Celia Wagar's CritPoints

A lot of what I’ve ended up critiquing video essayists and other games writers about is the clarity of their writing. I feel like many people are trying to create “Good Writing” rather than communicate effectively. Many video essays are written more like political speeches than they are trying to be direct and informative. It feels like they are informed by what makes good fictional writing more than good technical writing, and try to carry a vibe to the detriment of their message.

Here are the principles I follow to make my writing direct and effective:

1. Every essay is an argument.
   • An essay is trying to convince someone of something. It’s not a ramble, it’s not a reference document. You have something you think is true, and you want other people to agree with you.
   • An essay that tries to convince someone of something must inherently be constructed around your reader and their perception of your writing.
2. Have a clear thesis statement for your argument and for each point in your argument.
   • The thesis is the thing you are trying to convince people of. Your theses guide every part of what you write. I know this is what your grade school teacher probably taught you about essays and you wrote a bunch of limp formulaic stuff, but it actually works. You just need to write like how you speak.
   • If you ever think that your essay is confused, vague, muddled, or lacks a clear voice, always return to the thesis statement. What is the thing your essay, or that part of your essay, is trying to prove?
   • Focus on The Point, just The Point, and nothing but The Point.
3. Present evidence supporting your thesis statement.
   • Once you’ve established your thesis, you can back it up with evidence. If you present evidence first, then it’s confusing what point you’re trying to make.
4. Avoid gushing about the thing you love or being blinded by the thing you hate.
   • Your gushing or vitriol is an emotional substitute for the thing you actually want to say. You are gushing or whinging because you can’t say something concrete about the thing itself. Sometimes the thing that is good about your subject is ineffable, you don’t have the words for it.
   • I challenge you to drill down and find the words instead of gushing. You can absolutely be emotional in your writing, just don’t substitute saying concrete things about the thing itself for ranting about how you feel about it.
5. Flowery language and big words are an indulgence at the cost of clarity and precision.
   • Whenever I read a 4 syllable word for a concept that could be explained with four 1 syllable words, I retch. Use big or obscure words only when absolutely necessary. You’re not impressing anyone with your vocabulary, you’re just making yourself harder to understand. Flowery language is wasted if you have nothing of substance to say, so focus on that first. (I know I’m guilty of using big words all the time. I try to use smaller ones where I can)
   • Avoid buzzwords like “juice” that substitute a precise meaning for a feeling. If you use a piece of jargon, make sure it has a clear definition, and that your audience knows that definition.
6. Use as few words as possible, with as low a syllable count as possible. Focus on information density with simple communication.
   • Flesch-Kincaid is a score that evaluates the readability of a piece (what grade level can be expected to read your writing and comprehend it). It’s basically how many words per-sentence, and how many syllables per word on average. The fewer words per sentence, and the fewer syllables per word, the easier your article is to read. Use small words and short sentences.
   • Seriously. Lower your word count. Use simpler words. Express your ideas more plainly. Don’t include filler sentences and paragraphs and words that don’t actually convey any information. Don’t repeat yourself. Avoid 3-syllable words and greater.
7. Try not to unnecessarily use contractions.
   • Contractions in writing take more effort to parse than contractions spoken aloud, and they can sometimes make a grammatically correct sentence look like gibberish. You don’t have to speak like Data from Star Trek, but consider whether a contraction is making the sentence simpler or more complicated. “There’re” rather than “there are” is a recent example that jumped out at me.
8. Keep your sentence construction simple.
   • A good sentence structure is: [Subject] [verb] [Object]. “This thing is having this effect, resulting in this outcome.”
   • Avoid Garden Path sentences. Be straightforward with your sentence structure. Don’t lead your readers on a meandering path!
   • Try to keep each sentence to as few clauses as possible. If each sentence only has one clause, that’s great! Avoid complex-compound sentences if at all possible.
   • Try to order clauses so that they follow each other in a straight-forward and logical order. Avoid dependent clauses where possible. Try to avoid putting dependent clauses at the start of sentences.
   • Try to avoid qualifying remarks in the middle of other sentences, or save them for the end of the sentence. These complicate sentence structure. They’re good for being careful and avoiding confusion. Try to state them as their own sentences if you can.
9. Make sure the subject and object of your sentence are clear, even if it means restating them instead of just saying, “that”.
   • The subject is the thing you are talking about, the object is the thing that the subject is acting upon.
   • Always restate the subject you are talking about at the beginning of each new paragraph.
   • Also be sure that the action taken by the subject has its effect clearly explained.
