George Will on Writing Columns

SOURCE:  "George Will On Our Unruly Torrent." The Bulwark Podcast. September 14, 2021. https://podcast.thebulwark.com/george-will-on-our-unruly-torrent

KEYWORD:  writing, sermon, craft, writer, preach, 

In a recent podcast, George Will, the columnist, shared his rules for writing a column.  Of course, the goals and purpose of a sermon are very different.  First and foremost, the sermon must be grounded in Scripture.  I would also demand that the gospel be proclaimed.  Nonetheless, I am amazed that I seem to follow Will's rules in writing my own sermons.  Perhaps, I spent too much time reading his columns before becoming a preacher.  

PODCAST HOST:

In your mind, do you have an ideal of the perfect column? I mean, how do you write a column? Because...it is such a finite art form in and of itself.

GEORGE WILL:

Yes. I'll give you a few of my rules.

First. There's nothing in the world, more optional than reading a column and people are only going to do it if it's fun, and you make it fun by having a good lead paragraph. 

And then by packing it full of facts. I know our columns appear on order called the opinion pages of papers, but that doesn't mean opinion is enough to carry a column. But I want my readers to encounter a whole lot of facts...I think that people want to learn things and learning about Will's opinions is fairly far down the list of what they want to learn. 

Third, it seems to me, laughter is fun. So I think people want some wit or something amusing within the column. It can just be a phrase. It can be a story, but if you put all these things together and you figure out how to compress it all into 750 words, you've got a nice little craft.