Are you Rick Grimes or a Walker?

The difference between good writing & bad

Rick Grimes or Walker? Depending on the day (and what you did the night before), you may feel like either. But when you’re writing, you’ll want to aim for the former.

Why? Because if you’re not fighting for the top of the content heap, you’re simply doing the sorry zombie shuffle. And, in today’s reading world, it’s survival of the fittest.

The Apocolyptic Battle For Readers’ Attention

There are plenty of Ricks out there. They’re attractive, alluring. They draw us in with an addictive nature that often makes us do things to seek a relationship with them. We buy, we subscribe, we feel emotionally connected.

But for every Rick, there are at least 10 Walkers, mucking up our world. Their cold, empty words make us turn and run, drop off a page or filter or delete their unwanted emails.

As writers, it’s funny how we try so hard to break through the white noise and, in the process, may inadvertently create walker-type content.

And it happens for a lot of reasons, the least of which may be because we’re bad writers. Sometimes, we’re trying to please a client or a executive who has watered down our work; other times, we’re trying to squeeze too many SEO words or key messages into our writing without thinking about how the resulting content resonates with our readers.

 

5 Ways To Kill Your Content

So how can we keep our content from becoming a shell of what it could be? Here are just a few ways writers unknowingly kill their content.

1. Ignore your readers.

You might think the most important quality in a writer is the ability to write. I think it’s the ability to have empathy. To put yourself in your readers’ shoes.

Before you write anything, you should be asking yourself, “What is my audience interested in? Is it this? And, if so, am I writing it in a language they understand?”

For example, like other companies, Surly Brewing Co. has included its philosophy statement on its website, but it does so in language that resonates with its customers. To paraphrase, it states:

We don’t make beer for everyone. Beer for everyone is beer for no one.

Our philosophy? Make great beer. Have fun. Give a Damn about your community.

Really, our philosophy is better poured than spoken or written. So, go Find Surly beer and get all philosophical.

Now, I want a beer.

2. Go on and on and on.

We often talk about the “wall of words” that happens when articles drone on, forming large (and many) paragraphs containing every little detail.

Fashion consultant Tim Gunn often reminds designers on “Project Runway” to edit themselves. And like a gaudy dress embellished with too many fabrics, colors and buttons, sometimes writing can contain too much of a good thing. Some details add important context to a story, and there are others that are just nice-to-knows and some that aren’t even that.

Take a good, hard look at what you’re writing and ask yourself whether removing a word, sentence or paragraph would affect its quality and accuracy and remove it if it doesn’t.

You can also break up your text with shorter paragraphs, easy-to-scan subheads and bullets.

3. Use 3 words when 1 will do.

Like details, general wordiness is exhausting to read.

• For example, when you write: “Due to the fact that” rather than: “Because”
• Or how about: “In some cases” rather than: “Sometimes”
• Then there’s my favorite, the redundancies. “Totally unique,” as if there’s a somewhat unique. Nope, just unique.
• Or, we can be “connected together.” Is there a way to be disconnected together or connected apart? Probably just connected would work.
• Added bonus, current status quo, collaborate together, blend together. I could go on but won’t for the same reason I can’t slowly drag my fingernails down a chalkboard. If you’re into that kind of self-punishment, Grammarist has a great list of redundancies.

Fewer words. Easier reading.

4. Bury the lead.

Studies show that readers generally drop off after the third or fourth paragraph. According to a Chartbeat study, more than half of readers spent 15 seconds or less on a web page (about a third spent that amount of time on actual articles).

A recent Microsoft study demonstrating the human attention span dropped from 12 seconds to 8 in just the last 15 years shows you need to grab your readers’ attention up front—and fast.

So saving your good stuff until the end is like not including it at all. Often, bits of reading treasures—the kind that make you think “Aha!” or the real crux of story—are hidden in the seventh or eighth paragraph, when they should be promoted to the first or second.

5. Lack a point.

If you don’t have a good, solid reason for writing something, your audience won’t have a good, solid reason for reading it. Likewise, if you have a good reason for writing something but don’t convey it in your writing, you’ll get the same reaction. Why should your readers care if you don’t?

Good writing has a point, a goal, and drives straight toward it. Bad writing has no direction or too many.

These are just 4 examples; there are many more. It’s not easy to gain traction in today’s world or, as novelist Nathaniel Hamilton put it: “Easy reading is damn hard writing.” But it’s well worth it in the end.