John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is most well known as an international relations theorist and a strong advocate of the realist school. He has written several books on international relations including The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, Why Leaders Lie: the truth about lying in international politics and most recently The Great Delusion: liberal dreams and international relations. He has also written numerous articles in academic journals as well op-ed pieces in a diverse range of publications including The New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and the London Review of Books. If you haven’t read his work, you really should.
Clearly Mearsheimer knows a thing or two about writing. I came across the following tips on writing provided by Mearsheimer as part of an online discussion several years ago. (In truth someone recently tweeted Mearsheimer’s comments and because I wanted to include them here, and also because I’m a good scholar, I tracked down the original source which was an online discussion on Reddit several years ago). As part of the discussion which ranged widely across Mearsheimer’s work and current challenges in international relations, one participant asked Mearsheimer how he communicated his ideas so well and what tips he could offer to aspiring political scientists to help them become better writers. Mearsheimer’s response provided a short but extremely valuable summary of the keys to good writing:
I think the keys are to: 1) use simple language and minimize as much as possible the use of jargon; 2) organize your thoughts in outline form before writing and make sure that they fit together, kind of like building blocks; 3) make sure every paragraph has a terrific topic sentence and contains only one core thought; 4) put a short paragraph at the start of each major section of the paper signalling to the reader what will follow; 4) write as if you were bent on telling your story to your mother or father, who do not know much about the subject at hand, but are well-educated and interested to hear what you have to say. In other words, think of yourself as a great communicator, someone who can explain complex ideas to educated and smart people of all sorts. I hope that helps.