Tuesday, August 28, 2012

There is no I in writing

Writing is hard.

It all comes down to the difference between what you want to say and what they need to read. And how much of the one you need to sacrifice in order to achieve the other.

Let's say you are angry at something. The natural response is to write about how angry you are at this thing. The less uncertain terms the better, right?

The thing is that the readers don't need to know how angry you are. They rather need to know why you are angry, and they moreover need to read something that will make them just as mad about it as you are.

These are two different texts, and you need to employ different writing techniques in order to write them.

This is what makes writing so hard. Because no matter how angry you might be at something, that text does not care. And the reader won't have a reason to care until the text provides it. Which means that you, the writer, will have to place yourself in the rear view mirror and look straight ahead at the reader.

Do you read me?

No comments:

Post a Comment