Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello everyone. My name is Shani Roger and
I'd like to welcome you to the secret source
of great writing. Now for those of you
who don't know me, I've been a journalist for
more than 20 years and was for some years a senior editor
at The Wall Street Journal. I've also written for
many other top newspapers and news organizations
including the Economist, Bloomberg News, dow Jones, and the Financial Times. I've learned a lot
about composing, highly polished writing consumed regularly by millions of people. I'm going to share
the secrets of writing to an
exceptional standard. The principles here
will help you to write better whether you're
a consultant of some kind of marketer or a salesperson or
blogger and author, or a journalist, or
even a college student. That's because you're
going to learn how editors and
writers on some of the most well-known
newspapers in the world put magic
instead of writing using techniques that hardly
anyone outside of the journalistic world knows about the types of
journalists that in fact, I've taught writing
to as part of my role as a writing coach. Now I've spent my years
as a journalist trying to come up with a really
powerful formula and perspective that could
help people outside the journalism
profession to rise to the top of the steep learning
curve of great writing. In this course, you're
going to find that formula. And it basically boils down to for really powerful concepts, simplicity, clarity,
elegance, and evocativeness. If you knew just
how to work with those four ingredients in
your writing is pretty much all you need to transform yourself into an
exceptional writer. Simplicity is the ingredient
that brings lightness, pace and punching
us to your writing, setting it apart
from all the heavy, long-winded prose that
we see everywhere. And it's so depressing to read. Clarity is the ingredient
that brings sharpness, brightness, and
focus to your ideas. Elegance is a quality
that brings order, float and poised to your writing through things
like structure and rhythm. And evocativeness
is the ingredient that makes your writing
stimulating by doing things like changing up
sentence structure and adding colorful words that fire
up a reader's imagination. So why is having such profound
writing skills important? Well, if you're looking
to stand out in terms of your communication skills in whatever field you're
in, sales, marketing, consultancy or anything else, euglena gain a clear
advantage by knowing how top editors on magazines like The Economist craft their prose. The techniques in this course will empower you to write with a kind of style and flare that's rarely seen in the
business world. And that therefore will
easily be noticed by others. And all. The aim of this
course is to get you to where you can do
that effortlessly by using the techniques I spent two decades of my
life perfecting. So wherever you are and with whatever ambition
you've arrived here, I'd like to give you a
very warm welcome and hope I'll get to see
you on the other side.
2. Why Write Better?: Hi, guys. My name
is Shani Rider, and I'd like to welcome you to this short introduction to
my complete writing system, which is designed
to help you write with exactly the style
and flare of some of the top writers and editors on newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and
the economist. Such journalists know a
bunch of cool tricks, techniques and tactics
that make their writing really stand out massively
from most other people. And I've spent the
last two decades as a journalist and have written for both of those publications, as well as for many other
top news organizations, including Dow Jones,
Bloomberg News, and also the Financial Times. I've also trained reporters and editors at the
Wall Street Journal, helping them to
improve their writing, which is read by
millions of people, and I did that training across
a lot of the Asia bureaus. Now, whether you're
a consultant, a marketer, a salesperson, a blogger, a journalist, or a college student, these techniques are going to help you to raise
your writing to an immaculate standard
that your readers will instantly know
and appreciate. They'll work for blogs, books, and general business writing equally well as for journalism. And how do I know this What
I'm going to give you here is the basic framework that I
teach in my flagship course, which has tens of thousands
of satisfied students. And before we get to that, I want to just
explain to you why I think it's useful to learn
how to write better. Well, are you looking
to stand out more as an accomplished writer and
communicator in your field, whether that's in sales, marketing, consultancy,
or anything else? In that case, what kind of advantage do you think you
might gain if you could write to the standard
of top editors on magazines like the economist
and the Wall Street Journal? Wouldn't that be useful
for your profile at work and for things like
your career progress? Now, perhaps you own
your own business. If that's the case,
do you reckon that business that has communicates in a really,
really slick way, whose written material
zs professionalism is going to have
better marketing copy, better sales e mails, communication with clients, and a better converting website? Or maybe you want to
position yourself as an expert or authority
on a particular subject. That means promoting yourself or your services through things
like content marketing, say by writing authoritative
articles and posting them in places like
LinkedIn and Facebook. If so, how much of a
better chance would you have of going viral
with such articles if your writing is wrapped up in highly professional
writing that reads as beautifully as
an article that you might read in an
established newspaper. Finally, you may be
someone who wants to become a writer
by profession, maybe a full time blogger or an author of best selling books. If so, these advanced writing skills will
help you to stand out massively from all the noise that's out there
on the Internet, because strong, sharp, crisp writing is a highly
rare commodity, especially on the Internet. Now, the aim of
this course really is to start you on a journey, the end point of
which is a place where you can write
to a top standard effortlessly using advanced
writing techniques that I've spent two decades
of my life perfecting. So whoever you are and with whatever ambition
you've arrived here, I'd like to give you
a very warm welcome and express my hope
that you'll get a huge awakening from the
material in this course. Okay.
