Developing a Thought
We’re told attention spans are shrinking, so if we want people to read what we write for the web, we have to be concise.
That’s sound advice . . . up to a point.
Lately, I’ve coached some bloggers who each suffer from the same dilemma: They want to write longer works — more fully realized posts or even a book — but they’re not sure how. They’re so practiced at condensing their thoughts, that they can’t, out of habit, bring themselves to expand them.
If you’re in that situation, consider the following exercise.
Grab a pen and print out your last post (or any piece of your writing). What I’d now like you to do is mark spots where you, or another writer working on the same piece, could have expanded the work in a different direction.
You might, for instance, have described a scene using one or two words when someone else would have described it in five hundred words.
Or, you presented one argument, and neglected mentioning any counterarguments.
Or, you spoke about an idea without giving an example of it in action.
Once you’ve marked all the potential development spots, pick one and write about it.
That is, write it as if you were going to insert it into the post, or use it as a way of writing a new standalone post.
Remember, for the most part, writing is an unnatural act. Whatever writing style you have is learned. If you want to take your writing in a new direction, you have to force yourself in that direction so you can learn as you go.
To expand your writing, practice expanding it.
