C. S. Lewis’s 5 Rules For Writers

In this post, we’ve shared British novelist, C.S.Lewis’s 5 rules for writers.

C. S. Lewis was a British novelist, poet, academic, literary critic, and essayist.

His works have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies. The books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia have been popularised on stage, TV, radio, and cinema.

C. S. Lewis was born 29 November 1898, and died 22 November 1963

C. S. Lewis’s 5 Rules For Writers

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.
2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.
3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean ‘More people died’ don’t say ‘Mortality rose’.
4. In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was ‘terrible’, describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was ‘delightful’; make us say ‘delightful’ when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, ‘Please will you do my job for me.’
5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very‘; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

TIP: If you want help writing a book, buy The Novel Writing Exercises Workbook.