3. The Secret Sauce of Flair: Now, when I graduated
from college, more than 20 years ago now, I was convinced that I
was a brilliant writer. Now, I usually gotten good grades in my
writing assignments, and tutors had also often
praised my writing style. And then I became a journalist. And that was when I realized
that I was nowhere near as good a writer as I had
presumed myself to be. See, editors on good news
publications are ruthless. They would hack away at my
impulsive use of jargon, my cliches, official words. They'd strip my articles bare of all bloated and hot
airfield sentences. They'd move my points
around so that they flowed in a much nicer way. And by the end, my stories were really unrecognizable
as my own work. But I couldn't deny as much as that hurt my
ego that they were always ended up looking much better than when
I'd submitted them. And a dance type better than the writing in books that I'd
read in school and college. Sometimes those articles
would end up reading like beautiful pieces of music
more than anything else. I came to realize that there was writing and there was writing. Gradually, it became clear to me that editors in top
news organizations, particularly knew
heaps of tricks and tactics to make their
writing sparkle. And the people outside
the profession really had no idea about
those techniques. And that was how as
a Newbie reporter, I became aware of what I call the gap between
how good a writer I thought I was and how
good it's possible to be. I set about trying to learn their methods, and
20 years later, I came up with a formula
that allows people like you to easily
learn their techniques. And that's how the secret
source came about. The secret source is made up
of just four ingredients, and I'm going to reveal them to you through the course
of these lectures.
4. The Four Crucial Ingredients: You're going to see that you can become an exceptional writer by applying just four basic
ingredients to your writing. In fact, just knowing what
those four ingredients are is going to take your writing to another
level almost immediately. Here are those ingredients,
which I want you to burn into your consciousness because
they are really so important, simplicity, clarity,
elegance and evocativeness. Did you get that?
Simplicity, clarity, elegance and evocativeness. I call this the
secret source because those four ingredients
are really all you need in order to turn yourself into an outstanding
writer of blogs, books, and any type of
business correspondence. So let's start with simplicity. Accomplished editors
and writers use the idea of simplicity
to bring lightness and punchiness to their writing because it helps
to remove all of the unnecessary fluff and
complication from their prose. After you learn some key
simplicity techniques, your writing will no
longer be slow and heavy. It will be lean and mean. Now, clarity is the second ingredient of the secret source, and you're going
to learn here in this section how to make
your writing crisp, sharp, and focused so that it expresses your
meaning brilliantly. The third ingredient in the
secret source is elegance. Now, few people understand elegance when it
comes to writing. But in this course, you're
going to see the wonders that order and flow can
do for your writing. Finally, I'll reveal to you the ingredient of evocativeness, the quality that
makes your writing engaging and captivating. When you apply just these four ingredients
to your writing, your prose will immediately
become concise, sharp, graceful and stimulating.
