Posts Tagged ‘Writing Tips’

Last month I had the pleasure of taking our newest course, Freewriting for Business, on its maiden voyage. I designed the course with this principle to guide me: by the end of the two days, I wanted participants to see how different writing could be if they relax into it, how enjoyable, delightful, even therapeutic. It didn’t have to be the strangled and strangling experience some people fight against.

Attending the course were six of the most open-minded, open-hearted participants a facilitator could hope for, and I watched them blossom as they progressed through short, playful exercises that I think of as the equivalent of scales on an instrument. They built stories collaboratively, tried ‘automatic’ writing, and crafted postcard stories from groups of ten words. We analyzed characters from classic literature to cultivate creative empathy, a skill used by fiction writers that one participant said would help her be ‘more compassionate’ when writing at work. I did put them through their paces—they hand-wrote pages and pages over the two days—but there was laughter, revelation and loosening up. We started to sound like an orchestra getting ready to play.

I was gratified to learn that they did feel differently toward writing by the end of the two days. They were excited about writing again, their composition muscles limber and ready for action. They felt that writing was something they could do, something that they might even enjoy.

Music to my ears.

Managers play a huge part in the successful transfer of learning. Recently a manager who cares deeply about helping her staff improve their writing skills asked us for ways she can help. Here are some suggestions:

One minute essay. Ask your staff to write a one minute essay describing the main points learned in the course. Writing helps consolidate key points and clarify what you learned.

Ask for the checklists. We provide job aids designed to help writers assess their own drafts and give structured, pointed feedback to their colleagues. It’s also a great coaching tool for managers. Your staff will be able to explain how to use them.

Ask to see their personal action plans. In every course we give, learners have an opportunity to review what they are learning and compile a list of the strategies they want to use in their personal practice. Ask to see this list. It will be a long list, so have your staff articulate three key learning objectives and watch for their progress.

Reinforce the good. Give praise when it’s deserved. Positive feedback is a great confidence builder and it’s good to remember that we can learn as much from hearing about what we’re doing right as from what we’re doing wrong.

Have them teach you something. The best way to learn something really well is to teach it to someone. Ask your staff to explain two or three of the key lessons they learned.

Share really good work. Show your commitment to positive change by trumpeting successes. If someone on your team writes a great email, share it with the team. People love praise. It will make everyone work harder and will set a benchmark for what you’re looking for. It also shows you are serious about improvement.

Give feedback with sensitivity. We know our writing reveals a lot about us, so when you give feedback do it carefully. Point out the positives first, then the problems. When you give your feedback, remember that if a document needs to be restructured or rewritten, if the content is wrong, there’s no point in correcting grammar and punctuation. That’s wasting everyone’s time.

Model great writing yourself. Make sure you are modeling a plain, warm, professional, style yourself. Avoid cliches, the gratuitous use of big words and a wordy style. Instead, use plain language. Not sure what that entails? Ask your staff. They’ll be able to tell you.

If you liked 10 Ways to Improve Your Writing, here are 10 more ways:

11. Don’t be a perfectionist, at least not every time. It’s great to know how to create a perfect document, but doing it every time is a lot of work. Not everything you write NEEDS to be perfect. The main thing is to make sure it’s good enough to achieve your purpose and meet the needs of your reader. Of course, it’s also important to know you CAN make it perfect for the times when you need to.

12. Show the bones of your writing. Your writing is clear when readers can see the shape of your message. There are many ways to reveal this shape—getting to the point, creating a hierarchical structure, writing talking headers, using layout to show how sections relate to each other, and using transitional markers to connect ideas. The more you use these tools to reveal the bones of your message, the easier it is for the reader to grasp your message quickly and easily.

13. Show the muscle of your writing. If bringing the bones to the surface clarifies your message, bringing the muscles to the surface improves the style and readability. Muscular writing is concise, uses strong verbs, is positive, conversational and active. Muscular writing energizes readers and propels them to act.

14. Be transparent. Try not to let anything distract your reader from your message. Distractions can be big things, such as a rambling structure or an offensive tone. It can be little things, such as an ill-chosen font, too many big words, sloppy spacing, and bad grammar or spelling. Transparent writing doesn’t draw attention to itself and lets the reader absorb your message effortlessly.

15. Be precise and concrete. The details make your writing memorable and vivid. Here’s one of my favourite examples from Strunk and White. First, the vague version: “In proportion as the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the regulations of its penal code will be severe.” And the vivid example: “In proportion as men delight in battles, bullfights and combats of gladiators, will they punish by hanging, burning and the rack.”

16. Use a conversational tone, but don’t be conversational. A conversational tone is warm and personal. It captures the sound of your voice. You don’t want to replicate your actual conversation, because that would capture all the ums, ahs, redundancies and hesitations. The best way to create the warmth of your voice is by reading your writing out loud. If you know you’d never say the words in speech, you shouldn’t write them either. Worried you’ll be too chatty? Remember who you are writing to and use the degree of formality you’d use if you were speaking to that person. You’ll find that way you can easily balance warmth, formality and respect.

17. Assume ignorance but not stupidity. Many writers assume too much prior knowledge on the part of the reader. And when they write to a large group of readers, they alienate readers who are unfamiliar with the subject matter. It’s best to assume your readers are ignorant, but not stupid. The readers who are knowledgeable aren’t likely as close to the content as you are, and they appreciate a quick refresher. Readers who know nothing are not alienated and can get up to speed quickly.

18. Make sure important information stands out. Decide what’s most important and help the reader see it by using boldface, isolating it in white space, or using headings, visuals, lists or colour. Just don’t use all these devices at once. Remember that if you try to emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.

