Character development is complex. But in children’s books, and even books for teens, the approach is a little different. Here’s how to develop characters for kids and teens.

It seems like just yesterday (but it was actually a few months ago) that I announced the Character Development Crib Sheet. That crib sheet was, of course, intended for an adult audience with adult characters.

Children and teen characters are different. [Read more…]

It’s been said that every story has been told over and over. But characters are unique and refreshing…if you write them right. Here’s how to develop a character.

Every story is built on two fundamental bases. The foundation is the plot. The plot is fairly simple. It can be told in a few sentences.

You might spend a further few pages describing the many twists and turns in the plot.

On that foundation grow the characters.

This is where it gets exciting. People follow the plot, but they relate to their fellow humans (or non-humans given humanesque personalities). [Read more…]

Too many businesses use nouns to describe an action. That makes your message harder to read. Here’s how to fix that.

Speaking in plain English is never dumb. In a previous post, I shared a list of words that can be simplified without dumbing it down. A couple examples were “base” instead of “foundation” and “help” instead of “assist”.

But it’s not just the words you use that can make your text harder to read. It’s also the structure of the words.

The poor structure I see most often is replacing verbs with nouns. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against nouns. Some of my best friends are nouns.

But nouns describe things.

Verbs describe actions. [Read more…]

When you write in plain English, you are not “dumbing it down”. You are clearing things up.

There are two main ways to make a text easier for everybody to read. One way is to use simpler concepts. This way, even people with little education will understand. Even people unfamiliar with the topic will understand.

For instance, try explaining climate change to someone with very little education. You could talk about the change in temperature and the melting ice caps and the rising oceans and how all this affects El Niño and… no way!

You’ll have to make the explanation itself simpler. [Read more…]

It’s about the reader and only the reader. Use “you” in your text to give the reader ownership of your product or service, or the ideas you are putting forward.

You are the center of the universe. That is because you are the reader right now. As long as you keep reading, you are the center of the universe. Everything in this article is about you, because if you stop reading, I would just be writing in an echo chamber.

On your blog, “you” is also the center of the universe. But on your blog, you are not the “you”. You are just the writer; your readers are the all-important “you”.

If this sounds confusing, consider first why people come to your blog or website. There are several possible reasons: [Read more…]

If you are writing non-fiction, clarity counts most. Here are four tips to write clearly.

Before sharing my incredibly useful tips with you, I must begin with two huge caveats.

First, fiction is not like non-fiction. In fiction, the mood is sometimes more important than the facts. But even in fiction, clarity counts. If your readers can’t follow the story well enough, they will get discouraged.

And, even hitting just the right mood, your story will fall flat if they just don’t get it. [Read more…]

Sometimes we throw in extra words that add nothing to the meaning of what we are writing. They make it harder to read your article, book or report. Here are some of the most useless words in the English language.

Go straight to the Infographic

If you want to be clearly understood, write in plain English. Don’t use big words just to sound important. And don’t throw in these useless words that add nothing to the meaning of the sentence.

JUst throw them away!

Available

This useless word gets thrown into sentences all the time. Here are two ways it is thrown in for no good reason:

• “This report is available with…” No, no, no. Instead, you can say “This report has…”. It’s much shorter and to the point.
• “The line staff processed the available documents.” Hold on…they processed only the available ones? Really? Why didn’t they also process the unavailable ones? You see, there is no reason to specify that they processed the available documents.

Throw it away! [Read more…]

Readability is in crisis. Even the abstracts from studies on readability are virtually incomprehensible. Let’s see what they really say.

What is readability? It’s a measure of how easy a text is to read. For example, how easy is it to read a blog post or white paper you wrote?

Readability is most commonly measured in grade levels. The average person reads in the range of Grade 6 to Grade 8. This might shock you. You’ve had 12 grades of education. Or you’ve had 15 or even 20. But you still read at a Grade 8 level or lower. Yes, you can read at a higher level, but you would do so only when you have to. Why is this?

[Read more…]

Alexander Hamilton was America’s greatest ghostwriter. Here are five lessons he leaves us, with quotes from the musical that bears his name.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius of a writer, taking the fairly base form of entertainment that hip-hop is and elevating it to artistic grandeur. Hamilton: An American Musical contains layers of meaning, and pulls people into the story of America’s greatest ghostwriter.

What? You thought Hamilton was a banker? Or a politician? Or a lawyer? [Read more…]

The Grammar Monster doesn’t like what he sees in business documents. Let’s publicly flog the worst offending grammar errors.

I edit a lot of business documents, from blog posts to case studies, from book manuscripts to press releases. It’s funny how the same errors repeat themselves from document to document, from client to client. Here are some of those grammar errors I see the most. [Read more…]

Ever wonder how to become a better writer? It’s simple. Sit down at your keyboard and start writing.

I have seen this question posed in various ways over the years: “How can I become a better writer?” And the answer really isn’t any different than “How can I become a better basketball player?” Or “How can I become a better guitar player?” Or “How can I become a better evil magician?” [Read more…]