Sanders Says - Making words beg for their life

June 16, 2010

Making words beg for their life

Anyone reading this has one thing in common with me: You write.

Whether you write for a blog, reports for work or articles for publication - writing is becoming a driver of your ability to communicate and succeed. Think about how many words you need to write in the average week to report, inform, persuade, sell or explain.

How much do you study your craft, writing? Because I'm working on my fourth book (Today We Are Rich, March 2011), I'm in writer mode, brushing up on the skillset. Currently, I'm re-reading the fabulous book On Writing Well by William Zinsser. He gives great advice for all non-fiction formats from business to biography to memoir. His central message is that writers must eliminate clutter from their sentences and paragraphs.

He points out that readers are fickle, and if you make them work too hard, their eyes will drift to a writer who's better at his craft. Years ago an editor remarked, "when editing your documents, make every word beg for it's life. Treat them like they cost $1.00 a piece, and that will change the way you write."

One way you can do this is re-read your writings, putting brackets around any words that aren't absolutely critical to the sentences they are a part of. It's OK to bracket entire sentences or paragraphs too. Later review each bracket and expect to strike out half of them, trimming down your work considerably.

Unless you already have word economy down pat, plan on excising a third of your original words in the editing process. You are not trying to get rid of the words that reflect your style, just the ones that are not required.

You don't have to say, "In my opinion, this is a bad idea." Say, "This is a bad idea." (We know it's your opinion). "At this point in time" should be stricken, replaced with "now". Get the idea? Starting a sentence with "It must be pointed out" is also wordy, just make your point.

Zissner's promise is that word economy allows the idea to shine through and keep the reader engaged. No matter what you write, if you're not being read to the end, you probably aren't making a connection.

Posted at 4:40 PM in Business Effectiveness | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)