writing

Tips about Writing

kencoder3 Comments

Recently, I borrow a book call “Can Do Writing”; It is talking about how to do business writing, which is also appropriate for my blogging; There are some points that I learnt from it and worth to share;

Hope this article could give you some tips when you don’t know how to start or organise your writing;

Know your Purpose and Audience

To make an article that people love; We need to have a clear purpose that may bring results;
For example, a product comparison report help us to choose the right product that fit our needs; These are the questions we need to think about when we are drafting our articles:

  • Who will read this article?
  • What they learnt from it and how the content help?
  • Is the content too easy or difficult to understand for my audiences?
  • Is the information too less or much to my audiences?

Example:
A “hello world” android program tutorial;

  • Who?
    • Android developer, probably a beginner;
  • What can be learnt?
    • How to compile and run the program;
  • Too easy or Too difficult
    • Talking about “Activity” Lifecycle may be too difficult;
  • Too less or Too much
    • Should include how to setup the IDE, folder structure, how to compile and run;
    • Other topics will be too much;

Reference: http://developer.android.com/training/basics/firstapp/creating-project.html

Make a Purpose statement

A purpose statement can help us to focus on what we are writing, preventing writing something too many idea which may distract your audience; Besides it guides us to organise our articles well so that our audiences can digest easier.

A purpose statement is assembled by the following parts:

  • Type of your article?
  • What your article does?
  • What will your audience learn from?
  • Who is your audience?
  • What will your audience does with the information?

Examples:

  • Tips to draft content for technical blogger
  • Create an Android Project using Android Studio for programmer not yet know about Android
  • C++ std::vector Programming Reference for C++ Programmer

Making Points

Points, the ideas and facts you want to present, are important in your articles; To make our articles different from others, our points should be different from others, otherwise, it doesn’t made any point to make the articles;

For examples, write an article about “Learning Java”; We can make different points by targeting the different audiences, such as “Learning Java for C programmer” and “Learning Java for Python programmer”; We may find these books in bookstores;
The authors of them are offering different points or say different perspective to their audiences;

Three techniques to select and organise the points:

  • Write the points in short words and sentence
  • Eliminate the points not match your purposes and audiences
  • Order the points

Further more

The above is just about building the content of the articles, which is the thing I always missed before;

In the book, there are a lot of information about how the technique of writing such as using appropriate words, keep the content consistent, and more.

Book Reference:
CAN DO Writing; author: Daniel Graham and Judith Graham;