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VOICES

How to write, by V.S. Naipaul

V.S. Naipaul’s top 7 tips for aspiring writers.
V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932, when literacy among Indian men on the island stood at 23%. Naipaul’s father had taught himself to read and write and became a journalist for the Trinidad Guardian. He gave his son the idea of the writer’s life and the idea that it was a noble calling.

Naipaul attaches equal value to his fiction and non-fiction and has mastered (as the Nobel committee said) a form of writing that combines the two. His 31st and latest book, “The Masque of Africa” (out now in Britain, and in October in America), sees this tireless observer return, albeit in a slightly more leisurely style (“we went in his ambassador’s car”), to a continent he first visited 44 years ago.

Golden rule

After university, Naipaul decided the way he had written undergraduate essays was not “proper writing”. He set himself the task of learning to write all over again, this time using only simple direct statements. “Almost writing ‘the cat sat on the mat’. I almost began like that.” For three years he stayed with those rules.

He recently provided a list of seven rules for beginners at the request of an Indian newspaper:

(1) write sentences of no more than ten to 12 words;

(2) make each sentence a clear statement (a series of clear linked statements makes a paragraph);

(3) use short words—average no more than five letters;

(4) never use a word you don’t know the meaning of;

(5) avoid adjectives except for ones of colour, size and number;

(6) use concrete words, avoid abstract ones;

(7) practise these rules every day for six months.

So does he follow these rules himself?

Read the full article at the Economist’s Intelligent Life magazine.