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Terrific advice for bloggers

And for most writers engaged in writing narrative non-fiction. I was packing up books the other day, and ran across a particular book I’d acquired a few years ago. It was a personal narrative, and the subject matter, as well as the author, interested me. The problem with it was that the book badly needed […]

And for most writers engaged in writing narrative non-fiction. I was packing up books the other day, and ran across a particular book I’d acquired a few years ago. It was a personal narrative, and the subject matter, as well as the author, interested me. The problem with it was that the book badly needed editing, as the author apparently couldn’t tell which details of her own story mattered to her readers, and which details were extraneous. I gave up on it because it began to sound like a recitation of actions and events without meaning, except that they happened to the writer. Hard to make the reader care. That writer could have used a big dose of:

So what?

I had a global politics professor whose class included a significant participation component. After every student comment or interjection, he would look at the speaker and ask, “So what?”  That was your cue to move beyond a simple statement of fact and link your observation to an outcome or embed it in a context.  It was intimidating, but hugely helpful in sharpening our collective rhetorical skills.

Do the same thing with your writing. Interrogate it mercilessly (your audience certainly will). So what? Why does this matter? Why should the reader care? Why is this important? Why can’t it be cut? Make every sentence and idea defend its life.  And if you can’t do that yourself, get an editor who will be merciless in doing it for you. You need it. We all do.

Bleed

There’s a difference between making everything about you and infusing yourself into everything you write. The former is lazy, narcissistic and all too common. The latter is how you develop and define the unique voice that endears you to an audience and makes your words instantly recognizable in a sea of sameness.  It’s difficult to strike a balance between TMI and being a cipher, but being compelling involves putting some of yourself (even if it’s only obliquely so) on the page.  You need to figure out how to make that work in your genre through a trial and error process.

Read the whole thing. It’s short, but good.

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