5 Techniques for Improving Your Writing

Want to make your writing more effective? Want your writing to have more influence, more effect, more readers? Here are 5 ways to bring tired, drab prose up several notches:

Focus: Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Connect: Write to and for the Reader

Listen: Fill in the Gaps

Use examples, provide details

Exploit: Look for opportunities to shine

Remember it this way: F-CLUE

In this issue’s article, we’ll look at the first element: Focus

Focus: Don’t bite off more than you can chew

One of the worst problems that writers run into is lack of focus -- their writing simply bites off more than it can chew and leads into more and more complications. Here’s an example:

Tel Aviv is a great city. Its coastline provides a variety of great beaches for young and old alike. The beaches are typically filled with both Israelis and tourists from all over the world. It’s not surprising to hear English, French, Russian, and many other languages. Most beaches are close to hotels and to the center of the city where there are many attractions. The city also has some wonderful parks where tourists can relax in the shade on a hot summer day.

What’s wrong with this paragraph? Its topic, as reflected in the first sentence, promises to be about the city of Tel Aviv and why it’s so “great” --- but then goes on to just one aspect of the city -- its beaches. To make matters worse, the writer feels compelled, at the end of the paragraph, to go on to yet other reasons why Tel Aviv is a great city -- and so the reader is taken on a meandering path through the city’s parks leaving the reader wondering where it’s all going to end.

But it doesn’t take much to fix up this paragraph -- it simply needs a little focus. Here is one way to do that:

Tel Aviv’s beaches provide a wonderful combination of beauty and fun, not to mention a lot of variety --- whether young or old, you can find a beach suited to your tastes. ...

The beaches are typically filled with both local Israelis and tourists from all over the world. It’s not surprising to hear English, French, Russian, and many other languages. ,,,

Most beaches are close to hotels and to the center of the city where there are many attractions. ..

The paragraph has now been arranged under a general topic --- Tel Aviv beaches -- and this is then divided into three incomplete paragraphs each with a narrower focus -- various aspects of Tel Aviv’s beaches. The first deals with the variety fo beaches, the second with the type of people you meet on the beach, and the third with the location of the beaches to the rest of the city. By focusing on a particular topic and particular aspect of the topic, the writing becomes more interesting, more readable, and more informative.

5 Techniques for Improving Your Writing

Focus: Don’t bite off more than you can chew

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