5. How I Discovered the Sauce: Now, while working as an editor for the Wall
Street Journal, I noticed something
interesting about the way that I edited articles. No matter how much time I
spent editing an article, I'd only end up making four
types of changes to it. One, I'd make the
writing more simple. Two, I'd make the writing. Tree, I'd make the
writing more elegant, I'd make the writing evocative. Now, I'd sometimes make hundreds
of tweaks to an article. But each change
ultimately fell into one or more of those
four basic categories. Gradually, it became obvious
to me why that would be. Simplicity, clarity, elegance,
and evocativeness are the four main qualities that give writing a
feeling of quality. And just watch how those four
ingredients can transform even the most basic sentence into something more
slick and polished. It was indicated to
the president by his chief advisor that it
should be attempted to formulate a decision to act at the earliest opportunity in the best interests of
circumventing what might otherwise result in the country flowing
into embarking on a prolonged extended and exorbitant military
conflagration. Was that enjoyable to
read? Of course not. And that's because it lacks those four vital ingredients
I told you about. To start with, I want
you to pause this and use those four ingredients,
simplicity, clarity, elegance and evocativeness,
to inform you in making that sentence just
sound better than it is. Okay? Well, here's
one way to do it. The president's chief
adviser urged him to act quickly to avert
a long, costly war. Is that better than the
original? Yes, of course, it is. So I hope you're beginning to
see what a powerful formula this secret source
is even when it's applied to a single sentence. Now, to do that, I've only used just a fraction
of the simplicity clarity, elegance and evocativeness
techniques that the best editors have in
their writing tool kits. So imagine what
the secret source could do for an entire piece of writing with all the
different features that are there to use. So before going on,
here's a brief summary of the role that each ingredient
in the secret source plays. Simplicity makes writing punchy, Clarity makes writing click
and easy to understand. Elegance makes writing flowing, and evocativeness makes
writing stimulating. Truly, there isn't much
else you need other than those four ingredients to make
your writing exceptional.
6. The Power of Simplicity: At school and at college, we often learn to write in a long winded and
convoluted way. It happens because
that's the sort of writing that we're used
to seeing in textbooks, which are typically
dreary and boring to read because they're
so formal and official. Now, as a result,
most people write in a needlessly flowery and
painfully long winded way. Now, having a wide
choice of words is great for expressing
your thoughts precisely, so you should definitely work on improving your
vocabulary all the time. But please don't assume
that using fancy, official and convoluted
language for its own sake makes you
sound intelligent. Usually, using excessively
formal words and complicated sentences just
makes you seem pretentious. All you need to do is start applying simplicity
to your writing, and it will help it
easily to stand out. The best way to
make your writing more simple is by stripping out needlessly fancy language and cutting down excess
fat from your prose. Your writing becomes more sophisticated when
you can express your thoughts even complex ones in the simplest possible way, while, of course, not
dumbing down your ideas. Be ruthless with your own copy. Get your ego out the way and ask yourself honestly
with each sentence, whether a simple idea
is being expressed in a needlessly complicated
or flowery way. I'm going to give
you three tactics now that you can start applying immediately to boost the
simplicity of your writing. First one, use
familiar language. Second, use as few words as
possible to express ideas. Third, uncomplicate your ideas. Let's start with
familiar language. Words with an official ring like comments, exhibit and utilize. More often than not will
weaken your writing. Journalists call such
writing officials. It's usually better to replace such words with the simpler
equivalents like start, show, and use,
which are shorter, less pretentious and
generally have more impact. Imagine a cover letter for a job application that
ends with this sentence. I shall be pleased to invoke, facilitate and formalize
an acquaintance with you. Should you deem my extensive and considerable experience
to be appreciably worthwhile to your company and its long term trajectory
at this moment in time. It has the appearance of
being grave and weighty, but really it's as pretentious
as hell, isn't it? I try to use familiar language
to make the idea sound less bureaucratic.
Okay, how about this? Now, by all means, use
longer words that are more precise or more evocative
for your purposes. Just don't go for
excessive formality, believing that you're coming
across as more smart. Okay, so the second idea,
express ideas economically. You may be surprised how many
words can be deleted from a sentence without losing
any of the intended meaning. See, what does this
sentence really mean? I'm of the opinion that my domestic feeline companion has adorable characteristics. That's right. My cat is cute. The journalist Harold Evans once invited readers to imagine a sign above a fish Mongers that reads fresh fish sold here. He asked, which of
those words could be deleted without any trouble
and pause and have a think. Okay. Well, here is unnecessary because after
all, you are there. Sold isn't strictly necessary as nobody assumes fish are going to be given
away for free, right? Fresh maybe isn't
required either, since the opposite
would be stale fish and who would advertise
selling stale fish. Finally, if you're standing close enough to read the sign, then you're probably likely to be able to smell
the fish anyway. Now, that's really
a humorous exercise not to be taken too literally. Of course, for
marketing purposes, a fishmongers sign is essential. But it just goes to show
how much you can cut away when you start thinking deeply about every word
that you're using. When you cut away unnecessary
words from your sentences, you start to give
them more power. They become punchy instead
of slow and heavy. So the third idea is to uncomplicate thoughts
as much as possible. Always play with ideas
in a sentence to try to get them down to
their simplest form. And here's one example
I was shown on a writing course that
I once attended. The notion that a competitive
workplace environment is commensurate with
superior performance is at best dubious. The context of a sentence
like that could make a difference to how you
interpret and edit it. But for now, just
try bringing out the basic idea more
straightforwardly. Okay, here's one
possible solution. Okay. Now, the economist Paul Krugman asked readers
once to consider whether this complicated sentence
could be expressed more simply an economic view that has unfortunately retained
considerable influence, possibly because it has a political appeal
to some parties, despite extensive
empirical evidence that appears to refute
the proposition. He proposed replacing
all that with the simpler term a zombie idea. Now, that may be an
oversimplification, but it helps to illustrate
the huge distance one can travel from complexity
to simplicity. Okay.