19. Use a style guide. In a pinch, make it up, but be consistent. Readers love consistency. Style guides are a great way to be consistent, because they define usage. If your company has, or recommends, a style guide, great! Use it. If you don’t have one, or don’t have time to consult one, make it up. Just be consistent. Not sure if you should spell out numbers from 1 to 10 or 1 to 20? Make an executive decision, be consistent. You’ll fool 90% of your readers. (Okay, I made up that statistic, but it feels right.)

20. Keep your layout simple and elegant. Less is more. Only use as many text elements as you need. If you’re writing a complex document, like technical documentation, start by considering what kinds of information you need. Assign a look to each element and be consistent in how you treat it. For example, the title of every visual should be the same. Every bulleted list should look the same, and every Level 3 Heading should look the same. This gives the reader confidence that text that looks alike functions alike.

Any suggestions to add?

I spent a lot of years in school. I loved that period in my life and spent many happy hours immersed in ideas, books and libraries. I wrote a lot of essays too. In my first year in grad school especially, I remember being super charged with passion for what I was reading, thinking and writing, but I never felt my essays conveyed that passion. They always felt flat to me and I didn’t know why.

Looking for the key to expressing my enthusiasm, I went to the Centre for Academic Writing (where I later worked). There I learned how to tighten my structure and provide a roadmap for my reader. I learned how to clarify my thinking, but my tutor didn’t have a suggestion for how to add life to my essays.

It wasn’t until I did the research for my first business writing course that I learned the secret: be concise, use strong verbs, prefer the active voice, and use plain but vivid language.

Looking back at some of early writing in my old, academic style I found quite a few bloated sentences. Here’s how I’d write them today:

Revisions

The following brief sketch of the history of the NFB is largely drawn from C. Rodney James’s Film as a National Art and from D. B. Jones’s Movies and Memoranda. The medium of Film was first used by the Canadian government as a national instrument to promote trade.

McLean’s report urged that changes be made in the activities of the Bureau, and concluded with the recommendation recommended inviting that Grierson be invited to Canada to make a survey of the situation and to prepare a report including make more specific recommendations.

Grierson’s 1939 report, prepared in 1938, essentially criticized the MPB’s lack of centralized power and purpose.

I think they’re better–more muscular and vigorous. How about you. Do you have any sentences you can cut down to size?

I spent a day recently doing some coaching for one of my favourite clients. I had appointments with eight people. It was a diverse group–from finance to IT, and from junior to senior.  Some write reports to the executive team, and some write brief emails to each other. Some are technical writers, some write letters. Every person I met brought in a sample of their writing, and even though their writing was so different, I found myself saying the same things to each one of them: “Consider your reader—what information will they need? How will they want to see it presented? Why does your reader need this information? How can you present your message in a way that makes it easy for them to take their next step?”

Examples of what I saw at the follow-up session, and how these questions affected their revisions:

An email to a consultant asking a series of questions about a technical process. The first draft was a casual, rambling stream of consciousness, in which the writer asked a question, then adds a couple more that come to mind while he is writing. The fix: revise the opening of the message to explain you have 3 questions about the ABC process, number the questions clearly, and then update the subject line (maybe “Three questions about ABC”) to let the reader know what to expect. The reader then can easily embed the answers into the original message. It takes only a few minutes for the writer to revise, and saves the reader time and frustration.

An email to a supplier about coordinating an event. The email contains three small questions, and confirms another piece of information. Instead of one email to the reader containing everything, write four separate emails. Why? If you separate the different questions, requests and information into separate emails, the reader can respond quickly where possible. If you don’t have ready answers to every question in a multi-issue email, it’s easy to sit on it until you have everything you need. Better to answer what you can quickly. It’s also easier to file and retrieve information that is clearly labeled and not buried in an email with a useless subject line, like “Information” or “Follow up.”

A technical report recommending a change of software to manage a vital business process. The original document is well organized with all the key information a decision maker would need in the Executive Summary. The only problem is it’s very technical and studded with acronyms. The decision makers are the Board Members, who are unfamiliar with your jargon. The solution: assume your readers are ignorant, but not stupid. Avoid using technical language they might not understand, especially acronyms. Using acronyms might save you a few keystrokes and buy you credibility with your colleagues, but they frustrate readers who aren’t familiar with them. The solution: use the acronyms in your draft, then use the Find/Replace function in MS Word to spell them out. Even better, instead of an acronym, use a descriptive term, like the Agreement, or the Enterprise System.

A letter to a lawyer describing your analysis of a problem and the next steps you will take. This writer (a charming guy) had abandoned his earlier legalese style (yay!) but had rebounded to extremely spare prose, thinking the opposite of a legalese style is one that was condensed to the point where it felt dehydrated. The solution: relax, use a conversational style and tell the reader a story—what you did, what you found, and what you have done as a result. Unpack it, expand it, be conversational. The letter is a record, part of a file, and needs to tell its chapter of the story clearly.

Documentation of a change to proprietary software. The changes were listed on the page in separate paragraphs. What was missing was any context—the document needed a title and an introduction, so a reader who picks it up now or in the future knows why and when the changes were made. It also would help to number the changes themselves so they could be scanned quickly and referenced easily.

What impressed me about the day was how different each of the documents I reviewed was from each other. The revisions were different too. What was the same was the thinking process and questions that helped my learners see ways to improve their writing.

Take a look at something you wrote recently. Now put yourself in the place of your reader. Consider for a moment what their prior knowledge is, why they need to read your message, what they will do with it, and how you can best present it to make their job easier. What changes would you make?