William Higgins, author of ?Your Road to Damascus? is my guest today! Welcome William!
1)?? It?s not just about putting words on the page.
Anyone can put words on paper, or on a blog, or post them on various social media sites. It takes work to craft a message that is clearly understood by the reader.
When you write it is important to have an objective. What do you want the reader to get from reading your message? What do you want them to know, feel, do in response to what you are telling the? If you can?t explain this, you?re not yet ready to write.
Once you have your objectives defined, you must decide the logical, chronological, or sequential way to present them. Don?t do what they do in the sports columns of the local newspaper; start with the end of the game and then randomly review what happened during the game. Start at the beginning and proceed to the end.
Then you also need to determine what the best way is for you to get the message across. Will you use allegory, metaphors, examples, life-like stories, or some other figure of speech to communicate? Will you use your own experiences? Will you use the experience of others, or will you make up fictitious examples to communicate?
You may also need to have a style guide. If you are writing a rather lengthy, complex article or book with numerous titles, headings, sub-headings, and worksheet pages, put together a guide that will ensure that all entries that are supposed to be at equal levels are formatted the same. You will need font style, size of font, character formatting and however you decide to format them.
Before you begin to put your message on paper, or on your hard drive, you also need to chunk your content. Whether you?re writing a story, an article, a blog, or a book, you need to divide it into bite-size chunks the reader can digest. This will make it easier for you to flow from one concept to the next and build in appropriate transitions. Without this chunking your message is one long flowing stream that may overwhelm the reader.
Once you have all this, you?re ready to begin to weave it all together to form your narrative. And that?s where the fun begins!
2)?? Others see things differently.
What you see as abundantly and crystal clear others may see as a fog. What you see as a clear flowing stream others may see as a muddy river.
Ask for feedback. Recruit friends, family, neighbors and acquaintances to be your reviewers and give you feedback on you message. Don?t tell them what you are trying to say in your writing, ask them what they hear you saying. This will help you see if what you wanted to say, and what they heard (read) you say were the same thing.
Don?t challenge them when they give you feedback. Don?t indicate they are so wrong in what they read. Don?t tell them it?s so clear and they?re just missing it. They read what they read, and it?s because of who they are and what has gone in their lives. We all read in the context of our own being, and we can?t get away from that. That?s why it is so important to have numerous people giving you feedback.
With that feedback you can rewrite your message using different words, examples, stories. You don?t have to change or water down what you are saying, but you may want to change the way you are saying it.
3)?? Make use of professional experts.
From the cover of a book, to the interior layout, to copyediting, a writer that doesn?t take advantage of those with professional expertise will not produce a finished product as good as it could be.
You have a story to tell. Let others help you tell your story in such a way that it appeals to others. Book covers, interior layout, few typos will all have an impact on the reader.
Someone has said the most important part of a book is the cover. If a reader is not attracted by the cover, they will never get to the message. You?re probably not a cover designer. Hire someone, or recruit a friend, to do that for you. When I wrote my book, I had a cover pretty well all designed, and I thought it was pretty cool. But it really didn?t say anything. The cover designer I used asked me that very question, and then suggested an alternative that really said what my book was about. I?m so glad I chose to spend the money on her services, it was one of the best investments I could have made.
My book went from having a ho-hum cover, to an eye-catching cover that attracts the reader?s attention and draws them in with the underlying message spelled out in graphical form.
4)?? ?Spell check is a writer?s best friend.
Whether you typed in your narrative, hired someone to do it, or had a friend do it for you. They are not perfect. we all make mistakes, and we don?t catch all of our mistakes.
I had more than eight people look at portions of my book. No one caught all of the mistakes.
I was validating the final PDF version of the book returned from my interior layout consultant and thought I should do a spell check of the Word version while I was at it. Lo and behold, turns out I had forgotten to do this before sending it to layout. I had reviewers watch for typos et al, but nothing beats spell check. I found almost 100 misspellings that could have been easily fixed.
Even so, it?s good that I found them and not the reader. There are few things that irk readers, and give the feeling of unprofessionalism, than numerous typos and grammatical miscues. Rather, as you write a section, take time to run a spell and grammar check for it will also tell you what sentences are passive, fragments, and more. You can easily fix them at that point, before they get imbedded in your mind at least.
Make use of spell check. It?s free after all!
5)?? ?Short is sweet.
There are many readers that just don?t like to read, men especially. If you can get your message across in 5 words instead of 20, use the 5. Listen to others when they say you should shorten your writing, they mean it.
Take the time to do it as you are writing. It?s much more difficult after you have gotten everything down. It?s like cutting a beloved child out of your will! You have birthed that baby. You have nourished them, and you just can?t cut them out!
But other people don?t look at your ?kids? the way you do. They will just see a lot of words, and will get bogged down in the details. Give them the message, but hit them with it, don?t pound them over and over again.
After you have written a section, take a few minutes to reread it and ask yourself if you could say the same thing with fewer words.
The first draft of my book, which is lengthy to begin with because of all that needed to be covered, was over 360 pages and 180,000 words. I had several people telling me I needed to trim it down. I didn?t want to. I liked each and every word. But I took their advice and was able to trim almost 40,000 words and about 40 pages. That took work, and I wrestled with what to take out and what to leave in. But it was worth it and I ended up with a more readable product.
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- Interview with William ?Bertie? MacFarland, author of ?Back Channel: The Kennedy Years?
- Interview with Children?s Book Author Cheryl Malandrinos: ?Writing for children is no different than writing for adults?
- What was the best road trip you ever took? Interview with Jennifer Allee + Giveaway!
- 5 Things You Should Know About Writing Fiction by Khanh Ha, author of ?Flesh?
- Interview with Science Fiction Author Valmore Daniels: ?When I?m writing, I?m fully absorbed in the world I?ve created?
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