You may know people who talk aimlessly, without any sense of purpose in their messages, never getting to a meaningful point. But you might not, since most listeners today don’t think they have time for anything they don’t see as important.
Your readers are as smart as you are.
Do you read every email you receive? Of course not. It has to be someone you know or a topic you care about. Imagine your audience as not interested in your story. Why should you do that? Because it’s your job to make them interested, and if you don’t, you’ll be the unknowing victim of their Delete clicks.
Always be looking for ways to improve.
The best communication gets to the point in the fewest, simplest, yet most vibrant picture-making words possible. Readers won’t know to thank you for your improvement efforts. They’ll just find more pleasure in what you have to say.
Here are a few possibilities:
- Begin sentences with nouns and noun phrases, not “there” or “it,” which are weak.
- Replace negative with positive. Instead of saying what something isn’t, say what it is.
- Use plain, easy-to-understand words, because your simple message will impress your readers, not flowery expressions.
- Avoid indefinite qualifiers like very, really, and absolutely. Words like big, tall, and long don’t transfer your visual image to readers without some comparison that shows how big, how tall, or how long.
- Use humor to make a bitter message taste better.
The odds of finding are much better when you’re looking.
You should treasure the view of other writers who can see what you don’t. Listen to what members of your writers group have to say, and then decide what works for you and what doesn’t. And by helping them with their manuscripts, you’ll have new insights that will make your own writing better.
