There are No Good or Bad Writers

Renée Pinchero guest blogs for us this month, sharing something she wrote in the group Writing in the Trenches (WITT). WITT is a supportive community space for writing teachers & tutors, literacy specialists & homeschooling parents who work with neurodivergent as well as neurotypical students. We share activities, resources, ideas, and contemporary research related to our field. We also share our experiences in the writing trenches and invite others to do the same. 

This post highlights the importance of shifting away from the idea of "good" and "bad" writers and, instead, teaching our students how to be effective writers. For more posts like this, join WITT here.

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So many students come to writing with the sense that they are just not “good” writers. It’s as if the production of a measurably “good” piece of writing is due to some kind of genetic trait, like brown eyes or curly hair. However, what students often mean is that writing is hard for them…it feels like it doesn’t come naturally. Or, they produce “great” work in the first go or so. 

The truth, we know, is that writing, like many skills, is something that requires explicit instruction and consistent practice. 

And, like a lot of skills, learning to write is complex. 

However, the situations in which we write over a lifetime are always changing: the people to whom we write, our reasons for writing, the context, the technology…even the vocabulary. And, unlike some other skills, there is no uniform formula which produces “good” writing every time because there is no generic form of writing.

Since writing is also about communication and expression, writing by nature is dynamic, as are the writers themselves. Each writer is unique, not just in their writing voices, but in their thought processes, their learning processes, and their writing processes. This doesn’t mean that we can’t teach a class of students to engage in some kind of a process to produce a piece of writing, but a shift in the paradigm away from the idea of good and bad writers might help writers approach a process that is more genuine for them. We need to talk to emerging writers about what skills help make effective writers and, therefore, effective writing. 

So, who or what is an effective writer?

Simply put, an effective writer is one who achieves their writing goal(s). 

Maybe the goal is to explain a complex idea to someone, to demonstrate what they've learned about a topic, to assert an opinion, or simply to connect with someone. In all of the above cases, what makes the writing (and, therefore, the writer) effective is whether or not the writing serves its purposes and meets the needs and expectations of their intended audience.

Additionally, in order to do this, the writer needs to understand the context in which the writing takes place as well as the genre - its rules and its constraints.

Young writers often already know how to do this. When they make pictures and write notes for loved ones, they often employ the language and symbols appropriate for both their writing situation and their audience. Think of kids' early writings: Mother’s and Father's Day cards, Valentines, Thank You notes, and so on. They regularly know how to effectively employ the tools of the various genres by making choices about the illustrations, the words, and the colors that will best appeal to their audience.

Explicitly talking about (and practicing) writing for different purposes and different readers in different forms puts an emphasis on the awareness and the skills needed to be an effective writer and help us shift the conversation to what makes a piece of writing effective.

Here, I’ll pause and say that so many “strong” high school writers, who have perfected the ultra-generic five-paragraph essay, or some version thereof, end up writing papers in college that don’t make the grade–literally and figuratively. The papers (and the writers) often don’t adequately address the assignment and many student writers are completely baffled as to why because they had believed they were ‘good writers.’

The issue, of course, is not that they are not good writers but rather, they don’t know how to transfer what they do know about writing for different purposes in different genres to different audiences. (I can’t tell you how many students in my first year writing classes try to squeeze five paragraphs in a tw- page paper, or go in the opposite direction with a five paragraph, 2,000 word essay!) 

In college, writers are expected to write across multiple disciplines (each with its own constraints, rules, conventions, etc.), and in order to be successful in that writing, student writers need to understand that they also need to focus on what will make a given piece effective in achieving its goal.  

Shifting this frame to effective writing and, therefore, effective writers, can help emerging writers to become skilled in articulating their reasons for writing, using the rules and conventions of the genre in which they are writing (or at least understand that they need to become aware of those genre conventions), and cultivating an awareness of audience needs and expectations. 

This, too, might help students lean into the hard parts of writing and understand that they aren’t approaching a writing task as someone who is “good” or “bad” at writing.

So how do effective writers approach writing? In order to meet the needs and expectations of their readers, effective writers need to reflect on those needs and those expectations. Then, they need to not just think about the content about which they will write, but they need to identify, learn, and effectively use vocabulary, syntax, and organizational forms that will achieve their purpose. They need to think about the style, tone, and voice which will reach their audience. 

Creating awareness

There are many ways to create awareness and capitalize on the idea of effective writing. And this is not to talk abstractly about audience, purpose, genre, etc., but we can start with what our student writers DO know. 

Texts, group chats, and more

By middle school, most students are exchanging texts and chats for various reasons - memes, information, making plans, and building and maintaining social connections.

As practiced writers in this form, they understand how to compose their written communication in a way that is both appropriate to the genre – its constraints and its dictates – and effective for their audience. They understand the meaning-making tools that are a part of the written language of the genre – emojis, abbreviations, images, captions–along with the syntactical rules that govern their use. In short, they have learned what it takes to be effective writers. 

And this might be one opportunity for us to start the conversation – about effective writers and effective writing. 

All of our students already ARE writers, and they already know what it means to be effective in some instances. Thus, as writing teachers, we need to capitalize on that awareness and shift the paradigm: there are no inherently good or bad writers, only effective ones.