Overcome the biggest barrier to good writing--time

Many of us know how to make our writing clear, concise, and appealing.

But looming deadlines mean that we must often settle for less than our best. While you might go through a dozen drafts of a cover letter or an application essay, you can’t do the same for that report or memo due tomorrow. 

That’s why ClearWriter focuses on the areas that make the biggest difference to your writing in the shortest time—to make your writing 80% better with only 20% of the effort (an idea called the Pareto principle).

The key is picking the right 20% to focus on. At ClearWriter we emphasize three areas where the payoffs are highest.

Planning intelligently. Most writers start by assembling details, examples, and comments in paragraphs—sporadically making points, rarely conveying a message. Our approach is to do the reverse—to start with your messages, to support them with points, and to use those points to assemble your details, examples, and comments. It’s easier said than done, but good planning will slash time from writing, rewriting, and editing. And it’s essential for writing in teams. Bad planning can cost organizations hundreds of hours.

Focusing on the areas that readers notice most. Titles, captions, and introductory paragraphs draw your readers’ attention, shaping their impressions for better or worse. Many readers will read only these elements. Making sure that they are flawless—and that they communicate your messages—will help you put your best foot forward.

Exploiting proven patterns for writing and editing. Good writing isn’t a mystery. We’ve taken apart the best writing to see what makes it tick, and we’ve compiled easy fixes for the most common problems. So, if your writing is full of such overweight phrases as “in relation to,” change these to “on” or “about.” Or consider the following passage:

Americans are struck by an annual outbreak of filial sentiment on Mother’s Day. They make more long distance calls on Mother’s Day than on any other day of the year.

Such successions of two sentences with the same subject are as common as they are uninteresting. But the first sentence can be converted to an introductory phrase to build anticipation:

Struck by an annual outbreak of filial sentiment, Americans make more long distance calls on Mother’s Day than on any other day of the year.

Such patterns, which improve writing with a change of position and the cutting of a few words, are the key to writing better in less time.

The next few entries will outline how we apply these three principles to the main steps in any piece of writing: planning, drafting paragraphs and sentences, and editing.