Rapid Writing Made Easy

So you have just spent 3 hours rewriting, rehashing and re-crafting.

Congratulations, you have just written the world’s best first paragraph.

You only have 700 words to go and that took you half a day.

Surely, there is an easier way.

Most writers sit glued to the computer for 90% of the writing process.

It’s time to turn that idea on its head and write the easy way.

Writing has 3 steps and drafting your text should consume the smallest percentage of your time:

• Preparation 50% of your time spent

• Writing 20%

• Editing 30%

Yet most writers do all 3 at once and kill their creativity.

Writing is a right-brain creative activity, editing is from the logical left-brain. Without care these skills can crush each other.

Preparation

Have you narrowed your topic down a specific angle? Break a broad topic into six to eight articles focused on a specific topic. Do you have enough material? 

Preparation includes two stages:

Creatively finding ideas to research and then creatively developing the researched material.

Try mind mapping to thrash out ideas to study, research them and then again mind map what you have learned. 

Ask yourself ‘Why anyone should read this?’ What is the ‘What’s in it For Me?’ factor? 

Do family stories and anecdotes illustrate your point?

Discover and play with the ideas until you know what you want to write. Get away from your desk. Go for a walk, and record your brainstorming into your digital recorder.

Writing

Tell a story, write fast, and don’t edit.

Your first job is to fascinate and entertain. An entertained reader stays to the end and remembers your article. Illustrate your point by beginning with an engaging personal story.

Write as if you are talking to a friend. 

Write fast and flow with the momentum of the moment. Let out your ideas in short simple words.

Don’t edit anything. If you realise that you put the second point of a series in the wrong order. Just write “2….” and keep writing. Fix it later.

If you are tempted to edit as you write, turn off your monitor and type blind.

Editing

You wrote as fast as you could, now edit as slowly as you can bear.

You need to come back fresh and emotionally detached. You could out the article away for a few days and edit with fresh eyes.

Examine every sentence, one at a time. If you read that sentence for the first time, what would you want to know? Does the next sentence tell me the answer?

Write in the second person singular. ‘When you bake a cake” is more engaging than ‘when a person bakes ….”

Begin the sentence with the subject. This keeps the sentence in the active voice: ‘John ate the apple’ (active voice) not ‘the apple eaten by John’ (passive voice).

Keep sentences short with an average length of 14 words. It is easier to read and you will make fewer grammatical errors.

One useful tool is Microsoft’s Readability Statistics. It is available from the tool bar and works with the spell checker. Readability Statistics gives you a statistical summary of your article.

Aim for:

• Keep sentences of 14 words average.
• Words to a short 4 to 4.5 character average.
• Keep passive sentences to 5-10%.
• Keep readability Index above  50%
• Write for a grade 9-10 reading age.

Use concrete nouns that people can easily imagine. Avoid abstract words. One way to do this is to avoid any word that ends with ‘-tion’. Use your spell checker and you may be surprised how often those letters creep in.

Write with descriptive verbs and avoid adjectives and adverbs. Replace the ‘to be’ verb (‘was’, ‘are’, ‘were’) with expressive verbs.  

Avoid clichés as they sound like advertizing. Use fresh and interesting expressions.

Concentrate on each of the three stages of writing separately. Prepare until your idea flowers into an impelling creative impulse. Speedily flow your idea to paper and mercilessly edit your text with the cool eye of a detached observer.