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Tania Przywara
Professor T. Wertz-Orbaugh
UWRT 1102-003
5 October 2015
Expanding on Previous WIDDefining Good Writing
How do you define good writing? On the very first day of class we were assigned to
write our thoughts on this question. I think there are so many aspects to good writing. What I
wrote for my WID was that good writing is defined by how engaging it is to read. It also is free
of grammatical errors, has rich vocabulary, and is written in a way that clearly demonstrates the
authors passion about the topic. Other things I wrote were that the topic must be interesting,
and that good writing is memorable and coherently organized.
I think that some of these qualifications of good writing are true, but not all of them.
First off, I definitely still think that good writing must be evaluated by how well it keeps my
interest. If it is boring me in the very first sentence, I will likely rate that piece of writing as a
low quality piece of writing. However, not all writing is meant to be full of suspense and
intrigue. Sometimes, writing is meant to present facts in a scientific way which does not lend
itself well to dramatic cliff-hanger opening sentences. So, this might be an exception, among
others, to my rule that good writing must be engaging and showcase a captivating opening
sentence.
The next quality of good writing I mentioned was that it must be free of grammatical and
other technical errors. Again, this cannot be a hard and fast rule, due to the huge range of writing
genres that exist. Of course, in an academic research paper, you will want to have proper

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sentence and paragraph structure, or your own teacher will likely grade your paper as low quality
writing. However, in composing an original poem, traditional grammatical conventions go out
the window. What type of poem has every comma, period, and spelling as the grammar textbook
dictates? Probably none, if any. Poems are free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness type
expressions through words. How could you possibly rate a poems worth based on grammatical
correctness?
Rich vocabulary is the next qualification Ive set which we come to in evaluating good
writing. Whenever I think back to novels I read as a kid, or even as a young adult, I remember
the huge impact that lush, descriptive vocabulary has had on my experience of the story. When I
read a sentence full of such poetic descriptiveness that it has a definite emotional and musical
quality to it, I relish the experience infinitely more than when I read a dry, uninspired sentence
that holds no descriptively rich vocabulary. Some authors in all types of writing genres have this
gift of spinning together words that hold just the right emotive power. With rich vocabulary that
aids description in free-flowing verses, writing becomes much more engaging, and thus better, to
read. Again, however, this cannot apply to all genres of writing.
The requirement for good writing to be about an interesting topic is probably not the
best type of requirement for evaluation. The problem with writing is that it is a specific art form.
You must put in words what exactly it is your subject is. Thus, if the reader does not hold the
same passion for that topic youve written about, the reader will not describe your writing as
being about an interesting topic. However, when comparing writing to music, it is much
different. In music, you will have a main melody or motive that will be developed later on.
There is no specific topic inherent in the musics melody, but it is open to interpretation, and thus
can be interesting to many different people. For writing, I think that the best thing to do is

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simply show that the topic interests you as a writer. If the writer shows definite passion on the
topic at hand, that passion can be transmitted through the writing to the reader, whether or not the
reader originally thought that that certain topic was interesting. I think that this is one of the
major qualities of good writing. Being able to write in a way that makes any topic seem
important and interesting is something that all good writers should be able to do.