…for Reformed Perspective

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Everyone has at least one article in them – I’m convinced that’s true. It doesn’t matter who I’m talking to, they all have a story, some lesson, a piece of wisdom earned or received, that is so valuable they should feel obligated to share it with the rest of us (Ps. 71:17-18).

Sure, we aren’t all writers, and yes, there are other ways of telling “the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord” (Ps. 78:4b). Sharing can happen via chats at church, over coffee, or in the car with the kids. Maybe you can start your own podcast – that could be brilliant too.

But there is something about putting pen to paper and just pondering, what has the Lord been teaching me? And if it’s something you’d share with your spouse, friends, or kids, then couldn’t a few thousand others benefit too?

You don’t even have to be the writer to get it down on paper – one of my favorite Reformed Perspective articles is Alice Kuik’s World War II remembrance “War through the eyes of a child,” as told to her writer friend Jane DeGlint. Together they crafted something that should be read every single Remembrance Day.

The point is, we all have our God to glorify, and we all have a story to share, and pulling out your laptop and typing away might be a really good way of doing both.

But what if you’ve never written much of anything before?

Well, then you’re like the new homeowner who has to figure out for the first time how to get your shower draining like it should. There’s nothing to it but to start, turn to whatever advisors you might have at hand (“Hey dad, have you ever…?”), ask YouTube and ChatGPT for a few tips too, and then slog through until something works. Yes, there are master plumbers out there who could do it better, and master writers too – folks who can just churn out poetic, punchy stuff – but for the rest of us, it is just a matter of putting in the sweat and time.

And I’m here to help too. While I can’t make it easy, I can make it easier. What follows are my own best tips, the same half dozen I’ve been sharing with aspiring writers, and repeating to myself every time I’ve run stuck, these last 25 years. I’m not sure I like the acronym (so if you think up an alternative let me know) but I’m going to run with it – let’s see if we can get your writing to pass the SMELLS test.

1) Specific detail (or, Show, don’t tell)

If I told you that Wes Huff is a witty Christian apologist, you’d have to take my word for it. But what if I showed you? In his recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, Huff explained why it’s not enough to respect Jesus as a great teacher:

“I have a friend, Andy Bannister. He’s out in the UK, and he says if you take Christ out of Christian, all you’re left with is Ian. And Ian’s a great guy but he’s not going to save you from your sins.”

Now, instead of just taking my word for it, you’re a witness – this guy is funny. Specific details like this key quote help a writer to show, rather than tell.

Specific details that liven up your writing could include pertinent statistics (so long as it isn’t just dry data), on-the-ground facts, setting-the-scene descriptions, and the right biblical text. The key here is specificity. The difference between an insightful blog post read by only dozens and an insightful article read by thousands can come down to whether the writer is talking in generalities, or whether he is willing to dig up specific examples and illustrations and facts and figures.

So, it’s one thing to say abortion is devastating and another thing entirely to say that it may account for 52% of all deaths worldwide. It’s one thing to say we are facing a demographic crisis, and another to explain, as Mark Penninga recently did, that “if we look at Italy, in just 30 years it is projected that 60 percent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, and no uncles.” It’s specific details that catch our attention and drive home the truth.

2) Murder your darlings

In her latest book, Upheld, Christine Farenhorst remembers when her husband Anco was taking classes in veterinary school, and they were thankful for folks who’d take compassion on their poor student status and invite them over. The Pots were an example, but “rather impoverished themselves.” So when Mrs. Pot offered her a pastry, Christine was grateful for the treat. But after a few bites, she was horrified to discover her pastry was full of mold. Should she say something? The elderly woman was quite delighted with her own piece: “Isn’t it good? I’ll bet you haven’t eaten anything like this for a long time!”

“Mrs. Pot beamed at me again and a patch of sunlight caught a faded spot of the carpet. I knew she considered both Anco and myself underfed, and had taken great pains to buy something special for us.”

And so, Christine ate it all down as quickly as she could, and when asked whether she’d like another piece, she “croaked a trifle hoarsely” that no, she did not, “but it was delicious.”

“[Mrs. Pot] appeared very pleased with the comment, and I knew that my statement, strange as it sounded to my stomach, was Gospel truth to my heart.”

I love this exchange, and since reading it I’ve wanted to use it in an article about how Christians’ love of the truth needs to be better understood. The point I want to make is that it would be no lie for a high school boys’ basketball team to identify as girls for one particular game against that team – the one with the “girl” with the 5 o’clock shadow who’s been dominating the women’s league. In trouncing that team, our boys would be highlighting the truth that men are not, and cannot become, women. I wanted to use Christine’s story because here too, a lie is no lie at all – the cake was both disgusting and also delicious; stomach-churning, and heart-warming all the same.