7. Simplicity Exercises: Try to make these sentences
simpler and shorter using plain instead of
stuffy or formal language. The meeting will recommence in 30 minutes once participants have finalized their
consumption of hot beverages. How about this? The
meeting will start after a half hour coffee
break. And this one. We would like you
to utilize all of your resources to
facilitate and participate in a strategic dialogue among
members of your team and to strategize ways of finding
common ground between them. Well, how about
saying this instead. Please encourage your
team to get along. And this one with horribly
bureaucratic language that the British writer George Orwell invented to make
a similar point? Objective considerations
of contemporary phenomenon compel the conclusion
that success or failure in competitive
activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate
with innate capacity, but that a considerable
element of the unpredictable must invariably
be taken into account. Have a go at that. Could you perhaps say this? Okay. And now, this one,
the company said it would commence its new
bonus scheme this year, exhibiting its strong
commitment to staff. Okay. How about this? The company
said it would start its new bonus scheme this year showing its strong
commitment to staff. And this one. The manner in which he spoke to me
was unacceptable. That's right. The way he
spoke to me was unacceptable. And it's imperative that we conceptualize a way forward
that everyone can agree upon. Yes, it's important we find a way forward
everyone can agree on. Okay
8. The Power of Clarity: Okay. Clarity is the second key ingredient
of great writing. Have you ever read something that leaves you
scratching your head? I know I certainly have. Before I became a journalist, I used to think that this
happened because I wasn't smart enough to understand
the writer's point. After I became an editor, I realized it's seldom the reader's fault for not
understanding something. It's almost always the
writer's fault for not expressing things
clearly enough. Now, editors often have
the challenge of turning the most complex and
unwieldy sentences into something more
easily comprehensible, hopefully, without
sacrificing any of the writer's meaning. And in my experience,
the truth is that almost anything can
be expressed in a straightforward way that other reasonably intelligent
human beings can understand. Now, here are some
of the main ways that you can make your
writing more clear. The first thing is to avoid
what I call curly sentences. Sometimes we can just be too lazy to explain things clearly, and we leave sentences there that even when they don't
express our thoughts very well, you know, we don't do
anything about it. And then we put our
writing out they're hoping that someone will figure
out exactly what we mean. Now, you can mark
yourself out as a writer by being
committed to making your writing as accessible to as many likely
readers as possible. And that's because most people
who write truly don't take the trouble to make their ideas really crisp and really sharp. Notice how difficult it is
to get your head around this complicated sentence
about a particular country. While a four out
of five chance of avoiding recession doesn't
sound too alarming, it is notable that this is the highest probability in the post war period that didn't result in a subsequent recession outside of the global
financial crisis. Now, to be fair to the writer, I'm taking this out of context. But the idea is still so curly, that it's almost impossible to get it the first time around. And that's why I
advise you to shun this sort of complex
sentence construction and aim to untangle Kury ideas to enable
faster comprehension. This would be my best guess of what the writer
is trying to say. Since World War two, the
country has always gone into recession when the probability of doing so was
greater than 20%, except during the global
financial crisis. Now, I've made it less
Kury by getting rid of some of the negatively
phrased ideas, losing some of the filler words, and turning the negatively
expressed fraction into a positively
phrased percentage. I'm still not
entirely sure whether my interpretation
is correct, though. The second thing is
to shun jargon words like value added solutions, stakeholders and
medium term outlook. They're vague, and therefore, they don't carry your
meaning across very well. So they are another
obstacle to clarity. Yet, jargon remains very common, especially in business writing. Now, which is clearer,
this Jargon Laden centers. We are the market
leading service provider in the entertainment space, offering state of the art
value added solutions to stakeholders
around the globe. Or this version of it. We are the world's biggest
cinema chain? That's right. The version without
all that hazy jargon in it is a lot better. The third thing to do for
clarity is to avoid ambiguity. And one of the biggest things
that stand in the way of clarity is ambiguity
in your writing. Business writing is
often littered with it. So be ruthless and
strive to erasee any trace of ambiguity
from your own writing. Now, just to make sure you
understand this concept, can you spot the ambiguity in this council sign that
was spotted in a park. If your dog does a poo, please put it in the litter bin. That's right. Is it the poo or the dog that should
