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It’s reasonable and even good advice but the hard parts remain the hard parts. Specifically: // Know who you want to reach, what you need them to know, what c
by xyzelement 3y ago
It’s reasonable and even good advice but the hard parts remain the hard parts.
Specifically:
// Know who you want to reach, what you need them to know, what context they have/don't have, and what you want them to do with the information you will convey.
This is basically everything but most people struggle (and actually don’t really try) to figure out what the other person has in their head and what buttons have to be pressed to take them from status quo to the new level of understanding. That’s a difficult amount of empathy to generate.
And then “what do I want them to do after reading this” requires vision and ownership. Most writing is “I’ll dump what I know and they can figure out what it means” which is horrible for the reader and jeopardizes the outcome.
So yeah the advice is “good” but the number of people who can actually figure out what they want someone to do and how to make them see the value of it is scant.
- ozim 3y agoI have a slightly different observation. People read stuff and they don’t know even why and what for and disregard the context. So lots of times it should be know what you read, know why you read it - if you don’t understand it, step back and check the context. Fun part is that some writing is “I want people to hear me” and some is “I don’t want to repeat myself over and over again” - what I wrote will work with the latter one of course.
- xyzelement 3y agoThat’s very fair. I would call what you described as “reference” and it may have the benefit of an audience that has an explicit question that you already know they are asking. Agree that’s a little easier to “nail”