors Agree: They’re Passionate About Making Better Sentences
Neal Allen spent decades as a journalist and corporate executive collecting these rules. Anne Lamott, bestselling author of Bird by Bird and nineteen other books, started using them in her writing workshops.
They’re married. They’re both writers. They’re both passionate about making better sentences.
And they sometimes disagree on the specifics.
Anne writes: “I disagree with Neal, and he’s overeducated, so I would ignore this rule altogether.” Neal offers structure and precision. Anne offers heart and humanity. Together they create something better than either could alone.
Their conversation becomes your education. Their disagreements illuminate different approaches. Their shared passion elevates your craft.
This is the beauty of Good Writing—it’s less a rigid rulebook and more a lively dialogue between two people who care deeply about language, clarity, impact.
They show you thirty-six ways to improve. Then they show you their own process of applying, questioning, and adapting those rules.
You learn from their wisdom. You learn from their disagreements. You learn from their shared commitment to helping you write sentences that sing.
These Rules Work on Any Type of Writing
Email. Blog post. Novel. Memo. Speech. Script. Social media. Text message.
The principles in Good Writing apply everywhere. Because good writing is good writing, regardless of medium.
Your email can be vivid and specific. Your memo can economize and respect your reader’s time. Your social media posts can use strong verbs and build to finales. Your novel can twist clichés and engage all five senses.
The rules transcend genre. They transcend platform. They transcend purpose.
Why? Because they’re rooted in how humans process language. How attention works. How memory forms. How clarity emerges.
Reading is really an act of thinking and organization—the reader constructs meaning by mixing new knowledge into existing knowledge. Cognitive research shows that coherence plays a central role in reading ease.
Whether you’re writing for scientists or seventh graders, executives or artists, the same principles apply: be clear, be specific, be vivid, be economical, respect your reader.
The rules work because they serve the reader. And every reader—regardless of what they’re reading—wants the same things: clarity, engagement, respect for their time.
Give them that. In every sentence. Every platform. Every piece.
Anyone Can Learn These Rules Quickly
You’re thinking: I’m a terrible writer. I’ve always struggled with sentences. I’ll need years to master this.
Wrong. These rules can be learned quickly. Applied immediately. Mastered with practice.
You read “use strong verbs” and you can start implementing that today. This email. This text. This social post.
You learn “remove the boring stuff” and you can apply it to your current draft right now. Cut that redundant paragraph. Delete that unnecessary explanation.
The rules are simple. The application is immediate. The improvement is measurable.
As Neal and Anne write: “These essential rules for persuasive language work on any type of writing, and anyone can learn them quickly.”
You possess all the ability you need. You already write. You already communicate. You already create sentences. Now you’re just making them better.
One rule at a time. One sentence at a time. One choice at a time.
Quick to learn. Powerful to apply. Transformative over time.
Starting Where The Elements of Style Leaves Off
Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style taught generations of writers the basics. Grammar. Punctuation. Common mistakes to avoid.
Good Writing picks up where that classic leaves off.
You know the rules of grammar. Now learn the art of impact. You understand sentence structure. Now discover
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