| Am
I the only one who feels the volume of words I'm expected
to assimilate on a daily basis is spiralling out of control?
Radio and TV shout at me constantly. Papers, magazines and
journals thud on the mat, each with a guilt-tag of "paid
for that, must read it." The bin-able junk-mail that
lands alongside hasn't a hope as it can be sent straight for
recycling without a qualm. And that's not to mention the burgeoning
World Wide Web, where there's now said to be more pages than
people on the planet! Or the size of Sunday papers! And is
it just my imagination that people even talk faster than they
used to? Think Sir Winston Churchill and you'll see what I
mean.
So
how do you get your writing noticed in amongst that lot?
Sadly volume of writing doesn't mean quality, but it does
create a level of white noise that makes it difficult for
your audience to concentrate. So it can be seriously hard
work to get an important message read and understood in
the age of information overload.
It's
time to put yourself in your reader's shoes, behind their
desk, with their known or imagined set of distractions,
and come up with the persuasive letter, the report or proposal
that will make some impact. How do you do it?
Learning
to focus on the thinking and planning stages of writing
is a vital step in the process, and one that doesn't depend
on how well you write, or what marks you got for English
at school. This is stuff you can learn and it will make
a very significant difference whether you are writing a
letter of application for a job, a marketing leaflet or
the company annual report.
1.
Think
There is a tendency to wade straight into the writing of
long complex documents without a clear sense of purpose
or audience. Ask a few obvious questions to help clarify
the right approach. What am I trying to achieve? What key
arguments need to be presented? What will be the most attractive
benefits of my proposal to the reader? Sort out this kind
of basic information in your head or in note form first.
At this stage you can ignore the distracting process of
looking up the thesaurus or running your work through the
spell-checker and focus on your ideas.
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Make
sure you have got those unique creative thoughts properly
crystallised before you commit to writing even a first draft.
Remember that pen and paper can be a great aid to thinking;
but if you are scribbling ideas as fast as they come, that's
for your eyes only. It's not the final version!
2.
Plan
Structure is enormously important when it comes to writing
anything longer than a 5-sentence email. Busy people want
to be able to understand what they are reading within an
incredibly short space of time, so organising content and
arguments so that your core message is immediately apparent
becomes essential. A clear table of contents, a fabulous
executive summary and a logical order for the rest of the
document will see you well on the way.
3.
Write
With the thinking and planning in place, there is far less
risk of staring hopelessly at your blank computer screen
when you come to the core activity of stringing the sentences
together. Make decisions at the start about the style, tone
and voice that suit the purpose of your writing. Practice
over a paragraph or two and then be consistent.
What
are the current conventions on style that will make your
report acceptable in the boardroom? Are the casual tones
and sloppy spelling that we use in e-mail transferable to
the posh proposal? Caution is important here, as people
vary widely in their attitude towards a relaxed approach.
If you know your audience, you can choose a style to suit.
Otherwise, the best advice is to write the clearest, most
correct English you can manage. Always check the spelling
and get someone else to read it over for those invisible
typos that you can't spot in your own work.
Short
sentences are less risky than long. Paragraphs can vary
in length, but should be logical. Ask yourself if you could
easily give a paragraph a heading. If you can, you've probably
got it about right. Use bullet points to break up dense
writing.
It
is worth paying particular attention to opening sentences,
summaries, illustrations and lists of key benefits. Try
to work out which elements of your letter or report are
going to be important sources of information for your reader
and focus extra attention to make sure these sections are
accurate, consistent and complete.
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4.
Review
Once you have a draft on paper you have an opportunity to
review your work. Go back to your thinking and planning
stages and ask if you have succeeded in meeting the stated
purpose of the document. It might be a very elegant piece
of writing, but if its off course the effort could still
be wasted.
Remember
to review the content and the structure as well as the words
you've chosen. All too often when you ask someone to review
a piece of writing they'll comment on punctuation and possibly
sentence construction, but fail to ask the core questions
regarding content, structure and style. Are there missing
links in your argument or key information that you've omitted?
It's always harder to identify that kind of missing detail,
than comment on what is already on paper.
Finally,
try and approach what you have written from your reader's
perspective. Have you answered their sarcastic questions?
Have you supplied the right level of background information?
Most importantly, have to
I
have found that the think-plan-write-review pattern holds
good across a whole range of writing, from technical manuals
for computer software to soft-sell mood pieces for marketing
literature. It's a routine that involves a certain time
commitment, but it avoids the twin dangers of writers block
and an end product that is selling apples instead of pears.
With a bit of practice you may even be able to do the thinking
and planning stages at the gym or when you take the dog
out.
People
are sometimes surprised that they can't just write the way
they talk and fail to make allowances for the extra time
involved in planning and structuring a piece of written
material, writing and rewriting until it is fit for the
intended purpose. Without the two-way interaction and immediate
feedback that you get in a conversation, the words have
to work doubly hard to be effective, and hold the readers
interest, right to the last full-stop.
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