Your Writing Will Become Way More Interesting If You Do This 1 Thing
It's easy to implement, too
The other day I did a coaching call with a student of mine.
We went through his post and I told him, line-by-line, what he could improve.
It was a monster 40-minute session. We basically turned an 8-minute read into a 4-minute read — give or take.
You know the problem that kept coming up?
Lack of specificity.
He wrote a brilliant post at the core, but it lacked specific details in many places.
That and a good bit of the paragraphs could be deleted — so there’s a bonus tip for you.
Edit like every word costs you money.
I wanted to hone in on specificity here and detail how you can use it in your own blog posts.
Here’s An Example Of What Not To Do
I found the following writing clip by searching for articles with “self-awareness” somewhere in the post.
I think it’s an example of what NOT to do.
Read it here 👇
If you got through it without drifting off to sleep, I salute you.
No disrespect to this author, who I will not name, but this clip makes me want to fall asleep at my desk.
So let me rewrite it and add some specifics.
Ahem.
I remember wanting to look like my best friend Justin in high school.
He used to get the attention of so many girls, which is something I envied him for.
One time Justin told me he wouldn’t change a thing about how he looked.
Lucky him.
One day I realized while looking in the mirror in college that it’s not bad to want to change how we look.
Okay great. That was painful to write, by the way. Not a word of it is true — but I needed to do it for the sake of this article.
Why does my clip feel different from the other one?
For one, I turned “we” into “me” and gave specifics. Let’s take a look at the opening lines side-by-side.
“It’s easier to talk about what we prefer to look like”
Eww. Gross. Don’t speak for me.
“I remember wanting to look like my best friend Justin in high school.”
Okay. Better. It’s my experience. Not yours. Maybe you can relate, maybe not. Maybe the audience is imagining what Justin looks like. Does he look like Thor? Or Chris Evans?
We are given the name of a person, a time, and a place.
In the first example we’re given nothing, which is like staring at a blank canvas. That ain’t interesting unless you’re REALLY stoned.
In the second example I’m painting a picture for you.
This is a good contrast between writing that’s specific and writing that isn’t.
Show. Don’ Tell.
I call un-specific writing too “preachy.” You’re telling us the lessons we need to know.
With specific writing you’re showing us.
You don’t need to tell me that I prefer to look like someone else. Tell me a story about how you once preferred to look like someone else and I’ll either relate to it or not.
You can either tell me that sleeping 8 hours a night is good for you or you could tell me a story about how you tracked your sleep for a week, detailing how you felt after 6,7, and 8 hours of sleep.
I guarantee your personal experience would be much more fun to read.
Even though it’s likely you’ll come to the common conclusion that more sleep = better, there might be some interesting nuance to explore and at the very least, a story with an ending that’s inconclusive for me as the reader.
Entertain me.
Give me something new.
Give me details.
Your writing will improve drastically if you get more specific in future posts.
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Great reminder for me! Thanks!