clarity & content creation
What does it mean to be a strong writer? Is there a specific process to follow? A language to learn? A particular voice to convey?
Writing means different things to different people. In William Zinsser's book, On Writing Well, he discusses the nearly black-and-white differences between his and another writer's literary beliefs, attitudes, and practices. Zinsser himself is deeply practical, simple and professional in his work, while his companion was the utter opposite: passionate, whimsical, and thrilled by it. There are no hard-and-fast rules to the process of writing. In a way, writing is what you make of it.
“Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.”
Everything from rewriting to taking breaks to writer's block to symbolism is tackled differently by different authors. There is no "right" way to write, as it were. Certainly, there are guidelines: grammatical structures, syntax, and rules of thumb to rely on, but on the whole, writing is as individual as the authors behind it.
The important thing is to imbue your work with what makes it yours: that unique voice that catches the reader's eye and fills every word with humanity, enthusiasm, and warmth. That, more than any textbook structure or hierarchy of words, is what will draw your audience in and hold them fast.
Keeping your audience's attention is more important now than ever before. Web pages in particular suffer from a problem of attention. The Nielsen Norman Group has found that 79% of test users "always scanned any new page they came across" and a whopping 16% read word-by-word.
This means we need to re-evaluate how we create web content, and content in general. The tides have long since begun to change, and it is not in favor of dense, long-form content. Instead, web users overwhelmingly prefer simple, easy-to-digest content, without obvious promotions, opinions, or other "fluff" that distracts from the main point.
To properly capture and maintain a modern audience, writing must be concise, scannable, and objective from an outside perspective. Combining this simplicity and clarity with your unique, natural author's voice will create the perfect blend of form and function to enrapture any audience.
