How Tobe A Better Writer Dilbert Scott Adams

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The key takeaways are to keep writing simple, prune sentences, write short sentences, and avoid multiple thoughts in one sentence.

The main techniques for good business writing are keeping things simple, simple writing is persuasive, getting rid of extra words, and pruning sentences.

The steps to writing a book are compiling notes over several weeks, separating notes into logical groups, starting to write if compelled after a month, and committing to writing the full book if the compulsion persists.

https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the_day_you_bec.

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The Day You Became A Better Writer


I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in
“business writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks
here so you don’t have to waste a day in class.
Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping
things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will
sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.
Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you
can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t.
Prune your sentences.
Humor writing is a lot like business writing. It needs to be simple. The main
difference is in the choice of words. For humor, don’t say “drink” when you can say
“swill.”
Your first sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read my first sentence to
this post. I rewrote it a dozen times. It makes you curious. That’s the key.
Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers
aren’t as smart as you’d think.

Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker
than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to
imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way.
(Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)
That’s it. You just learned 80% of the rules of good writing. You’re welcome.

An important factor that contributes to the improvement of the business letter is the respect
of styles and genres. These provide an overall structure and style which is expected to
business correspondence and documentation. In addition to a general framework,
vocabulary and thematic specialist idiomatic phrases used in the common vernacular of the
economy for players in the trading community.

How to Write a Book


Posted September 25, 2013 in: #General Nonsense

A friend recently asked for advice on how to get started writing a book. I often get that
question. You might have an idea for a book, and all the writing skill you need, but how do
you go from idea to implementation? It’s a deceptively difficult step.
Part of the problem is that writing a book is the loneliest job in the world, and an immense
amount of work. It’s hard to get started on a project so daunting.
My new book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My
Life, took two years to write. For most of that time, no one but me saw any part of it. My
publisher and I have a long history, so he lets me run free after the general concept for the
book is nailed down. I probably worked for 18 months without anyone else seeing a word of
it.
Ask yourself if you could work on a project for 18 months without a single positive word
of encouragement, and without really sharing with anyone the thing you have been immersed
in day after day. Sure, I often mentioned the book project to friends and family. And I often
talked about topics I planned to include. But usually I got blank stares in return. The thing
with a well-designed book is that it only works in full form. Any chapter or topic out of
context just lays there. I wanted to talk with friends about my writing, but doing so was
impractical because it required a book-length explanation.
For nearly two years I plugged away on a collection of ideas around my theme and I have to
say that none of it worked until the next-to-last round of edits. With my layered writing
process, success tends to be binary. The book is a lifeless bunch of ideas until the moment it
isn’t. As a writer, you hope that moment comes, but you can never know for sure. This is yet
another case in which my natural inclination for optimism comes in handy. I tell myself I can
smell a book before I can see it. I know it’s in me; I just need to write until I find it. I’m not
entirely sure if I am intuitive or irrational, or even if those things are different.
If you’re planning to write a book, ask yourself if you are the type of person that can
spend that much time completely alone, doing unpleasant work, while receiving nothing in
the way of encouragement or positive feedback along the way. You won’t even know if
anyone will read your book when you’re done.
If you answered “Yes, I can do that,” I recommend these steps:
Step 1: Open a Word document and give it a name. If you don’t have a title yet, choose a
working title. Close your empty document and walk away. You have successfully completed
step one. It’s important to feel a sense of progress. I start every book exactly this way.
Step 2: You’ve probably been thinking for a long time about the content for your book, and
more ideas will come to you. Take notes in bullet form. Every few days, add those notes to
your document. Just get them on paper. If your topic is interesting, at least to you, this step
will energize you and get the ideas flowing. Your notes should be coming faster and faster
over the next few weeks as the ideas build on each other.
Step 3: Once you have several pages of brief notes, start separating them into logical
groups. Those groups might become chapters later, but for now it’s just a way to keep ideas
organized. When you add ideas, put them in the groups they belong or start new groups.
Step 4: In about a month, one of two things is likely to happen. You’ll either lose interest in
your own book idea, because your collection of ideas isn’t as compelling as you hoped, or
you’ll feel a compulsion to start writing. If you don’t feel the compulsion after a month of
compiling notes, walk away. I only write a book when the urge to communicate its message
becomes stronger than my desire for leisure. Writing a book is terrifically hard work with no
guarantee of a payoff. You can’t drag a book into existence; the book has to drag you.
Once you’re committed to writing the book, you need a process that works for you. Every
writer is different, but I’ll tell you my process as a starting point. I write in layers, roughly
like this:
1. Layer one (first draft) involves writing as fast as I can and getting the ideas in sentence
and paragraph form. My first drafts tend to be dry and descriptive, and full of redundancies
and broken logic. That’s okay for the first draft.
2. Layer two is where I start connecting the logic, putting topics in the best order,
removing redundancies, and identifying my most powerful themes. At this point, the draft
starts to make sense.
3. Layer three involves writing and rewriting the first chapter until I have the voice and
tone I want for the rest of the book. I might rewrite my first chapter thirty times. And when
the book is mostly done, I go back and rewrite it a few more times. In terms of importance,
both to the writer and the reader, the first chapter is about ten times more important than
any other.
4. Layer four involves engineering the wording throughout the book to produce the right sort
of emotional response in the reader. At that point I might rewrite nearly every sentence in
the book, keeping the meaning the same but changing how it feels when you read it. My
latest book is about the topic of success so I packed it with words and concepts that are
energizing by their nature. Every sentence in a book needs to have a consistent flavor and
feel. When I write humor, I try to make every third sentence a light or funny payoff. And I
avoid downer words such as the names of diseases while packing in lots of inherently funny
words such as yank, buttocks, Satan, squirrel, and the like.
5. Layer five is when the editors get involved. The first time my editor sees the book, she
makes high-level comments about which chapters work better than others, how the ordering
of topics is working, how the tone feels, and that sort of thing. No one cares about grammar
or sentence structure yet. Once I make the editor’s suggested changes, or in some cases argue
them away, this is generally the point at which the book becomes alive. For the first time, I
can reread it and say, “This actually works.” That’s a good day.
6. Layer six happens after my editor is happy with the basic flow of the book. Now a
second editor – a copy editor – goes over the writing in detail and fills my pages with notes
and corrections. It’s a humbling process. After I make those changes, the book is generally
done.
All writers have their own process. Now you know mine. The only other thing I would add
is that for most people, writing works best in the early morning or late night. I’m writing
this piece at about 5 AM. If you aren’t a morning person, try the late night approach.
Good luck!

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