But try as I might, I can’t make Christine’s story fit smoothly. It is a fantastic story, but to include it and explain its relevance will only complicate things, distracting from my point, rather than illustrating it. And so, for my purposes, I need to cut it (though in Christine’s book, it is perfectly placed).

This is what G.K. Chesterton meant when he said “Murder your darlings” (or was it Faulkner?). Every line and paragraph in your piece has to advance your plot or argument. If it doesn’t, it can’t matter how much you like that passage – how well written it is, or how funny – it needs to go. So yes, you must be able to “murder” your favorite lines, paragraphs, and examples.

3) Evocative

God’s Word is evocative – He calls us to not only hear, but to live out what He’s told us (Matt. 7:24-27; James 1:22-25). That’s what we want in RP articles too – there needs to be a call to action. The reader should not, once the conclusion is consumed, be able to simply file this away for information. We are trying to pass along wisdom, not just knowledge, so an article has to evoke a response: it needs to become wisdom used.

4) Lead (or lede) line

The most important sentence in your article is the first one, with the second almost as much so – if you don’t grab readers right from the start, flipping the page is really easy to do. That’s why your lead line and lead paragraph have to start things off with a bang and it’s also why I spend the bulk of my editing time on just the first few lines of each article.
What’s the key to a good lead? A question can draw a reader in – here are examples from the last couple issues:

• How do you buy a house when you are 19?
• Want to reduce your chances of being depressed?

A pithy quote (both, again, from last issue) can also be a strong start:

• “How we see is who we be.” – a wise pirate
• “The public school has become a counter-church” – Abraham Kuyper

And a solid standby is to begin with an anecdote – pull us in with a story.

But while there are all sorts of tricks, it’s really about effort. Flip through a few RP issues and study how each article begins, and jot down the openers you like best. Then figure out what you liked about them. Grab a Christian Renewal or your local paper, pull up your news feed, and start collecting the best beginnings. Learn by just opening your eyes to the writing you are reading every day.

5) Less is more

Blaise Pascal quipped this apology in one of his articles: “I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.” Brevity takes time, but it’s key to readability. If you could have said it in two pages but take four, you either won’t get your article accepted in the first place, or your double-stuffed piece will get half the readership it might otherwise have.

So a key to good writing is to be a good editor who can cut away all the fluff and confusion. Fortunately, if you are a reader (as every writer should be), you have all the makings for being a pretty decent editor – you can already tell when something is wordy, confusing, or repetitive. So get your first draft down, put it away for a week, and then with fresh eyes get to cutting, cutting, and more cutting.

6) So and but, not and

Not all your paragraphs should begin with “so” or “but” – that would get repetitive fast –but it’d be good if it was at least possible. These are transitional words that show there’s a tight linkage from one paragraph to the next.

In contrast, if you could only begin a paragraph with “and,” it would indicate that this paragraph isn’t all that connected to what came before it. You can test that out on this article, and here are some sentences that illustrate the same point:

• I ordered a chicken burger and an egg salad so I could see which came first.
• I tried to write a joke about procrastination but I never got around to it.

With “so” and “but” the second part of the sentence is responding to the first. We end up with what’s basically a very short story, and that’s great because stories are great.

But substitute the word “and” in either case and you just have a series of unrelated events. I ordered a chicken burger, and I ordered an egg salad, and I could see which came first. If that’s how your article sounds, you need to work on your transitions, tightening up your story or argument so it’s clear how it flows from one paragraph to the next.

Conclusion

This SMELLS Test is just a half dozen tips that should be taken for the helpful suggestions they are intended to be, and not as some sort of unbreakable rules. Shucks, sometimes these tips conflict. For example, in writing up Tip #2, I wanted to use some “specific detail” to “show rather than just tell” what it would look like to have to “murder your darlings.” All that showing meant it became one of my longer tips, ignoring Tip #5, that “Less is more.” However, in this case I judged that more was more.

Some of these tips are more important than others, and #3 is a big one, so I don’t want to end without issuing my own “evocative” call to action. So, how about it? Will you seriously consider writing for RP? Yes, not everyone is a writer… but it sure does seem like we’re all storytellers, and that’s almost the same thing. If you’ve got a story you’ve just had to share with all your kids or grandkids, or if you’ve been sharing business tips or marriage, parenting, mentoring, and general life lessons, how about sharing them with a few thousand more? If God has gifted you a lesson, pass it on.

We’re not all writers… but that doesn’t mean we can’t be.

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You can send your queries or articles to [email protected] and I’ll try to get back to you within two business days. If you want to dig deeper into the topic of writing as a Christian, you can’t go wrong buying a copy of Marvin Olasky’s “Reforming Journalism,” which offers all sorts of thoughts and lessons. For more tips in a much shorter format, click here.