A key focus of my blog is Blogging/Writing. Writing is a craft and can open up numerous doors for you. The key is to grow in the craft to the point where your writing is distinct and where audiences enjoy what you create. The following contributed post is entitled, How To Write Effectively For Any Audience.
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Good writing is a skill that can be enormously useful in pretty much any context. Whether you are writing something creative for yourself or others, you are putting together some material to share with colleagues, or you’re copywriting, it’s vital that you know how to write effectively and what kinds of rules to follow. One of the main things you always need to keep in mind with writing is the importance of the audience. You have to make sure you are writing effectively for the specific audience that you have in mind.
In this post, we are going to look at some of the things you might want to bear in mind to help you along with that. As long as you have thought about the following, you should find that you are able to write so much more effectively for any audience, and that is a great skill to have.
Research The Reader
First of all, if you want to write effectively for your audience, you need to make sure you know who they are. That means you need to research your reader as thoroughly as you can. If you are writing something like marketing material, then this is probably a process you have already been going through, but at other times you might find that you need to really work on it if you are going to know who you’re really writing for. In any case, it’s important to have this down before you get started where necessary.
The clearer a picture you have of your audience – who they are, what they respond well to – the easier it will be to craft writing that they will enjoy or respond well to. So it’s absolutely worth putting the effort into your writing research before you do anything else.
Follow Basic Principles
There are a lot of principles you may want to know about if you are trying to write effectively, and it is a really good idea to try and be aware of as many of them as possible early on. Many of these have been in place for many years, and while some are hotly contended, most of them have at least a nugget of truth to them. So you are going to find that they are absolutely worth knowing about, at least – and you can then decide how much you want to take them on board yourself.
So what kinds of principles are we talking about here? One perfect example would be Chekhov’s Gun, named after Anton Chekhov, the famous playwright. This is all about introducing an element only if it will advance the plot of the story – otherwise, leave it out. That applies not just to creative story-telling, but to pretty much any kind of writing you may engage in. If it doesn’t serve the piece, leave it out.
Then you also have principles like showing rather than telling. While not always the case, it’s often better to show the reader what you mean, rather than simply telling them. This also comes from Chekhov, believe it or not! As you can see, these two together put you in a pretty good stead when it comes to putting any writing together, so they are the kinds of principles you should try to be aware of.
Avoid Confusing Terms
If you are unsure whether your target reader will understand a piece of jargon or a niche term, avoid it altogether or introduce the concept to them in a way they can understand. This is important because there is no quicker way to frustrate an audience than by throwing some confusing terms their way, in the hope that they already know them. Sometimes the writer might even come off as arrogant as a result of this, so it is clearly something that you need to avoid at all costs.
It’s much better to slowly incorporate those terms by introducing them properly. This is altogether more respectful and more encouraging, and your reader will appreciate it.
Organize The Information Well
A lot of the time, good writing is really about how you organize the information you are trying to present. You want it to be meaningful and well and easily understood, and most of that comes down to the manner in which you arrange it on the page. Think about what needs introducing first, and then slowly go deeper and deeper. That is the best approach you can take if you are trying to talk to an audience of any kind.
