I was in business school when I wrote the worst thing I've ever written. It was a written assignment for a first-semester class and, when I got my (failing) grade back, the instructor had written, "This was hard to grade."
It was a devastatingly concise critique. My writing was so bad that the person responsible for assigning it a letter grade had a tough time doing even that.
I learned an important lesson that day. Well, a bunch actually. From the rest of the instructor's criticism, I internalized a bunch of helpful tips on how to structure a written piece so that I'd never write anything quite as shitty again.
What's the point?
When I was practicing law in Canada, I never wrote a legal brief, memo, factum, email or anything else without knowing exactly what the point of my document was.
Was I trying to convince a skeptical judge?
Was I trying to educate a more senior lawyer on a specific topic?
Was I trying to persuade opposing counsel on a particular point?
I've endeavored to keep the same philosophy in my copy and content writing, as well as my public, online writing, in my new career.
When I write a story, article, social media post, or anything else, I start — and end — with my main point. I do my best not to bury the lede in the middle of a squishy mess of a story.
I put the point right out front, at the top of my work. Then I expand on it in the middle. Then I repeat it in the conclusion just so my reader doesn't forget it.
I forgot this lesson when I wrote the assignment I mentioned in the introduction to this piece. I didn't know what the point was. I didn't know the reason I was writing what I was writing (because I never really understood the question). And it showed in the finished product.
Give us easy-mode
There are a bunch of ways you can make your story, post, or article easy-to-read.
You can stick to tried-and-true templates and structures for the writing form you're following. For example, if you're writing a personal essay in a blog post, stick with a familiar format for personal narrative essays. One that we're all used to.
You can stick to a simple, chronological order of events. I'm not saying that there isn't a place in the world for complicated flashbacks and flash forwards, but that place probably isn't in your how-to article about planting perennials in the backyard garden.
You can stick to easy-to-understand words that everyone knows. Again, there's a place for five-dollar words. But you better make sure that your readership is cool with them before you start throwing them around all willy-nilly-like.
If you're writing for the web, give us plenty of whitespace. That means lots of line and paragraph breaks. No one likes the wall-o'-text effect.
And, for God's sake, stay away from jargon unless you're writing for a technical audience. And, even then, use it sparingly. No one wants to read a bunch of corporate-speak or legalese.
If you've got the time and energy, give your piece to someone to read. Then skip the inevitable, "What do you think?" question and instead ask, "Was it easy to read?" Ask them to repeat the point back to you to make sure they were able to readily understand the thesis.
Support your claims with citations
Nothing boosts a story's credibility more than honest-to-God, on-point, accurate citations to authoritative sources. If you're making a claim about the world, you better be able to back it up with a quality citation.
I find that nowhere is this more necessary than in all those popular articles dealing with pop psychology. If you want to casually claim that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts or that people are fundamentally cruel you better be able to back it up with some solid meta-studies (and not just a one-off evo-psych riff from 1982).
Make it a story
This one's more for the bloggers and Medium writers among us but it applies to one degree or another to pretty much everyone.
People are primed to respond to stories. From cave paintings to PowerPoint presentations, we're all suckers for characters, plots, themes, morals, lessons, and everything else that comes out of a good yarn.
It doesn't have to be a complicated story. In fact, simpler is probably better. But see if you can, in one way or another, incorporate a character who goes through some shit and learns a lesson at the end of it. Your readers will be more likely to remember what you've written. They'll also be more likely to care about what you've written in the first place.
Wrapping Up
That's about it. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but hopefully you've found a few tips you can apply to your latest story or article. Here's the TLDR:
- Know your thesis well and include it in the beginning, middle, and end
- Make your work easy to read
- Cite your sources and back up your claims with authoritative links
- Include at least some aspects of storytelling in your work to ensure your readers care about what you have to say
I've found these to be critical "must-do's" in my own work, whether I'm writing for Medium, for clients, or for anyone or anywhere else.
PS: I write a free, weekly newsletter called An Untethered Life for working professionals interested in increasing their income and finding fulfillment with online writing. Hope to see you there!