Book notes: Everybody Writes, by Ann Handley
Writing Rules: How to Write Better
Good writing can be learned—the way trigonometry or algebra or balancing a balance sheet is a skill most of us can master.
The key to taking your writing muscles from puny to brawny is to write every day.
Realize that you probably already do write every day. You write emails; you post to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram;
“If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot,” Stephen King writes in his book On Writing.
Many of the world's most brilliant writers stressed regular routines and schedules for writing.
So the challenge for companies is to respect their audiences and deliver what the audience needs in a way that's useful, enjoyable, and inspired. The challenge is to also keep it tight, as Tim Washer, who produces video for Cisco, espouses. That means clarity, brevity, and utility.
Brevity has more to do with cutting fat, bloat, and things that indulge the writer and don't respect the reader's time.
Make it clear. Don't make the reader work hard to understand you.
“Start with empathy. Continue with utility. Improve with analysis. Optimize with love.”
Place the Most Important Words (and Ideas) at the Beginning of Each Sentence
12 steps process for longer text:
Goal: What are you trying to achieve?
Reframe: put your reader into it. What's in it for them?
Seek out the data and examples.
Don't discount your own experience; at the same time, don't rely exclusively on it.
“the smart writers I know start out by tapping into their own private stock first,”
Organize.
Some options are a list, a how-to guide, and a client narrative.
Write to one person. Imagine the one person you're helping with this piece of writing.
Produce The Ugly First Draft.
Write as if no one will ever read it.
Walk away.
Rewrite.
Give it a great headline or title.
Have someone edit.
One final look for readability.
Publish, but not without answering one more reader question: what now? What do you want them to do next?
“If I'm really struggling, it's usually not about the writing—it's about the thinking: I just don't really have the story down yet,” Doug Kessler told me. “So more research or groping with the outline can unstick me.
A caveat: some writers—including me—write as a way to figure out what we think.
I'm talking about having a general sense of the key point or direction of the piece, as well as how to relate to the audience, even if that general sense is not fully fleshed out
Andy Crestodina writes an outline of a piece and then makes the main points its headers. Then he fleshes out the outline in a kind of fill-in-the-blank exercise. For him, “great writing isn't written, as much as assembled,”
Recognize that brilliance—or anything close to it—comes on the rewrite.
Good writing serves the reader, not the writer. It isn't self-indulgent. Good writing anticipates the questions that readers might have as they're reading a piece, and it answers them.
Humor comes on the rewrite.
“Good writing (and therefore crafting good experiences) requires us to understand and have empathy for our audience, their situation, their needs and goals,”
Spend time with your customers or prospects.
Understand their habitat.
Be a natural skeptic. A powerful question is, Why?
Ask why they do it. “Never assume that you know the answer to why your readers or the people who use your products do what they do…
Share story, not just stats.
Use a customer-centric POV. Replace I or we with you to shift the focus to the customer's point of view.
Company-centric: We offer accelerated application development.
Customer-centric: Deploy an app to the cloud at lunch hour. And still have time to eat.
Two approaches to self-editing:
Developmental editing, which I call editing by chainsaw. Here's where you look at the big picture.
Line editing, which I call editing by surgical tools. Here's where you look at paragraph and sentence flow, word choice, usage, and so on.
State your key idea as clearly as you can near the start.
Slash anything that feels extraneous—
Make every paragraph earn its keep.
Make every sentence earn its keep.
Move things around. Are things in the right order?
Shed the obvious.
Ditch adverbs unless they are necessary to adjust the meaning.
I might not believe in writer's block, but I do believe in writer's evasion.
Misplaced modifiers and odd word order are among the most common errors I see made by marketers—
Here's another example: Original: Though often misunderstood, scholars know that anarchy does not mean chaos. Corrected: Though often misunderstood, anarchy does not mean chaos, as scholars well know.
‘A Good Lede Invites You to the Party and a Good Kicker Makes You Wish You Could Stay Longer’
Put your reader into the story.
Describe a problem your reader can relate to.
Set a stage.
Ask a question.
Quote a crazy or controversial bit of data.
Tell a story or relay a personal anecdote.