go in the litter Bin? And where is the ambiguity
in this sentence? Trico bought starfish last year. Since then, the company has
failed to report a profit. That's right. Which company
failed to report a profit? Trico or Starfish. How would you fix the ambiguity if you knew that
the company that failed to report a profit
was actually starfish? We're here are a few ways. Trico bought Starfish last year. Since then, Starfish has
failed to report a profit. That's the kind of
straightforward way. Or if you didn't want to repeat the word Starfish,
you could say, Trico bought Starfish
last year since then, the acquired company has
failed to report a profit. Or Trico bought
starfish last year. Since then, the subsidiary has
failed to report a profit. In each case, it's making clear which company has
failed to report a profit. Now, the fourth
thing, punctuation, misplaced punctuation
often hurts clarity. The book eats,
shoots, and leaves, calls attention to the dramatic difference
that misplacing a mere comma can make to the
meaning of a sentence. Okay. And compare this. The panda eats shoots and leaves as a
description of what a panda eats. Compare that with this
more sinister version, which has a comma in it. The panda eats,
shoots and leaves, a very different meaning, right? Consider the huge
difference in meaning here. Did you run over my friend? And did you run over my
friend without the com. There are very two different
sentiments, right?
9. Clarity Exercises: Okay, so try to remove the
ambiguity from this sentence. The rivalry between
John Smith and Peter Jones has intensified
since he was promoted. How would you write
that if you knew that John Smith was the
person who was promoted? Okay? Here's one solution. Since John Smith was promoted, his rivalry with Peter Jones has intensified. Now try this one. The friendship between
Leonard and Mark has never been the same
since he left town. Let's say you know Leonard
is the one who left town and that Leonard
is a feisty lawyer. How could you fix the ambiguity? Yeah, you could
say the friendship between Leonard and Mark has never been the same since
the feisty lawyer left town. Now, write this abstract
and curly sentence in a more straightforward way that makes its meaning clearer. In the light of the
extent, scale, range, and immeasurable complexity of the uncertainties that persist
on the economic front, we conclude having evaluated the country's mid to
long term prospects that multifarious scenarios
could yet unfold. It's a tough one to interpret, but maybe you've got
something like this. Maybe you've got
something similar. Now, remove the jargon
from these sentences. After two years of strategizing, we have at last finalized a new payment system for stakeholders who
frequent our stores. Well, how about after
two years of planning, we have finally created
a new payment system for our customers.
10. The Power of Elegance: Now one of the most
overlooked aspects of good writing is elegance, the quality that makes
writing flow well. There are two ways to make
your prose flow better. First, you can add rhythm
to your sentences. And second, you can add elegance to the structure
of your writing. Now. The first thing is
give sentences rhythm. Develop a feel for when
a sentence seems too long or short compared with
others that are nearby. You'll know because
your writing will feel clumsy when
you read it back. Perhaps treat the whole piece
as a musical composition, looking for whether the word
sound melodious together and whether a string of sentences
feels too monotonous. Consider whether a
sentence goes on for too long because it has
too many ideas in it. And if it does try
splitting it into two sentences and notice
if the rhythm improves. Or ask whether you are with its one syllable makes a particular sentence
flow better than saying you are recognized
when you're repeating the same structure to the point of dullness
in your sentences. Like this, frills airways
reported record profit. The airline said it was
pleased with the result. Frills is planning to increase
the number of roots it flies internationally to
help boost future earnings. The same subject verb
pattern repeated endlessly can become tiresome. So how could you improve that? Well, how about this? Frills airways
reported record profit and said it was pleased
with the result. To help lift future earnings, the airline said it
was planning to boost the number of roots
it flies globally. Now sensitivity to writing with rhythm takes
time to develop. And just as with something
like dancing is hard to teach, start by trying to spot it
in other people's writing. Now Martin Luther King's famous, I Have a Dream speech contains strong elements of rhythm in it. I have a dream that one day
on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former
slaves and the sons of former slave owners
will be able to sit down together at a
table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering with
the heat of injustice and oppression will be transformed into an oasis of
freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four
children will one day live in a nation where
they will not be judged by the color
of their skin, but by the content
of their character. Now, notice the blocks
of time that are there in the way it's written in order to create some
sense of poetry. Ex US President Barack
Obama's speech writers also knew how to make