10. Apply Occam’s Razor: Whenever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities.
    • If you can describe something using a framework that already exists, do that before you invent a new framework, or a neologism. There are a lot of disciplines outside of games that have frameworks and theories that are useful to game designers, such as math, psychology, computer science, and user experience. Game design is one of the final bastions of the renaissance woman, where a disparate knowledge of the world can be synthesized together.
    • Try to create elegant theories that explain as much as possible with as few rules as possible, with as much precedence in existing theory as possible.
    • When coining words or terms, ground them in words that are already used for the topic. When I try to coin new terms, I try to come up with ones that explain themselves and sound as much like common parlance as possible, so that they seem like they’re already a part of your vocabulary, rather than something that requires an additional explanation like “Donkeyspace” (that said, I do love the term Donkeyspace).
    • It’s hard to address or imagine concepts that we don’t have names for. Game design is such a young field that many things haven’t been named yet. This means many influential things fade into the background unnoticed. Being able to think outside of your prior cognitive constraints or linguistic limits, to simply observe what is there, is a valuable skill.
11. Avoid Weasel Words whenever possible.
    • Be precise about which groups you’re referring to. Don’t use passive voice. Don’t use any terms with an unclear definition. Make sure your audience knows exactly what you mean by every term in every sentence you write.
    • If you’re writing an opinion piece, weasel words can be okay sometimes. Sometimes, you are talking about a certain group of opinion-havers. Sometimes things are uncertain and of indistinct quantity. You want to avoid using Weasel Words automatically, and instead use them deliberately when it makes sense.
12. Identify and remove Buzzwords.
    • If you’re using a technical term or jargon, does it actually mean anything? Will your readers actually obtain a specific understanding from the use of this term, or would it be better to use the equivalent words instead?
    • Technical terms can make an article shorter, but they impose an additional mental burden on readers, and they might not translate into the concepts you’re trying to get across, or they might be a substitution for a substantial concept.
    • Don’t use a word just because it sounds fancy, prefer plain english wherever possible. If writing something makes you feel smart, distrust that feeling.
    • Technical terms at their best will precisely and concisely target a specific concept, and at their worst will refer to a vague feeling or vibe instead of anything concrete.
13. Be mindful of how much knowledge you’re assuming your reader has.
    • You have probably thought a lot about the topic, and have a lot of baseline knowledge and thought processes that your reader doesn’t necessarily have. Build that up with your reader from scratch instead of assuming they’ve thought through that already.
    • If you’re covering an advanced topic, sometimes you can assume certain knowledge, but be aware of what, and whether that’s a reasonable assumption.
14. Work with your reader/listener. You’re trying to show them something really cool. You’re not trying to fight them.
    • Assume the reader is on your side and not hostile towards you. Just because every essay is an argument, that doesn’t mean that you have to be angry or hostile towards them.
15. Don’t talk directly to your readers about what you are doing, just do it.
    • Your reader can see what you’re doing. Explaining to them is just filler.
    • Any time you feel tempted to go, “And now I’m going to tell you about this,” “Lets consider these things,” just talk about it. Write a thesis statement instead.
    • If you must say, “I” then talk about your direct experiences.
    • You can call back to earlier sections, or mention that you’ll cover something later, but keep this brief, and use this sparingly.
16. Consider alternative interpretations. Consider if the opposite is true. Avoid tautology.
    • It’s easy to write things that are misunderstood, or which have unintended consequences. It’s also easy to write things that seem like a truism, but are not actually true, or are actually unfalsifiable or don’t say anything at all.
17. Remember your goal.
    • *What* is this writing trying to accomplish? Is it trying to convince someone? Is it trying to inform someone? How well is it actually doing that?

If you’re writing something purely informative, or a how-to guide, then it’s no longer an argument, so some of these tips won’t apply. If you’re not sure where to start on an informative topic, start with what’s simplest, what can be explained in the least amount of time, that is most helpful to someone lacking familiarity. Find the most elementary building block that will give someone the biggest return.

I arrived at my writing style after many years of writing. In my early years of games writing, I kept struggling to say the thing I actually wanted to say. I knew there was this ineffable beauty to games, but I couldn’t put it into words, so I would substitute that lack of clarity with basically going, “Isn’t this so cool!?” And now that I’m a more accomplished writer, I see other people repeating a lot of the things I struggled with originally. It took work to get to where I am, but I hope that this helps you get a leg up early on.