Finish strong, with a call to action (if appropriate) and a sense of completion,
Recast the biggest takeaway of the piece.
Add an element of tonal surprise. “Turn the story around,” suggests Matthew Stibbe. “If you've been formal, go relaxed.
Let others have the last word. If you've interviewed someone for an article or post, consider ending with a direct quote
“Don't tell me that the moon is shining,” wrote Russian playwright and short-story writer Anton Chekhov. “Show me the glint of moon on broken glass.” Show, don't tell
Specific details make content vibrant, and they add a necessary human element that makes your content more relatable.
Align story and strategy. Tell a specific, simple story really well, aligned with a bigger idea and broader strategy.
Use Familiar Yet Surprising Analogies
Thirty million sounds like a lot. But is it? It's about 12 percent of the population (that helps) or just over the total population of Texas (much better).
Instead of: The leaves of the giant pumpkin plant are huge. Try: The pumpkin leaves are the size of trash-can lids.
Ground your data or your text in the familiar yet the surprising, taking it out of the theoretical and into the real and visceral.
Good, pathologically empathic writing strives to explain, to make things a little bit clearer, to make sense of our world—
Don't just tell your readers that you feel something; tell them why you feel it. Don't just say what works; tell them why it works
No one will ever complain that you've made things too simple to understand.
Assume the reader knows nothing. But don't assume the reader is stupid.
Finding the best fit for your message. Do we need more or fewer words? Would a chart or graphic or visual convey an idea more simply?
Design with your words, rather than fitting words into a design.
White space is a prerequisite, not a luxury.
Large chunks of text are formidable and depressing.
Finding a writing buddy can feel like having someone to train and volley with. Together you might brainstorm ideas, give new writing a first read, give feedback, suggest improvements…in short, prod each other to do better work.
Having a buddy by your side is helpful. Having an entire committee on your back? Not so much.
Get sign-off on the bones of the outline, then start writing.
Set clear expectations for how many rounds are acceptable in the approval process.
Seek an OK, not opinions.
The best writing—like the best parts of life, perhaps—is collaborative. It needs a great editor.
Three major types of editors:
Copyeditors/proofreaders,
Substantive editors, who give a piece of writing a higher level read and offer suggestions
Line editors, who comb through a piece to correct grammar, word choice, and paragraph and sentence flow—
The best Web writing isn't necessarily short, but it is simple, with…
Shorter paragraphs with no more than three sentences or six lines
Shorter sentences with no more than 25 word
Straightforward words
Use bulleted or numbered lists.
Highlight key points
Use subheadings to break up text.
Add visual elements,
Use lots of white space
Several readability scoring methods, but the best known is Flesch-Kincaid
The longer the word, sentence, or paragraph, the longer the brain has to postpone comprehending ideas until it can reach a point where all of the words, together, make sense.
I like to end a writing session when things are going well and not when I'm sucking wind, so that the next time I pick up that writing again (to rewrite, edit, or whatever) I have some momentum
Set a Goal Based on Word Count (Not Time)
Deadlines Are the WD-40 of Writing
“Write in a way that comes naturally … Prefer the standard to the offbeat.” In other words, write for real people, using real words.
Avoid Frankenwords—words stitched awkwardly together to create something of a monstrous, ugly, frightening mess.
Avoid words that have additives (many of them have -ize or -ism or -istic fused to the end of them).
Run as far as you can from words pretending to be something they are not, particularly nouns masquerading as verbs or gerunds (workshopping, journaling; leverage; incentivize, bucketize),
Don't Use Weblish (Words You Wouldn't Whisper to Your Sweetheart in the Dark)
Would you say, “Let me ping you on that,” or would you say, “I'll get back to you”?
Passive means that something is being done to something, instead of that something doing the action on its own.
Passive: The video was edited by a guy named Hibachi.
Active: A guy named Hibachi edited the video. Passive: Duduk theme music is rarely featured on podcasts. Active: Podcasts rarely feature duduk theme music.
Use expressive verbs when you can
Instead of: In his anger, he accidentally cut his finger.
Try: In his anger, he accidentally slashed his finger.