word sound musical. Take this example. We should follow the example
of a police officer named Brian Murphy when
a gunman opened fire on a Sikh
temple in Wisconsin, Brian was the first to arrive. He didn't consider
his own safety. He fought back until help arrived and ordered his
fellow officers to protect the safety of the
Americans worshiping inside even as he lay bleeding
from 12 bullet wounds. When asked how he did that, Brian said That's just
the way we're made. That's just the way we made. We may do different
jobs and wear different uniforms and hold different views than
the person beside us. But as Americans, we all share the same proud title
we are citizens. Now to see the contrast, tried to read this
sentence in a way that sounds poetic and I'll warn
you, it's very difficult. Now making ideas flow well is the second
part of elegance. And a good writer
makes sure that the ideas flow forward in their writing in an elegant way. Rather than stating
just one relevant point after another in a random way, they compose the ideas in a way that really hanged
together beautifully. And that's what
people often mean when they talk about structure, even in your blog or
business running, Think of your pieces
containing points that can be organized into sections or
bigger blocks of ideas, and then arrange those sections in the most elegant way to create a feeling of flow
between each block. When you do this,
you may feel your writing take on a gracefulness
that you never realized. Possible. It's possible with
something even as basic as a cover letter for
a job application. Would this be an
elegant ordering of the information in
your cover letter? First, Here's my
background and experience. Next, Here's what I'm
seeking an interview. Next. This is the job that
I'm applying for. And next, why I'm
interested in that job. Now, I hope you can see
that that's probably not the best or most elegant
order for your narrative.
11. Elegance Exercises: So try to turn this into a more elegant composition
in terms of rhythm. The reason that I
maintain that Mr. Davis is not exactly
suitable for the job that he recently
applied for is that his temperament is lacking
in some important respects. And in this regard, Mr. Davis would need to implement
some major changes to his character before we would reconsider an
application from him. Pretty inelegant right? Now, here's one way which
may not be perfect, but it has a better sense of
timing than the original. Mr. Davis isn't suited to
the job he applied for as his temperament has
some major flaws unless his character changes, we won't can reconsider
his application. Now remember the
inelegant cover letter that we looked at before, which had this order. Will try and turn
it round to make the structure more elegant by moving the blocks
of ideas around. How would we make it read? Okay? Now there's no wrong
or right answer. But here's how I might do it. Won the job I'm applying for to why I'm interested
in the job. Three, my relevant
background and experience and for what
I'm seeking an interview. Somehow to me that feels more elegant and maybe you had it slightly differently
and that's okay. The ideas flow into each
other much more beautifully, creating a much stronger feeling of gracefulness and elegance.
12. The Power of Evocativeness: Okay, evocativeness
is the quality that makes your writing stimulating when it's
combined with simplicity, clarity, elegance, it can really take your
writing to another level. Now here are two easy ways to boost the evocativeness
of your writing. First, use stimulating words. Take this fairly bland sentence. The benchmark stock
index turned negative following six consecutive
days of gains amid investor concern that weakness in the banking
sector may lead to problems similar to those that recently affected
Lehman Brothers. There's nothing wrong
with that in theory, but you could make
it more evocative by adding in some more
stimulating words, creating better imagery
for your readers. So try and do that. Now take a look at this version. The share markets snap six straight days of
gains as fears of a Lehmann Brothers style
financial collapse sent investors
fleeing for cover. Now, you may not agree some of that
might be a bit cliched, but I just wanted to show
you that we've created more imagery like snap
six days of gains. We've added more dramatic
action like fleeing for cover. And we've inserted a emotions
into it such as fears. Now, don't overdo this. It's not always appropriate
for sober business writing, but it is still
useful to know that you do have this
freedom and power to make your writing easily more
colorful and stimulating. Now the second thing
you can do to make your writing more evocative
if you use active sentences, learn to know when you're
using passive sentences. A passive sentence is where
the subject is presented as the thing acted upon rather than as the actor
in the sentence. So in this sentence, The company was told by the regulator to hand
over the documents. Were told what's happening
in a passive way, not from the position
of the actor. And who is the actor? That's right, the regulator who is telling the
company something. Can you make the
sentence active? That's right. You would say the regulator told the company to hand over the documents. The picture forms more
quickly in a reader's mind. When you say things
in this active way.
