Over the past month or so, I read two books that, whilst writing my last article, caused me to rethink some things.
It’s funny, because the two books are completely different, but basically on the same subject, and with the same purpose.
One is Writing to the Point
The Second is “This Book Will Teach You How To Write Better
”
If I haven’t already posted reviews of these on the site, I’ll be sure to in the near future.
Essentially, both are about writing in a more straightforward style.
I don’t know about you readers, but this is something I wish I had have learned years ago.
Yesterday
Yesterday I was writing about having too many ideas. In that article, I talked about getting through your ideas quickly and how to think about projects in a way that meant you got them done. It was rambling and a bit easy read, like I was talking to one of my writer friends in a bar as opposed to writing an article.
Then it hit me; I’d read that this is what Neville Medhora suggested.
I had never thought of it as a means of circling through ideas more quickly though.
Really, if you’re writing for a person with the reading comprehension of six year old, the words are going to flow easily.
This means each project takes a lot less time – and surprisingly, it actually becomes better for it.
Me
I’m a product of the academia system. I like reading and writing. I like obscure theories and dense academic books that are so dusty you can tell you’re the only person that’s read them in the last decade.
I got the expense certificates on my wall by writing in that style. Many commas. Many semi-colons. No fun or humour. No subjects that are actually going to make a difference in people’s lives.
If you read my first articles on this site, or god forbid, some of the first articles I wrote for my earlier website projects, you’ll see that style.
You probably won’t read much of it though.
You’ll tune out.
Now try to imagine reading a romance book in that style. Or a self-help guide. It’s not going to happen.
But imagine trying to write in that style. It takes forever to build a paragraph when you’ve got complex sentences everywhere.
So as writers we have to rein ourselves in.
A lot of writers are the same as above. If you read a lot, your reading comprehension is going to be higher than the average person. If you write to that level, you are going to take longer to write, and you’re going to lose readers.
In short, you’ll be spending more time on a project than you should, and you’ll be losing readers and their money for the privelege.
So a quick way to get more ideas onto paper and to make them more effective is to start writing at an easier level to read.