Writing, Clear and Simple

If you’re trying to get started writing something, and you’re stuck on the beginning, skip the beginning. Author Kathleen Krull puts it like this:

 What is your destination, or the target of your book? Many writers, especially mystery writers, actually write the endings of their books first. Your ending may prove a useful starting point in fine-tuning your focus.

There’s no rule that says you have to do what the King of Hearts says (in Alice in Wonderland): “Begin and the beginning, and go on until you come to the end: then stop.” Maybe you know the conclusion you want to leave people with, the one thing you want them to take away. Fine. Begin with that, and then work backwards.

Or start in the middle, organizing your arguments and supporting material, and work your way towards the beginning and the end.

The point is: begin with what you know you want to say, and work from there. Don’t let the notion that you have to start with a solid beginning paralyze you. 

Will Schwalbe asks if confidentiality disclaimers on e-mail messages are as stupid as they look. You know the ones: The dense bits of legalese at the end of an e-mail message that say, in essence, that if you aren’t the intended recipient of this message, you’re not allowed to read it, save it, or forward it on to anyone else. I’ve collected a few representative examples:

Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message including attachments, if any, is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message. If you are the intended recipient, but do not wish to receive communications through this medium, please so advise the sender immediately.

I always say, if I’m not the intended recipient, then why the hell did you send it to me, and why are you putting the onus on me to do the right thing when you’re the one who screwed up?

I particularly wonder about that phrase, “Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited.” Prohibited by whom, or by what statute? Is that phrase enforceable? Or is that like the software licenses that say “by installing this software, you agree to be bound by the terms of this license”?

And how is this supposed to work when the message is sent to an e-mail list (like a LISTSERV list, or a Yahoo or Google group), especially those that archive messages on a public website? (That’s where I got the examples in this post, from lists I belong to.) 

Here’s one that struck me as a masterpiece of legal gobbledygook:

Disclaimer and Confidentiality Note: Everything in this e-mail and any attachments relating to the business and/or activities of [full company name] and/or its subsidiaries (hereinafter collectively referred to as `[company]´) is proprietary to [company]. The information in this e-mail is confidential and is legally privileged. [Company] does not own and/or endorse any other content. Views and opinions are those of the sender unless clearly stated as being that of [company]. This e-mail is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this e-mail by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. Please notify the sender immediately if it has unintentionally reached you. Whilst all reasonable steps are taken to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the information and data transmitted electronically and to preserve the confidentiality thereof, no liability or responsibility whatsoever is accepted if the information of data is, for whatever reason, corrupted or does not reach its intended destination. 

 I like that bit of weasel-wording: “any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful.” [Emphasis added.] “May be unlawful,” but maybe not, eh? And maybe this is just a bunch of smoke-blowing.

(On a tangent: I wonder what the bandwidth cost of these things is? That last one is a real corker, weighing in at 175 words, or 1,140 characters with spaces. What percentage of e-mail traffic is taken up by this legalese?)

Over on Will’s blog, I said I thought these were the result of overlawyering, but I’ll see if I can get the legal writing gurus—Wayne Scheiss,  Ray Ward, and Mister Thorne—to venture an opinion on the actual legal value of such disclaimers, or if they know whether they’ve ever been challenged in court.

Write about the things people like to talk about. Guy Kawasaki has a list of the “Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing,” (distilled from Lois Kelly’s Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing), but they’re not just great for marketing. These are great ways to draw people into any kind of content:

1. Aspirations and beliefs
2. David vs. Goliath
3. Avalanche about to roll
4. Contrarian/counterintuitive/challenging assumptions
5. Anxieties
6. Personalities and personal stories
7. How-to stories and advice
8. Glitz and glam
9. Seasonal/event related
   

 (Check out Guy’s blog for a bit more detail on these.)

For example, I think that one of the compelling aspects of the Harry Potter books (and there are several) is the David vs. Goliath angle: Here’s Harry, a school kid, up against someone that everyone says is one of the greatest wizards ever, Lord Voldemort. He keeps going up against these overwhelming odds, and manages through grit, determination, and a good dose of good fortune, to come out the winner. People love those kinds of stories.

Another example: Many successful bloggers will tell you that some of their most popular posts fit into the “How to” mold. Giving people some practical ideas that they can take home and put to use right away will grab their attention.

And then there’s the popularity of books like The Secret, which promises to teach people “life-transforming” revelations. That’s tapping into people’s aspirations, pure and simple.

What do you think about this list? Are there other things people love to talk about? How can you blend these ideas into your writing?

Join in the conversation!

By way of The (New) Legal Writer blog, two ways to do a better job of editing your own writing:

1. Step away from the document. Give yourself a bit of a break from looking at it. When you come back, with fresh eyes, you’ll see things that you didn’t notice before.
2. If you’re going to review the document on paper, print it in a different font. I’m with Ray on this one: I’ve never used this trick, so I’m going to give it a try the next time I’m reviewing one of my own pieces. I’ll let you know how it works.

Here’s another trick for self-editing: Read the piece out loud. When you hear something, you’re using a different part of your brain. If you hear something that doesn’t sound quite right, take a closer look. Chances are it’s something that you need to improve or correct.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed that I’m not a big fan of abstraction in writing. (Here’s something I wrote about abstract language a couple of months ago.) But what do you do when you have to write about an abstraction?

The same thing that writers and poets have done for millennia: use a metaphor. 

Metaphors, and the closely related rhetorical devices, simile and metonymy, are ways to describe a thing by making a direct comparison to another thing. Saying someone has “muscles of steel” is a metaphor: The person does not literally have muscle tissue made of steel, but the speaker is trying to convey the idea of strength by comparing them to a known strong material.

Metaphors are wonderful tools to use when you have to talk about abstractions. For example, Thomas Jefferson wanted to make a point about needing to be unyielding when it came to matters of principle, but to not be so rigid in other matters, so he used the metaphors of water and rock to do so: “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” We’re all familiar with what it looks like to move with a river’s current, and how immovable a large rock is, thus we can almost immediately grasp the abstract ideas he’s trying to convey.

Don’t be afraid to try coining your own new metaphors, they’re all around us.  This morning, as I was considering getting a pocket knife for my son, I started thinking about how teaching a boy to use a knife is a metaphor for teaching him how to be a man. You must carefully control the knife’s blade; use it carelessly, and you can injure yourself or those around you. In the same way, as a boy grows to manhood, he has to learn to control himself; otherwise, he will harm himself and those around him.

What else could a pocket knife be a metaphor for?