13. Evocativeness Exercises: Try and make this
sentence more active. The flag was unfurled
by the mayor. Who is the actor. That's right. So how would you say it? The mayor unfold the flag. Now, which of those
two gives you a stronger picture and is
therefore more evocative. So how about this one? The pen was held by Mary. Mary held the pen. That was the last exercise. I want you to go and look at the last cover letter
that you wrote for a job. Or perhaps look at a cover
letter that you'd like to write for the next
job that you want. I've tried to use the
evocativeness tactics I showed you to make
it more stimulating. Looking for things like
passive sentences and overly dry words and
a lack of imagery. It might as well also apply all the other ingredients to clearing away all the jargon, the ambiguity, any long-winded
answers in elegance and crankiness and so on and bringing rhythm
to the whole thing. Try to make your cover letter as powerful and as
beautiful as possible. I'm pretty sure that by applying as many of these
techniques as possible, you're going to
make it much more effective, persuasive,
and attractive.
14. Tip of the Iceberg: What I've given you
some basic principles and tactics for making
your writing more powerful and beautiful using the secret sauce
that I talked about. I just want you to
be aware that there are many more tactics
in the pantry that accomplished journalists use to make their writing exceptional. Now let's start with simplicity. We saw some ways that
you can strip out needlessly fancy language
from your writing and cut the excess fat from your pros to make
it more punchy. But there are many
more ways like dealing with redundant words, filler words and
also implied words, and steering clear of
repetition and rambling. There are all things
that can help with the simplicity of your writing. And there are more ways to, of uncomplicated your
sentences, for instance, by making your ideas short
enough to comprehend easily and for removing
obstacles that stand in the way of simplicity. Like long-winded descriptions. There are ways of
simplifying further by eradicating unnecessary
distractions from your writing, as well, like pointlessly
capitalize words or quote marks around words that for which there's
no compelling reason. Now as far as clarity goes, there are countless
more techniques for bringing
sharpness, brightness, focus to your ideas, and many more ways of avoiding fuzzy or out-of-focus ideas that can easily
turn readers off. And there are
techniques for making really crisp distinctions
between things, comparisons and contrasts to make your writing shine
even more brightly. Now as for elegance, there are countless ways
to order your writing brilliantly to give it even
more of a better flow, such as by creating smooth
transitions between sentences, ordering paragraphs
in a more elegant way and making ideas more parallel within your
sentences so that they don't create any
kind of crankiness. Not to mention a few
more tactics for making your writing sound more musical. Finally, there are many more
tricks that out there for making your writing more evocative and
stimulating as well. You could learn, for
instance, how varying your sentence structure and having variety in
your words can bring a completely new
flavor to your pros. And there are ways of making
your writing even more forceful and potent and fresh to fire rages reader's imagination and work more harder
on their emotions. And there's also much to learn about how to infuse what I call character into your writing and other skill that can turn dry, dull prose into highly stimulating and
captivating writing. You can also benefit from
knowing how to combine and balance these four
ingredients of simplicity, clarity, elegance, evocativeness
for the best effect. So I just wanted you to appreciate that what
you've already been given will take you a very long way forward towards improving
your writing abilities. But that it's still really
just the beginning of a very fascinating and
enjoyable journey toward exceptional writing that I
hope that I can be a part of.
15. Final Thoughts: Now you seem
simplicity, clarity, elegance and
evocativeness in action. I'd encourage you
to keep pushing towards making those
qualities more present. In the writing that you do. You'll notice it
transformed gradually into something much more powerful
and much more beautiful. And here's a tip that I'll leave you with whenever you're
reading something, consider how well the writer has applied those
four ingredients. Just so you get used
to studying them. Is what you're reading. Simple, clear, elegant,
and evocative, and couldn't benefit
from being more so. Also, whenever you're writing
something from now on, get into the habit of asking
whether any particular word, sentence, or paragraph or the thing as a
whole is a simple, clear, elegant, and
evocative as it can be. A sincerely hope you enjoyed this short introduction to
the world of elite writing. And I look forward if I
can, to teaching you more.
Shani Raja, Ex-Wall Street Journal editor
