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Readability in Creative Writing
- Mary Chittle
- Mar 5
- 4 min read
What is Readability?
Readability in creative writing is how easily a reader can engage with, understand, and process the text they are reading. Readability is crucial in piquing and maintaining the reader’s interest in your story. If a reader isn’t comfortable in their reading experience or they are struggling to comprehend what they are reading, odds are they will not come back for more, potentially not even finishing their initial read. Readability has a lot to do with the structural, stylistic, technical, and visual makeup of your piece. There are many simple changes and editing tools that you as an author can use and implement to improve the readability of your creative writing and ensure a smooth and enjoyable experience for your readers.
Tips for Improving Readability:
Avoid overly long and cluttered sentences. Lengthy and descriptive sentences certainly have their time and place and can be very beneficial, but they can also bog down the reading pace and dampen the reader’s interest if they are not done well. Short sentences can be used for emphasis or to increase tension. Work to create a good balance between short and long sentences to enhance the rhythm and flow of the reading experience.
Don’t try to be too flowery and extra descriptive; forcing it will only result in clunky writing. Description is a wonderful tool, but don’t let it get in the way of your dialogue and action-focused scenes.
Be aware of who your audience is, their average age and demographic. Don’t use complicated words or technical jargon if it won't make sense to your reader. This being said, don’t be condescending or dumb down your writing; readers will pick up on it. Be very intentional in your word choice.
Read your writing out loud–especially dialogue. If it doesn’t sound right to you, it definitely won't read well to the reader. Pay attention to where you put commas and periods, and when you start a new paragraph. These are the natural places where a reader will pause; make sure their pause will not disrupt their comprehension of the scene.
Be very careful to maintain a stable balance between using a character’s name and their pronouns. This is especially important in scenes with lots of action and multiple characters. You never want your reader to have to re-read a scene over again in order to understand what happened. Make sure to frequently use each character’s name so your audience is never unsure to whom who are referring.
Use more dialogue tags than you think. It can be easy for the reader to get lost in back-and-forth conversations when there are multiple speakers. It never hurts to remind your reader who is speaking. Even in large blocks of dialogue with only one speaker, using dialogue tags can be a good opportunity to clue the reader into any emotion the speaker may be experiencing or any simultaneous action.
Decide before you start writing what verb tense you are using and stick to it. It is easy to slip back and forth between tenses without even noticing, and it is important to be aware of this when re-reading and editing your work. This is another place where reading your writing out loud can be beneficial.
Avoid passive voice, as it can lead to longer, vague sentences that often involve too many prepositional phrases that might hinder the flow of your writing. Active voice allows you to employ strong verbs and give your characters more agency in driving the plot. Active voice also provides more energy to your writing, engaging the reader more than passive voice.
Readability is Visual
Font matters!! There is always great temptation to choose a pretty, swoopy, cursive font or a blocky and sharp font, but it often serves only to detract from the writing itself. Chapter titles or headings are a great place to give in to this inclination and lean into the visual beauty of different fonts. But for the body of your writing, choose a font that is simple and easy on the eyes. You want your reader to be able to move their eyes fluidly from left to right without being tripped up by weird loops or gaps from your font.
Font size is important too, make sure it isn’t too big or too small. Margin width goes hand-in-hand with font decisions, especially if your work is going to be presented in hardcopy form but should be taken into account even for electronic distribution. You don’t want your reader to be overwhelmed by what they see on the page or their screen before they even begin reading.
Paragraphs should not be too long or of uniform length. Longer paragraphs are totally fine, and you should not be afraid of them, but you should not have many of them in a row. Just as sentence length should be varied, it is important to have variety in the length and structure of your paragraphs as well to improve flow. Paragraph lengths are a visual cue to the reader of how long it might take them to read a page or chapter, and how much they need to pay attention to what they are reading for full comprehension.
About the author: Mary Chittle has been an avid reader ever since she was in the first grade, and has more recently discovered a love of writing. She loves fantasy and historical fiction, and is a huge fan of all things Tolkien. She is thrilled to be a part of the Summer 2025 Writer's Games and can't wait to read everyone's amazing work.
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