Partway through our conversation about his new book Good Writing: How to Improve Your Sentences, Neal Allen lost his train of thought. He turned toward his wife and co-author, Anne Lamott. The two riffed briefly, their faces slightly angled away from their computer and from me.
“It will come back,” Lamott said.
He nodded briefly and repeated: “It will come back.”
And it did. “Oh!” Allen said, facing the screen, and off we went.
It was a small exchange, the kind you might expect from a married couple, but I jotted it down anyway, sensing it may prove significant. As we talked, the two continued to finish each other’s thoughts, nudging one another forward, even setting the record straight. (At one point, Lamott said Allen introduced his 36 “writing rules” on their second date. Allen reminded her: “In the book, you say it was the fourth or fifth.”)
I realized that their back-and-forth mirrored Good Writing’s structure, but in an improvised miniature. The premise of the book is straightforward: one by one, Allen goes through the 36 writing rules he’s picked up across his decades-long career. He offers a concise, sharp, and entertaining explanation. Afterwards, he hands the proceedings over to Lamott, and she hits the ground running.
“It’s Neal’s book,” Lamott said when I asked how the partnership came about. “But when he told me he was going to publish his rules, I thought, perhaps a little bitterly, ‘Hey, I know something about writing, too.’” So, she annotated each rule.
“It was just fun. Sometimes I agree with him or amplify what he’s saying with an example. Other times, I am there to tell the reader, ‘Oh, he’s so overeducated, don’t even bother with that. Instead, try this.’ And so we found ourselves naturally in these roles of stickler and den mother.”
Allen added, “I’m an explainer, and then Anne offers the catharsis.”
Some of the 36 rules will be familiar to writers: Use strong verbs, prefer the active voice, and drop crutch words (like very). Others are hard-won, the product of a mind that has been at the craft long enough to notice the patterns that aren’t immediately obvious. As a more novice writer, I benefited from Allen’s experience. As I read and reread certain rules, a lightbulb would flicker on in the back of my mind, and I suddenly saw how to improve passages from my own work.
But what kept me reading Good Writing wasn’t the rules themselves, useful as they are. The real pleasure is, well, the writing and in joining Allen and Lamott’s conversation.
The stickler and the den mother
I’ll admit I was nervous, even a little giddy, to speak with Lamott. Her 1994 classic, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, occupies a special place in the hearts of those who willingly spend hours fashioning sentences, one after another, on the page. It has steadied many through their “shitty first drafts,” nudged them back to their desks, and offered companionship in a craft that can feel isolating — and, at times, prompt serious doubts about whether you should have paid closer attention during your high school career fair.
Lamott described herself to me as “the nice auntie who just loves to listen to you and tell you not to give up.” This self-portrait may be humble, but the affection is real. Any new book on writing bearing Lamott’s name arrives, inevitably, under Bird by Bird’s shadow.
Allen, on the other hand, I had to look up. A longtime journalist and nonfiction author, he describes himself in the book as a “hack writer,” an equally modest description, if in a stricter uncle kind of way. He is methodical, attentive, and clearly invested in craft.
It’s the pairing of a widely read literary figure and a meticulous working writer — who happen to know each other well — that allows Good Writing to stand on its own rather than echo Bird by Bird.
Allen’s long career in journalism shows in his instinct for clarity and discipline, the habits of someone accustomed to working under tight deadlines. Lamott, whose work moves between memoir and fiction, is more willing to bend a rule in the service of voice. Both allow themselves digressions that are funny, pointed, and thought-provoking. The result is a productive tension that gives the book its pulse: a friendly sparring match between precision and play where neither case ultimately wins. Instead, the reader sees the multiple ways a rule might live on the page.
After a few chapters, I began to anticipate the exchange. I respect Allen and eagerly await his next rule. But I stick around for Lamott, curious about what her charming perspective will add. On the page, as in our conversation, they sharpen one another and fill in each other’s gaps. The book’s authority comes from that dialogue.
Everything returns to the sentence
While Allen and Lamott’s perspectives give the book its rhythm, its focus is the sentence, and the authors are certainly not shy about their obsession. The book’s subtitle is, after all, How to Improve Your Sentences, not your plot, publishing prospects, or even writing more generally.
