Practical tips for writers (1) - Leo Babauta

If you’re like me, you collect lists of tips for writers. My view is: No matter how long I’ve been writing (now 43 years), I can always benefit from reading the thoughtful advice of other writers.

My favorite list is from Leo Babauta, a popular author and blogger. Of Mr. Babauta’s 15 tips, I especially like #1:

1. Read great writers. This may sound obvious, but it has to be said. This is the place to start. If you don’t read great writing, you won’t know how to do it. Everyone starts by learning from the masters, by emulating them, and then through them, you find your own voice. Read a lot. As much as possible. Pay close attention to style and mechanics in addition to content.

I agree that it “may sound obvious” and I agree that “it has to be said.” In my career as a business writer, editor and agency vice president, I have interviewed many writers who have not read great writing since high school. I have even met writers who do almost no reading at all; it would be an understatement to say that their work shows it.

As you probably know by now, I often recommend reading great writing aloud, for at least ten minutes per day. It is probably the most valuable way a writer can spend 10 minutes.

The Takeaway: Read Mr. Babauta’s list of 15 tips for writers. The tips are practical and practicable. Yes, I did notice that he gratuitously switched from third person to second person in the fifth sentence of Tip #1, quoted above. Yes, I noticed that he used the nauseatingly overused word voice. And, yes, I know he is involved in a messy intellectual-property dispute. I am not vouching for his grammar, diction or forbearance. I am only saying that his list is good.

Good jargon and bad jargon

There’s good jargon and there’s bad jargon. The good kind is a “specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group.” Insiders use this language as a form of shorthand.

For example, suppose a physicist is speaking before a group of fellow physicists. The speaker utters the phrase “Schrödinger’s cat.” The phrase refers to a well-known (to physicists) “thought experiment [that] serves to illustrate the bizarreness of quantum mechanics and the mathematics necessary to describe quantum states.”

The physicists in the audience will immediately recognize the phrase and will immediately grasp the familiar (to physicists) concepts behind them. So, in two words, the speaker has expressed perhaps two thousand words of background and has saved a lot of time. This is a good use of jargon.

Keep in mind, this kind of jargon is good only when all the members of the target audience are insiders. If some are not, the speaker or writer is talking over the outsiders’ heads – which is thoughtless and counterproductive.

Bad types of jargon

And there are bad types of jargon. That is, they are bad regardless of the audience. These bad types of jargon include:

“Speech or writing having unusual or pretentious vocabulary, convoluted phrasing, and vague meaning.”

and

“Nonsensical, incoherent, or meaningless talk.”

For example, here’s the opening paragraph from an email solicitation recently sent to business executives in the United States:

“we [sic] are contacting you regarding an international research project that is conducted by the RWTH Aachen University (Germany). The purpose of this research is to investigate how companies can maximize their innovation orientation by aligning their organizational structures to external situations.” (Boldface added.)

On the first page of the survey, the researchers state that they “want to analyze how firms achieve superior innovation orientation [and] if and how a focus on innovation needs helps managers to improve performance outcomes.” (Boldface added.)

The passages in boldface are certainly pretentious and vague. They may also be nonsensical, incoherent or meaningless; we can’t be certain without asking the authors what they were trying to say.

The Takeaway: Feel free to use insider technical jargon when all the members of your audience are members of your trade, profession, specialty or other in-group. With any audience, try to avoid jargon that is pretentious, convoluted, vague, nonsensical, incoherent or meaningless.

Untidy metaphors

Untidy metaphors are metaphors that look, sound and feel unfinished. When you use an untidy metaphor, your reader may not fully understand your point. You waste time – yours and your reader’s.

Example of an untidy metaphor

A published interview quoted a New Zealand politician: “…there are dangers in crossing the road [of genetic modification of food] and there are dangers in not crossing it.” The interviewer wrote: “No specifics, just an untidy metaphor prepared by someone less sharp than himself.”

Example of an untidier metaphor

If a speaker uses an impromptu metaphor, it may be so untidy that it suggests incongruous and confusing tangents.

This possibility is humorously demonstrated in a commercial in which a girl asks her mother what a certain word means. Because it is an adult word, the girl’s mother becomes flustered. She tries to give an age-appropriate answer by constructing a bland metaphor. But while she is constructing the metaphor, her daughter keeps interrupting with innocent clarifying questions that lead to humorous tangents.

The Takeaway: Whenever we create a metaphor, we should think it through, from the reader’s or listener’s point of view. In particular, we should try to foresee any tangents that may distract the reader or listener.

Concise writing is usually clear writing (12) – Russell Banks

Here’s another good example of clear, concise writing. It’s from The Sweet Hereafter,* a novel by Russell Banks (pictured).

When you are writing back-story, one challenge is to concisely provide enough detail to help the reader understand the main narrative. Like Joyce Carol Oates, Russell Banks usually meets this challenge with elegance and grace.

In this brief piece of back-story, a small-town resident describes his father:

Looking back, it seems I spent most of my youth cleaning up my father’s mess and the rest of my life making sure that no one mistook me for him. He was an impractical man, not quite honest, a fellow of grand beginnings and no follow-through, one of those men who present their children and wives with dreams instead of skills, charm in place of discipline, and constant seduction for love and loyalty. When he took off to make a fortune in the oil fields, he left behind a huge hole in the yard that was going to be a swimming pool, a pile of cinder blocks that was going to be a restaurant, a hundred old casement windows that were going to be a greenhouse, a stack of IOUs written to half the people in town, and a promise to return by fall, which no one in town wanted him to keep.

The Takeaway: To improve the clarity of your writing, spend at least ten minutes a day reading aloud from writers who write clearly. You will see, hear and feel the stark contrast between careful, grown-up diction and the careless, infantile diction that besets us every day. If you would like a list of recommended writers and works, please email me at the address shown in my profile. Ask for my “List of Writers to Absorb.” I will respond via email.

*Russell Banks. The Sweet Hereafter. Paperback. HarperPerennial, 1992, pages 63f.

David Ogilvy on how to write with empathy

Here’s a famous passage on how to write with empathy, from the “The Father of Advertising,” David Ogilvy (1911-1999). The passage appears in his 1963 classic, Confessions of an Advertising Man.* It begins with a simple, powerful technique for increasing your empathy:

When you sit down to write your body copy, pretend that you are talking to the woman on your right at a dinner party. She has asked you, “I am thinking of buying a new car. Which would you recommend?” Write your copy as if you were answering that question.

(1) Don’t beat about the bush – go straight to the point. Avoid analogies of the “just as, so too” variety. Dr. Gallup [bio] has demonstrated that these two-stage arguments are generally misunderstood.

(2) Avoid superlatives, generalizations, and platitudes. Be specific and factual. Be enthusiastic, friendly, and memorable. Don’t be a bore. Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.

Although Mr. Ogilvy’s advice was intended specifically for advertising copywriters, it is useful to anyone who is writing to persuade.

The Takeaway: When writing to persuade, write as you would speak to an interested, intelligent stranger.

Previous posts that involve empathy:
Avoid being too academic – even if you’re an academic
If you want to build trust, don’t use jargon
Readers can't help judging you by your writing
“The Gobbledygook Manifesto,” by David Meerman Scott
When a reader says your writing is not clear
Empathy for the non-technical reader
Writing can make or break the sale
Empathy always matters – sometimes a lot
The greatest error: failure to empathize

*David Ogilvy. Confessions of an Advertising Man. Paperback. Atheneum, 1988, Page 108.