The Business of Words

I recently sat in on a session where Valerie Khoo from Sydney Writer’s Centre gave a room of bloggers tips on improving their writing.

While Valerie was talking about online writing, the same rules apply when writing anything for your business. Here are her tips:

• Think about who you are writing for – consider your reader’s age, gender, demographic, income level, education level, understanding of the and even give them a name if that helps

• Plan – structure your writing so your reader will have a better reading experience, build credibility through referencing, find extra bits that will be interesting to the reader, go the extra mile to add value.

• Stay active – passive sentences slow the reader, while active sentences help them connect. Bring whoever or whatever is doing the action up the front

• Write without using “I” to see how many different ways you can create words

• Show, don’t tell – think of ways to let the reader draw the conclusion themselves

• Watch your sentence length – keep sentences to 15-20 words. If they run to 30 words or more, consider splitting the sentence in two

• Don’t include everything – what does what you’re writing about mean? Does including a point serve the reader? Have you over-researched? Can you make it tighter? What can you cut?

• Edit – proof read, check grammar and punctuation, read your writing out loud, especially conclusions as they can drift off. Leave your reader feeling satisfied.

So, ready, set, write!