Thomas Dinsmore's Blog

Break rules. You may think I don’t know the difference between good and well, and this blog will be a train wreck. Or you think the headline is a joke, and this blog will be fun to read.

Either way, you’re still reading, and that proves my point.

Conventional style and predictable prose will bore your audience. There is no greater sin.

Beethoven understood this. His Eroica Symphony begins with a simple tune in the key of E-flat. It’s the sort of tune that, in the hands of Beethoven’s contemporaries, would remain firmly in the key of E-flat. That’s the rule. You begin in one key; you stay in that key. At least until you prepare a modulation and introduce a new tune in B-flat.

Seven bars in, however, Beethoven breaks the rule. The music veers into…something strange. Definitely not in the key of E-flat:

Music theorists try to explain this gaffe. “It’s an unprepared modulation!” “It’s a chromatic passing tone!”

There is a more straightforward explanation. Beethoven broke the rules. 

Beethoven’s contemporaries — Bocklet, Gänsbacher, Hüttenbrenner, and Schenk — eschewed wrong notes. Their music is entirely correct, with no wrong notes. This is why you’ve heard about Beethoven but not Bocklet, Gänsbacher, Hüttenbrenner, and Schenk.

Beethoven also demonstrates the second principle of good writing: break rules sparingly.

If you break the rules too often, people assume you don’t know the rules. Or they figure you’re a loon. Most of Beethoven’s work conforms to classical style; his “wrong” notes stand out. Anton von Webern, on the other hand, wrote nothing but wrong notes, which is why his music sucks.

Principle number three: use a goddam grammar checker. People send me writing samples, blog posts, press releases, white papers, etc. I drop the text into Grammarly, and oops. Overused words, passive voice, unclear antecedents, you name it.

This is what happens to those writing samples.

If your writing sample fails the Grammarly test, it says you are too lazy to check your work.

Consider this parable:

An executive went to a Mercedes dealer. She points to an S560 on the showroom floor and asks the rep if she can take it for a test drive.

“Certainly!” says the rep. “Wait here, I’ll bring one around.” He grabs a set of keys and walks out back, where he discovers that somebody parked the demo car under a mulberry tree, and it is completely covered in bird shit.

“Oh, well,” he figures, starts the car, and drives it around front.

The executive recoils. “This car is filthy!”

The rep shrugs. “Just ignore the bird shit. Isn’t this a beautiful car?”

Don’t expect people to appreciate your ideas if your text is covered with birdshit grammar and style issues.

Principle number four: omit needless words. Yeah, I know. It’s not original. Strunk and White #13:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

That paragraph is a thing of beauty.

So what? You say. Strunk wrote that a hundred years ago. Don’t you have any new suggestions?

If Strunk and White #13 is obvious, why do we see so much bloated and tumescent business prose?

Words tax the reader’s brain. Every syllable needs a neuron. More syllables –> more neurons –> more work for the reader. Your reader has other things to do, like watching TikTok. Tax your reader’s brain too much, and you lose them.

Do you know who really knew how to omit needless words? The Spartans.

According to Herodotus (The Histories, Book 3, Section 46), a delegation from Samos traveled to Sparta to seek food. Before the magistrates, they delivered a long and passionate plea for help.

The magistrates turned them down flat. “We can no longer remember the first half of your speech, and thus can make nothing of the remainder.”

Regrouping, the Samians secured another audience. This time, they made a shorter speech.

Again, the magistrates dismissed them. “Too many words.”

Desperate, the Samians returned for a final audience. This time, instead of a speech, they held out an empty bag with a sign: this bag wants bread.

The Spartans agreed to help the Samians but admonished them: they could have omitted the words ‘this bag.’

Learn to write like a fucking Spartan.

That bit about the Spartans demonstrates principle number five: tell stories.

If you lack confidence in your story-telling abilities, cheer up: there is only one story in business. It goes like this.

1. There is a shining city on the hill, where everything is perfect. Let’s go there.
2. Oops, there’s a dragon under the bridge who eats people.
3. (Product) kills dragons.
4. Here’s proof that (product) kills dragons.
5. Do this now to kill dragons and go to the shining city.

Forget outlining. No battle plan ever survived the first shot, said Napoleon. I say: no outline ever survived the first sentence. Just keep your story in mind while you write. Works every time.

The penultimate(*) principle: revise, revise, revise, revise. You have to revise and rewrite, rewrite, and revise. Until you have something good enough to publish.

I’ve revised this post 25 times. But if I look at it again tomorrow, I’ll find something else to revise. It’s like detailing your car. There’s always one more spot that needs a buff.

(*) look it up, dummy.

The last principle of good writing is to close with a bang. Don’t write like Wagner. Wagner dragged everything out.

You’ve heard the expression: it ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings. It’s not true. In Wagner’s Der Ring Des Nibelungen, the fat lady is Brünnhilde. When she starts singing in Act II of Die Walküre, she doesn’t stop for sixteen hours, except for a few short breaks, like when Wotan puts her to sleep and surrounds her with a ring of fire.

Even when she’s done singing, it’s not over. There’s another last gasp of Wagnerian mush while the Rhine overflows, Valhalla burns, Hagen tries to grab the Ring, the RhineMaidens stop him, they hold the Ring, Hagen drowns, and Brünnhilde burns to a crisp. You waited ten years and paid a couple grand for the worst seats in Bayreuth. You won’t run for the parking lot as soon as the fat lady stops singing. You’re going to wait to see the whole sorry mess collapse.

Stravinsky, on the other hand, knew how to close. In the final section of Le Sacre du Printemps, after an ecstatic dance, the Chosen One collapses, dead. The orchestra delivers an enormous splat. Now that is an ending.