An adverb often (but not always) ends in ly—gratuitously
The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
Timid writers, in King's view, feel a need to stuff a sentence with explanation rather than relying on a stronger setup (remember show, don't tell?):
Often you can ditch an adverb if you also ditch a weakling verb in favor of livelier one.
Cliché is an overused simile or metaphor, an unoriginal thought. You already know the clichés of everyday life: a wealthy person who is rolling in money and laughing all the way to the bank.
Avoid clichés
Too often they sacrifice clarity on the altar of sounding professional (with fuzzy thinking, wordiness, conformity, clichés, taking a running start…
Use should have, not should of.
Keep your verb tense consistent
I versus me. If you eliminate the other person's name, does the sentence still make sense? Not cool: Colin went for a walk with Corey and I. Cool: Colin went for a walk with Corey and me.
If you use however to join two independent clauses (think sentences) you'll need to use a semicolon
Can a product or company really see anything? Does it have eyes? No, it doesn't. But you do, so you can see how asinine it is to write that an inanimate object saw something.
In terms of. If you find yourself using in terms of, chances are you're not thinking clearly.
don't use this, that, these, or those—especially at the beginning of a sentence.
If your adverb ends in ly and you're building a compound modifier, don't use a hyphen after the adverb.
Break Some Grammar Rules (like these):
Never start a sentence with and, but, or because.
Avoid sentence fragments. It's perfectly fine to sparingly add sentence fragments for emphasis.
Never split infinitives. There's supposedly a rule that says you can't let anything come between to and its verb.
Don't end a sentence with a preposition.
One big unless: “You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition when the sentence would mean the same thing if you left off the preposition,” Grammar Girl notes. “That means ‘Where are you at?’ is wrong
Never write a paragraph that's a mere one sentence long.
Mondegreen—or a term that results from the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase.
Well-known examples of mondegreens are It doesn't make a difference if we're naked or not (for Bon Jovi's It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not),
A subcategory of the mondegreen is the eggcorn, which is also a mishearing or mutation of a phrase, but usually one that makes sense. Examples might be coming down the pipe (instead of the actual phrase of coming down the pike)
A curated database of eggcorns is located at eggcorns.lascribe.net.
Avoid beginning sentences with words that you'd hear from a pulpit, your parent, or a professor.
Specifically, watch the use of… Don't forget… Never… Avoid… Don't… Remember to…
A compelling brand story is a kind of gift that gives your audience a way to connect with you as one person to another, and to view your business as what it is: a living, breathing entity run by real people offering real value.
Tell How You'll Change the World
Coming up with your bigger story is (relatively) easy, yet telling a true story in an interesting way “turns out to be about as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat,” says the writer Anne Lamott.
So how do you pull compelling stories out of your own organization?
It's true. Make truth the cornerstone of anything you create. It should feature real people, real situations, genuine emotions, and facts.
It's human. Even if you are a company that sells to other companies, focus on how your products or services touch the lives of actual people.
It's original. Your story should offer a new, fresh perspective.
It serves the customer. Your story might be about you, but it should always be told in the context of your customer's life.
It tells a bigger story that's aligned with a long-term business strategy.
Tell that bigger story relentlessly and unwaveringly. Show how you change the world, on a gargantuan scale like Skype (helping human hearts connect with other human hearts) or a smaller scale like Levenfeld Pearlstein (making lawyers real and accessible).
Ask yourself these questions as a starting point to crafting your story: What is unique about our business? What is interesting about how our business was founded? About the founder? What problem is our company trying to solve? What inspired our business?
What aha! moments has our company had? How has our business evolved? How do we feel about our business, our customers, ourselves? What's an unobvious way to tell our story? Can we look to analogy instead of example? (See Rule 19.) What do we consider normal and boring that other folks would think is cool? And most important: relay your vision. How will our company change the world?
Tell the Story Only You Can Tell
Don't Get Hung Up on Whether Something's Been Said Before—Just Say It Better
Your brand voice is simply an expression of your company's personality and point of view.
Your unique voice comes from knowing who you are, and who you are not
Look to Analogy instead of Example
“Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.” So look at what other people or organizations are doing—sometimes, even those outside of business entirely.
“Innovation is often the act of taking something that worked over there and using it over here.
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