At first, I found this scope surprisingly narrow. A novel, even a long article, is architectural. It unfolds across arcing scenes or arguments. Can we really reduce the craft to the sheen of individual sentences?
“I first heard the idea that ‘the unit of fiction writing is the sentence’ 45 years ago, during a workshop with Marilynne Robinson,” Allen said. The idea stayed with him and guided his writing for decades. “My job is the sentence, and secondarily the paragraph or flow, and only thirdly the content of what I have learned or am learning,” he writes in Good Writing’s introduction.
They do concede that the principle may feel most urgent for fiction writers, who will delight at — even expect — an elegant sentence in a novel or short story. Still, the sentence-first approach, they insist, is available to anyone who isn’t only concerned with the meaning, cares about the aesthetic of writing, and above all, wants to keep their reader turning the page. In conversation, Allen and Lamott spoke fondly of those non-fiction writers whose prose manages to inform and sing at the same time, such as Barbara Tuchman and Paul Theroux.
Rule #32, “Layer Your Sentences,” is their clearest articulation of the philosophy. A strong sentence, Allen argues, has more than one job. It has to convey meaning, yes, but also carry rhythm, harmony, plot, subtext, and whatever else the moment demands.
Cut the fluff
It’s tempting to think that paying attention to the sentence means ornamenting it. Allen and Lamott anticipate this misunderstanding and swat it away early. Rule #5, “Don’t Show Off,” felt like the authors turning a spotlight directly on my bad habit — one, I suspect, many writers struggle with.
“Get rid of anything that stands out or exists only because it shows everyone how good you are with words,” Allen writes. Devotion to the sentence, he and Lamott argue, means finding the most honest way to get your meaning across. Usually this practice demands restraint, even if the urge is to scatter tinsel over every line.
Under the pretense of the interview, while really just fishing for personal advice, I asked how a writer can tell when a sentence is fluffy.
“If it sounds literary, it isn’t,” Lamott said.
“Damn it,” I thought, not because I disagreed, but because she cut straight to the truth I never wanted to confront. After all, I like the way my tinsel sparkles. Then, a moment later, another “Damn.” Lamott’s phrasing, and my reaction, had proved the point.
Finding the shape
The more we talked, the more the sentence-first philosophy began to click.
In my public-facing science writing, I often begin with something readers know little about and that isn’t inherently interesting: whether that’s invertebrate emotions, aspen biology, or the latest gossip on those promiscuous Neanderthals. My job is to write in such a way that the reader grows curious enough to read one sentence, and then another, and another, until – voilà – they’ve reached the end.
In fiction, I move the same way. Only now, I don’t have a topic to guide me, and often I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I used to believe this was a flaw. I now suspect it’s simply the work itself. Sooner or later, meaning emerges sentence by sentence.
That’s when I started to see Good Writing’s real gift: giving language to the Spidey-Sense decisions I can tap into but never quite explain. Without that frame, a successful writing day can feel like magic or luck — and by extension, beyond my control.
Still, I worry about another problem: a string of good sentences without much connective tissue. How do you turn strong but fragmented lines into something with a defined shape?
“You sit with the material,” Lamott said. “Sentence by sentence, you make the transitions clear. It’s the gift of practice and the second draft. The rhythm will reveal itself to you.”
Allen’s other rules help the writer get there, even if they don’t seem devoted to the sentence specifically. Some zoom in to the word level: “Use Strong Verbs,” “Prefer Anglo-Saxon words,” and “Know Your Words Inside and Out.” Others pull back to the scale of dialogue, structure, and even practice: “Trust Your Voice,” “Write the Hard Stuff,” and, of course, “Finish the Damn Thing.”
Strong verbs sharpen a sentence. Trusting the reader trims needless words. Writing the hard stuff is about finding what you want to say, which leads to better sentences. Everything returns to the line.
The only actual rule: Keep the reader reading —
Even before the reader arrives at Rule #1, Lamott and Allen re-frame them as “tips.” In other words, they are meant to be broken. If that isn’t clear enough, Rule #34 spells it out: “Break the Rules.”
But an unspoken gospel lingers throughout the book. The authors don’t frame it as a rule — perhaps because all the others are in service of it — but it’s there: Keep the reader reading. To follow this gospel, they suggest, requires knowing your audience, your motivations, and when to chuck the rulebook and go rogue.
In that case, why have rules at all?
