The Most Important Rule for Effective Writing
 
by editor qualityEditing (currently offline)
 

The most important rule for effective writing is simple.  It is to be direct.  This cannot be stressed too strongly for beginning writers or those who are seasoned.  Tell the reader in the first few sentences what it is that you want to convey.  Be direct.  If the reader has only enough time to read the first paragraph of your work, make sure that the reader knows what it is you want to say.  If you are asking for something, make sure the reader knows it.  If you are writing an academic paper, make sure the professor knows what you are covering.  Save the reader the waste of time in having to figure out what you want or the topic of your paper.  

The sad truth about all writing, except maybe works of fiction, is that the reader does not really have much desire to read what you have written, especially if what you have written is a letter, article or school paper.  The reader is looking at your work strictly to determine whether you have anything the reader needs to know.  The reader is not interested in much else.  You may say, as some authors have said to me, that it is the job of the reader to read your letter, article or paper.  And that is true.  It is the reader’s job to read what he or she has received.  That does not mean that the reader wants to read it.  Or that the reader is interested in slogging through fifteen pages of dense type to determine that you want a refund or to report that fourth quarter profits are up or that some aspect of the teacher’s field of study has now been rehashed for yet another paper.  Like everyone else in society today, the reader wants to be entertained.  Luckily, it takes no more effort to write an entertaining paper than it does to write one that is not.  

Believe me when I tell you that the number one problem afflicting most writers is that they do not get to the point quickly enough in their writing.  Part of the problem is that most everyone learns to write in school where the overriding question is always, “How long does the paper have to be?” Unfortunately, the answer is usually expressed as a number of pages, and the writer then organizes the material to fit the expected length.  The writer is now thinking of the paper as a whole and will stretch the material to fit.  This thinking results in a paper that has a sketchy introduction, a middle that tells the tale, and a hasty conclusion.  

I can live with the hasty conclusion.  And the middle usually takes care of itself, because that is where the meat of the discussion lies.  The problem manifests itself in the introduction.  The writer knows what the paper is going to say, and wants to bring the reader gradually to the main idea, thinking that this shows good writing and operates to make the paper longer.   In an era of more relaxed attitudes about time, or when the writer was being paid by the word, this approach might have been appropriate.  Today we live in a rapid fire world.  If the first paragraph or page does not give us the information we need or want, we are not going to invest the time in reading the rest of the work.  Test this the next time you start to read something.  How soon do you know the author’s intention? I think that you will find that the writing that appeals to you most is the writing that announces the intention in the first paragraph.  Most writing is not a mystery to be unraveled by the reader.  

If you are direct in telling the reader what you want or what you are going to say in your paper, you accomplish two goals.  One, you have enlisted the reader into your cause immediately.  You have told the reader what to expect, and now when the reader reads the rest of your writing he or she can examine what you are saying without having to spend time trying to figure out your thesis or ultimate desire.  The reader may not agree with what you have written, but he or she is now judging your work on the merits of your argument or research or conclusions.  You have made a friend of the reader, who should be willing to let you guide him or her through your paper.  You are two people exploring an issue together, not one person desperately trying to decipher what you are trying to say.  

The second accomplishment is that you have set your writing apart from the competition.  A teacher who has to grade a stack of papers, or a harried office worker who has to reply to an in-box of letters or anyone else who has to read a lot of writing welcomes a well-written paper or letter because so many of them are not.  If the ultimate goal of the writing is to persuade the recipient to adopt a course of action, does it not make sense to make that person’s job in agreeing with you as easy as possible? If the reader only has to read the first sentence of paragraph to know what you want, and the reader has hours’ worth of other reading to do, whose letter or paper is going to get the desired response, maybe without the reader even reading the entire thing? A professor who has read thousands of papers on a subject can tell within a few words whether the writer knows the subject.  But the professor can only know this if the writer has expressed his or her intentions in a direct manner so that the professor can focus on the discussion and writing style of the author.

You have been told this ever since you began to write.  Teachers told you to use action verbs and to be concise.  Those are good suggestions, but they do not mean much to beginning writers because they are routes to being direct, not the result.  Writers should be told to be direct to be effective.