Tuesday Tidbit: “I’ve failed dreadfully if you have to read a sentence twice to figure out what I meant.”

 

Continuing with your need to strive for clarity in your writing. . . .

 

After you’ve set aside your rough draft for a while, read it with fresh eyes, checking for ways to make your wording perfectly clear for readers.

 

One of your most important goals

is communicating effectively with your readers.

 

Here’s one way to do that:

Aim your writing at an eighth-grade audience.

 

You might be asking: “What?!?”

 

You read that correctly.

 

Years ago, when I studied journalism, instructors taught us to aim our writing at eighth graders—that is, to write in a way eighth-grade students could easily understand.

Recently I saw the same advice so it must still be the best practice.

 

What’s true for journalists is true for memoirists: Aim at an eighth-grade audience.

 

Ken Follett, Welsh author, says his goal is to make his prose “utterly easy to understand.” He calls it “transparent prose.”

 

“I’ve failed dreadfully,” Follet says, “if you have to read a sentence twice to figure out what I meant.”

 

You know what Follett means.

You have had the unpleasant experience

of reading a sentence or a paragraph

two or three times

before you could figure out the writer’s message.

Don’t be that kind of writer!

 

Revise your sentences and paragraphs

and chapters until they are

“utterly easy to understand.”

 

And remember,

“revision is not punishment”

(Donald Murray)

 

There you have it:

your Tuesday Tidbit.