Humour

Topz (With a Z): Top Ways to Write Right

Note: This article is hosted here for archival purposes only. It does not necessarily represent the values of the Iron Warrior or Waterloo Engineering Society in the present day.

During his acceptance speech at the Academy Awards, Quentin Tarantino declared this to be a year of the writers’: between Tarantino’s own Django Unchained, Chris Terrio’s Argo, Wes Anderson’s Barely Legal Teens 7, and many other outstanding screenplays, Mr. Tarantino has a point. We here at Topz (With a Z) have always held ourselves to the highest of literary standards, which is why we are proud to be consistently positioned on The Iron Warrior’s front page … in the second section hidden at the very end of the paper next to ads for Chainsaw.

Write What You Know
“’There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do no know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.’ – Donald Rumsfeld” – Sammy J. We at Topz knew that sentence, hence the ability to write it. Researching heavily is a bad habit of some writers, making the work unrelatable to readers, requiring much needed research. It’s the common English secondary school teacher perspective of the intention of every author ever, except their students. If you have been following our column for the last several sun cycles, you know we never use the term sun cycles, but also that we write about many common day-to-day situations. Keep note of your daily activities and try it, anything from going out partying, travelling or commuting, to chronic masturbation sessions (this applies to you too women).

Write What You Don’t Know
Readers experience their day-to-day lives…well daily, so why would they want to read about it as well. Don’t be a boring Benjamin, do some research for some fascinating sci-fi, or if you’re lazy, just write fantasy. Fantasy gives you the added bonus of making Deus Ex Machina more acceptable. You can learn from the eagles in The Hobbit, the coincidental destruction of all the time-turners in the end of the fifth Harry Potter book, or the extra-large spicy Italian sausage in the pizza delivery boy’s pants in Barely Legal Teens 7 (also 2, 3, 4, and 6; BLT 5 was a dark stain on an incredible franchise). Speaking of segues, if you write porn, it becomes art and socially accepted by most middle-aged women, especially when you don’t know what you’re talking about, you lonely engineer you.

Booze It Up
Ernest Hemmingway once said, “write drunk, edit sober.” This is a philosophy we wholeheartedly embrace: once you get better acquainted with Mr. Daniels and Belvedere, you’ll be surprised to see all of the drama with your friends and family around you. Somehow, when sober, you must have been to all of their wacky “interventions” and “rehabilitation pamphlets”. If you don’t drink, just pretend. The following is straight-edge Wade’s attempt at sounding like intoxicated Edward: What, you think you’re better than me? I love you man, you’re a much better person than me! Shots shots shots! I’m so down for some chicken and waffles right now. Here’s my debit card, my pin is LTTE, go to the bank and withdraw $100. You know, a hole is a hole, why does society have to make things so complicated with labels like gay and straight? How did that carrot get there? I’M NEVER GOING TO DRINK AGAIN! Publishable! (Edward would like to clarify that he was not drunk, but rather tipsy at the time that any similar proclamations to those above were made.)

Writing Dry
We wanted to write a point about boring dry patents, research papers, theses, law CSEs, etc. But even that was too dry for us.

Actually Write
Instead of plagiarizing all the time or relying on group partners for the writing portion of projects, try to actually do some of the writing yourself. How do you expect to get better if you don’t practice? Some excuses for not writing that are valid in backwards places is being a lefty, but lefties deserve it so we at Topz don’t accept this as an excuse. It is common to know people who have been identified as being born with the ability to write, so if you are not one of those people, fake it till you find something you’re actually good at.

Write Well
Writing well doesn’t mean you have to write good. A simple trick that many use is writing in calligraphy to develop an underserving respect for what is actually being written. Another trick around this is to write in comic sans to engulf the reader in anger distracting them from the poor writing.

Inspiration
Popular locations for inspiration in the KW area include the Starbucks at Uni and King, the Starbucks in Uptown, and if you’re feeling like trying something new, the Starbucks in downtown Kitchener is the place for you. There you’ll find a lot of other inspiring writers, the difference between you and them is that they are being inspired by other writers. Let them inspire you to get inspired by others, individuality is for losers.

Using this article you can probably become a great secondary school English teacher, picking favourites, thinking something doesn’t make sense because students probably aren’t deep enough rather than your poor teaching, showing no support what so ever for kids who aren’t natively excellent writers, poorly attempting to embarrass students in front of their peers, and believing poor writers will not get anywhere in life especially not co-writing a column for a university faculty paper. FUCK YOU MS. MANNY! YOU ARE THE WORST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO ME!

Note: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Especially Ms. Manny, you bitch!

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