Manage Your Writing

This week: Predict your reader's attitude

Some writing is like rowing a boat downstream, with the current of your reader's attitude. Some is like rowing upstream, against the current.

This week, before you draft each piece of writing, ask yourself, "How is my reader going to feel about getting this message?" Having an answer to that question will almost guarantee more effective writing.

This week: Pick any one of a hundred ways to improve your writing

The Online Colleges site has published a terrific list of "100 Little Ways You Can Dramatically Improve Your Writing."

This week, scan the list, pick one, follow its link, and try it.

This week: Write a one-minute outline

When many of us were in school, outlining had a lot to do with Roman numerals, Arabic numerals, capital letters, and lower-clase letters. As a result, when someone mentions outlines, we run away fast.

Outlining can be much easier than that. When you're planning a piece of writing, just jot down--in any order--the ideas you want to include. Then take a minute, or less, to put them in the best order for your reader. 

If your ideas are on a computer screen, just drag them around. If they're on scratch paper, just number them:

"Let's see, I'll put this in paragraph 2, this in paragraph 4, this I'll leave out, this in paragraph 1, this also in paragraph 2, and this and this I'll also leave out."

Bingo. You have an outline. And you'll have a more effective message.

This week: Start with purpose

If a coworker interrupts us while we're writing a letter and asks, "What are you doing?" most of us will answer "Writing a letter."

That answer reveals a focus on the written product, not on its purpose. Such product-focused thinking keeps our writing from being as effective as it could be.

This week, when you start each writing job, take a few seconds to think about your purpose—about what effect you want to have on your reader. This week, if a coworker interrupts your writing and asks what you're doing, be prepared to answer (for example), "I'm trying to get this customer to forgive us for a shipping mistake we made."

This week: Make a non-Mind Map

Reader Dwayne Phillips commented on last week's post: 

Before writing, I do a non-Mind Map. It sort of looks like a Mind Map, but it isn't as neat and organized as the Mind Maps I see people "publish." It helps me.

Great point! Like Dwayne, I find Mind Maps helpful. But some books and Web sites on Mind Mapping emphasize neatness and a fairly rigid set of rules. Do try following the rules the first few times you Mind Map. Then do what works for you.

This week, before you write something, try a non-Mind Map.

This week: Make a non-outline

The great twentieth-century philosopher Winnie the Pooh defined organizing as "what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it's not all mixed up."

That's good advice for us writers. But too many of us carry bad memories of teacher-required formal outlining, with its arcane uses of letters and numbers. The solution: write a "non-outline." It's what executive Donald Walton was referring to when he wrote

Even if I'm writing something as brief as a one-page letter, I like to jot down some sort of outline. It may consist of no more than three or four words or phrases: the essence of thought I want to get across and the order in which I intend to build my message.

This week, before you start some piece of writing, try writing a non-outline. Jot down your three or four main points. If you decide they're not in the right order, renumber them.

If you read the Winnie the Pooh's definition again, you'll see why a non-outline will do your readers a great service.

This week: Eliminate COIK

Some technical writers and editors use an acronym, COIK, that stands for "Clear Only If Known." You'll sometimes find that an editor has scribbled "COIK" beside a passage that will be perfectly clear to any reader who already shares the writer's knowledge (and thus doesn't need to read the passage in the first place) but not at all clear to a reader who doesn't share that knowledge.

If the COIK material consists of just a technical term here and there, it can be corrected at the revising stage. However, eliminating COIK material often involves substantial rewriting. For this reason and others, therefore, it's more efficient to avoid COIK material "up front," by making consideration of your audience's knowledge an important part of your planning stage.

This week, before you begin writing each document, think clearly about what your readers already know, and what they don't.

This week: Find facts first

Executive Donald Walton, in his book Are You Communicating, says,

The biggest mistake you can make in a report, letter, proposal, or other important message (and it's made all the time) is to write without first getting and correctly analyzing all the facts. It's the one unforgivable mistake. Your boss or customer can overlook a slip in grammar, but not bad advice that results when factual preparation is sloppy and incomplete.

This week, pay special attention to getting your facts together before you start drafting

This week: Tell a story

Stories have always been important in forming communities and organizations. As The Cluetrain Manifesto reminds us, "Stories play a large part in the success of organizations. With stories, we teach, pass along knowledge of our craft to colleagues, and create a sense of shared mission."

This week find a place, somewhere in the writing you do, to tell a story.

This week: Read and listen more broadly

This week, make it a point to read or listen to at least one piece of communication from a culture other than your own. Pick up an issue of an unfamiliar magazine. Spend a few minutes with a cable channel from another culture or subculture.

With each exposure, you'll expand your repertoire of communication techniques. Not only will you be a better writer for broader audiences, you'll be a better writer, period.