Writing, Clear and Simple

Here’s a quiz for you. Who said this?

So if you speak in a way no one can understand, what’s the point of opening your mouth?

Sounds like someone asking people to use plain language, doesn’t it?

Hint: This quotation was translated to English from another language.

Metaphors are powerful tools that can help you clarify abstract ideas for your audience (as I pointed out in “Dealing with abstractions? Try metaphors.”). Just remember that you don’t have to limit yourself to words when you’re creating a metaphor.

Recently I gave a presentation about intellectual property (copyrights, patents, trademarks, and suchlike). I wanted to introduce the idea with an image that would give the audience a basic understanding that was based on their experiences, so I used this image:

No Trespassing sign

Signs like this are familiar to my audience here in the upper midwestern part of the United States. I figured that this image would help them grasp some of the ideas associated with intellectual property law: that is, just as you have to put these signs up on your property to protect it from trespassers, you have to take steps to protect your trademarks, copyrights, and patents.

Here’s another image I used for a different presentation, when I was talking about the consequences of losing control of a project. Here, the intent was to make a connection between the potentially catastrophic results of losing control of a car, with the potentially catastrophic results of losing control of a project.

A word of caution: Keep your audience’s cultural background in mind when selecting images. Any given image might have different connotations and associations for people from different countries. If the audience for the intellectual property presentation had been from a different culture, they might not have understood the significance of a bright yellow sign with the word “POSTED” in big bold letters. In that case, I might have used a different image I had, in which the sign said “NO TRESPASSING.”

Use your imagination when choosing metaphoric images for a document or a presentation. Where do you look for good images? I found the two photos in this post on Stock.XCHNG, which offers thousands of free images.

I like contractions—the kind you use in writing and speech, that is. So I was happy to find this little tidbit on the PlainLanguage.gov website:

Contractions make your writing more accessible to the reader. Research shows that that they also enhance readability.

Go ahead, use contractions. Your readers will thank you. 

For more guidelines for using contractions, see my article “Contractions and How Not to Abuse ‘Em.”

So you want to get started on some writing project—doesn’t matter what kind: essay, memoir, book, article, whitepaper, whatever. You know that you need to, or want to, write about some topic.

How do you begin?

There’s no single “right” way to begin; there are at least as many ways to begin as there are writers (and possibly as many ways as there are writing projects). For example, Sylvia Spruck Wrigley likes to use a journal to get started:

Some days journal writing is a kick-start. I circle around a subject, working out what it is that I actually want to say. My ideas do a freefall on paper—quotes, concepts, opinion. Usually at some point it’ll start to come together and I’ll find that I have a starting point (and if I’m really lucky, I might even have an idea for an end point).

I know that half the battle is just getting my butt in that chair—getting started. Part of it is working through the angles until I have some specific viewpoint that I can run with. I’ve been known to write as if it were a letter to a friend—I know I’ve found my subject when I suddenly resent the slowness of the pen. Nothing is fast enough to grab these ideas. That’s when I start to type.

Here are some more ideas to help you make that first step:

• Do a brain dump. Take a blank piece of paper and just start writing down everything you know about the topic. Grammar doesn’t matter, spelling doesn’t matter, organization doesn’t matter. At this point, all that matters is capturing whatever you have in your head on the topic. (This is much like Wrigley’s journal method.)
• Write down all of the questions you can think of. Ask all of the Whos, Whats, Wheres, Whens, Whys, and Hows. Don’t worry about the answers at this point. You may know them, or you may know where to find the answers. That’s great, but come back later to begin filling them in.
• Create a mind map. A mind map is a diagram of an idea and all of the words, ideas, concepts, and so forth, that are related to that idea. (See this Wikipedia article on mind maps for more information.) Take another blank piece of paper and write your central topic in the middle of the page. Condense it down to as few words as possible. Put a circle (or square) around it. Then write down the first related concept, topic, word, or idea that pops into your mind in another, smaller circle, and connect the two with a line. If there’s a word to explain the relationship between the main topic and the related topic, label the line with that word. Continue adding ideas radially around the central topic, and add sub-topics to the sub-topics wherever they seem to fit. Don’t judge or evaluate; just toss it all out there as fast as you can.
• Think about the structure. Forget about the content for a moment, and ask yourself how you could structure the writing. When you boil it all down, there are only a few basic organizing principles for any type of information, which you can remember using the mnemonic LATCH: Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, Hierarchy. (See my post “Structure: Choosing a different viewpoint” for more information.) When you’ve got your structure figured out, then you can begin filling things in.

What are your favorite methods for starting a writing project? Add them to the Comments.