Because, they argue, rules create discipline. As Lamott writes, “discipline, in my experience, is what leads to freedom.” Practice the rules enough, and you gain the fluency to break them with intention.
Rules also help you keep chugging along and get what you need out of the process. Writing, Allen told me, is a way to get over things. “It’s not so you can begin your exploration of it, but so you can complete your exploration of it. Any framework that makes it easier in the long run helps me move on to the next thing I want to do.”
Once I realized the hierarchy — reader (and writer) first, rules second — the rules felt less like constraints. I began to imagine them as Tetris pieces floating in front of me: I grab one, examine it, and flip it on its side or even upside down until it fits the larger puzzle.
As long as the reader stays with you, the scaffolding can shift. The work only has to stand on its own.
— and keep the writer writing
Thirty-six rules may sound excessive, but that excess is perhaps why the book came to light.
“Plenty of writers have their rules,” Allen said. “Hemingway had his four. Leonard had his ten. Atwood has hers. The reason I wrote this book is that there are really many more than that.”
Many of the principles we try to live by arrive as aphorisms that are memorable, compact, and true. They’re the quotes we tape across our monitors but find difficult to put into practice. What Allen and Lamott offer is something more sustaining: a fuller set of tools for building a practice (with plenty of quotable lines for pleasure).
I suspect the pair don’t care much if you don’t agree with the rules, but they do care whether someone who feels the pull to write keeps at it. If the writer’s gospel is to keep the reader reading, then its companion commandment is: Keep writing.
For this writer, the book and our conversation brought back something like an old, familiar pull, and a swift kick in the heart.
That evening, I dusted off an old story that I’d abandoned a few months ago. I re-read it and, predictably, I grew exasperated. Then, I flipped to the back of Good Writing, where a cheat sheet summarizes each rule in a tidy sentence.
Instead of wading knee-deep into the jungle, blinded by my overgrown sentences, I set out armed with 36 small, sharp machetes and began hacking away. With a small stutter of surprise, I cleared enough space to see the faint path I’d been walking on all along.
Why even bother?
The elephant in the writing room, at least for me, is the automated writers hovering in the background: ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever large language model you prefer.
Why struggle over sentences when a machine can absorb all the rules, never tire, and produce something passable, maybe even excellent, in seconds? Why seek out editors if you can prompt an algorithm? Hell, why write at all?
Lamott told me that once a friend handed her a phone with ChatGPT open. Lamott asked it to generate quotes in her voice.
“They were funnier than mine. They sounded exactly like me,” she said. “AI can write me, but I can write me, too, and I am writing for myself. I am writing to discover the truth and the heart and the soul of me, life, and the people I love most.”
She shared a similar sentiment on editing. “AI can edit people well. It just gave Neal a brilliant editorial summary, but so can someone else, and there’s a fundamental act that AI can’t replicate. Your own beingness, your creative self, is handing your work over to another creative being.”
That said, they’re certainly not anti-technology. They’re even releasing a companion app to Good Writing that points out places where a rule might apply, though it stops short of rewriting for you. Either way, for them, the work itself — slow, imperfect, occasionally aggravating, and deeply human — is the point.
Keep good company
Good Writing’s closing rule has nothing to do with mechanics: Show your work to someone else, or, as they put it, “Worship (Talented) Editors.”
Editors, Allen and Lamott say, help with blind spots. Unsurprisingly, they are each other’s first reader. “We know each other’s blind spots, and call each other out on our bullshit,” Lamott said — their marriage apparently surviving the vulnerable exposure of early drafts.
“Nobody wants you to be a writer,” Lamott added. “Particularly a fiction writer. So beyond getting good editing, it’s good to have other human beings around doing the same thing, reminding you that you’re not crazy.”
It’s ideal to have a writing partner, an editor, or trusted friends. But in the long stretches of solitude, Lamott and Allen become that company. They don’t quite spell it out (Okay, Lamott may. Repeatedly. With gusto.), but it hums in every chapter: Writing is worth it, and you’re not crazy for wanting to do it — or, if you are, we are too.
As we wrapped up, they showed the same easy warmth that comes across on the page and encouraged me to email if I had questions.
“We answer better in writing, anyway.”
This article “If it sounds literary, it isn’t”: The deceptively simple rules behind good writing is featured on Big Think.
