Readers first

• Stop thinking about rules, start thinking about readers first

• You are using your writing to help yourself think

• When the reading and writing perspective clashes

  • readers slow down ( they re-read a lot)

  • they don’t understand - ( misunderstanding rises )

  • they get aggravated

  • and then they finally stop!

• You have learnt writing in a system where the readers are paid to care about you (academia)

• Why are the readers reading, because they want something valuable

• Writing needs to be

  • clear

  • short

  • organised

  • persuasive

  • Valuable ( 80% important )

• “Writing is not about conveying your ideas to the readers, it’s about changing theirs”

Readers function

• Your readers have a professional function of challenging what you say.

  • You don’t have to explain them because, explanation takes place to tell you know.

  • First value is generated, put forth with a persuasive argument then explanation begins.

  
  

• For example if your paper/article/post gets rejected by someone, and you ask why ?

  • They mostly will say, “I don’t understand it”

  • Then don’t try to Explain.

    • Explaining, is revealing to the world what is inside your head, and no one cares what is inside your head, only what is valuable.

Original content

• Do a favour and find the synapse in your brain storing the

  • words NEW, IMPORTANT and ORIGINAL and KILL IT!

  • Work might be new and original but it doesn’t always count as Knowledge.

    • for example, counting how many people are there in your classroom and writing an article on it, might be a novel and original work but that’s not knowledge.

  • Conversations moving through time through a bunch of important people, decide what knowledge is.

  
  
  

Invaluable hack

• Take out 15 min/week reading articles in your field, print them out and go through every word and circle those words which is creating value to the readers

  • every community has it’s own code/style of writing

  • a set of words that communicate value

  • they are particular to a given community

    
    

• If you have such a word list

• When it’s time to push your own work/article/paper, you will look for such words in it

• If there are no such words in the first two paragraphs

• You are gonna dump the words from your invaluable word list.

• you’ve got to know your readers.

Flow/transition words that have nothing to do with value

• and, if, however, but, nonetheless, because, unless

Functions of writing

Writing that challenges authority

Here’s a way to challenge a formidable authority in your field.

• First acknowledge their knowledge and contributions to the field .

• Let them know that there’s a small thing that they might have gotten wrong

• You better have an argument, not an explanation.

• You are gonna have to predict what they doubt

• They will ask why and where they have gone wrong

• Here’s where the introduction of your work comes into rescue !

  • Intro’s are a small bite to show why they are wrong

    • Usually the first few para/pages decide whether they read or not
    • If they decide to read it’s because they think your work might be valuable for them.

Helping readers understand a topic better

• Here’s what your writing does

  • It helps a particular set of readers understand something they want to understand well

    • All the other stuff, being structured, being creative, dealing with subjects is how you fulfil that function.

  • The readers are not gonna appreciate just because you wrote it.

  • The function of your writing is to move the conversation forward, it cannot do that if it’s in your desk drawer. So publish that work.

  • Your writing is a way to participate in the world, yes, but not by sharing your feelings or thoughts, but by changing other people’s thoughts.

    • It’s not to communicate about you, it’s to change the way the readers think.

• Anytime you think of a great writer/professor/author, it’s not what they have done that you think about, but what they have done in the space between the other heads in the community.

  • It’s to change what’s going on in the spaces between heads.

    
    

• As a farmer is committed to his farm, miner to his mine, so a writer to the value one can provide.

Tension words

• What do these flow/transition words have in common

  • Anomaly, but, inconsistent, however, although

  • They create tension, instability, challenge, contradiction, RED FLAG

Move from instability to stability.

• Locate problems in specific reading communities.

• Your readers are looking for a language of instability, inconsistency and tension

  • from here arises cost/benefit factor

    • does reading the work inform that something is costing them

    • or if reading the solution to the problem benefit them (the readers)

• Good professional literature reviews will use it to enrich the problem at hand and move towards solution in the rest of the work

  • Creating layers of tension on previous work, stating not only were they were wrong and because of that we all are moving towards more instability.
  
  

• In history books too, one might argue that they build the background, but actually they are building the problem, to which they provide a solution in the rest of the work.

  
  

• In case the introduction of the work/paper doesn’t really work, writers usually ask what do I need to do?

  • The readers usually will tell them , give me some more background.

  • And one will think they literally need to shower in on some more background

    • But they don’t mean that, they mean, “I can’t figure out why this matters”

  • The background they need is the problem

Checklist

Here’s a checklist to the whole lecture, that I made to check the work of writing.

• Does the beginning have a language of instability, inconsistency and tension
• Does the solution reduce the cost or increase the benefit of the reader
• Does it help the reader understand something better
• Does it change the way the readers think
• Does it share your feelings, thoughts or change the other person’s perspective
• Does not necessarily have to be new, original, important
• Does it move the conversation of the group forward

References

• LEADERSHIP LAB: The Craft of Writing Effectively

• Handouts from the lecture