Writing to Be Understood: What Works and Why

by Anne Janzer Narrated by Anne Janzer

Overview

Have you ever wondered what makes your favorite nonfiction books so compelling, understandable, or enjoyable to read? Those works connect with you, as a reader. When you recognize what's happening, you can apply those same methods to your own writing.

Writing To Be Understood is the thinking writer's guide to effective nonfiction writing techniques, such as:

- Using analogies to illustrate unseen concepts

- Appealing to the reader's innate curiosity

- Balancing humility with credibility

For each topic, the book combines insights from cognitive science with advice from writers and expert practitioners in fields of psychology, technology, economics, medicine, policy, and more.

Whether you're an expert trying to communicate with a mainstream audience or a nonfiction writer hoping to reach more people, Writing to be Understood will help you expand the impact of your words.

Gold Medal Winner, 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

10/08/2018
In this straightforward, practical guide from Janzer (The Writer’s Process), the “why” of her subtitle provides her book’s most intriguing aspect. She applies insights from psychology and cognitive science, among other disciplines, to help nonfiction writers gear their work to the minds of their audience. Rather than focus exclusively on style or technique—though she does provide advice on tone and stylistic elements, such as the use of humor—Janzer seeks to figure out how to connect with readers, including hostile or resistant ones, and avoid alienating them. (Avoid overly complex sentences and “field-specific” jargon, for example.) She also explains how to take difficult issues and make them accessible and appealing to a general readership by understanding how people take in and process information. Acknowledging that readers “may be surprised by the amount of cognitive science” in what’s billed as a writing guide, she explains, per the title, “that’s because the end goal is being understood, and understanding is a cognitive function.” It’s a unique way to approach the topic, and while it may not resonate with everyone, it’s worthy of investigation. Moreover, her belief that the world needs effective communicators of challenging and multifaceted topics provides this entry into a crowded genre with an unusually compelling reason for being. (BookLife)

From the Publisher

"The world needs more writers who can communicate effectively, clearly, and empathically about complex topics like science and medicine. Read this book and become one of those writers." - Laura Lindenfeld, Ph.D., Director of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University

"In today's distracted world, it's not enough to simply write well - you have to hook the reader's interest and accelerate their comprehension. Use this book to engineer a better, more effective reading experience." - Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173443465
Publisher:	Cuesta Park Consulting
Publication date:	08/08/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

WHO ARE YOUR READERS?

How choosing a narrow audience can broaden your reach Why finding points of connection makes readers more receptive How to choose a specific audience

ALTHOUGH LANGUAGE IS STILL PRETTY recent in an evolutionary context, it has been with humans for millennia, shaping our brains and behaviors. As individuals, most of us have been learning from and sharing with other people our entire lives. Each of us carries within us enormous amounts of working knowledge about how to communicate.

Think about it for a moment. You automatically adopt different explanatory styles based on the person you are addressing. If a three-year-old asks you how your phone works, you'll give a different answer than you would to an adult colleague. Faced with someone returning to civilization after two decades in the wilderness, you'd come up with a different approach altogether. You automatically make decisions and shift your explanations based on what you know about the other person, as well as real-time feedback such as questions or confused expressions.

Yet when we write, those absent readers become less real to us, and we lose the benefit of a lifetime of acquired skills. We become entranced with our own words or caught up in our subject and write for ourselves or for some faceless, anonymous "general public." Everybody suffers when this happens.

To improve your nonfiction writing, first bring the reader back into the equation. When you picture a real person, you can activate that almost-instinctive knowledge you've acquired about communicating.

The Unknown Reader

While it may feel like a one-way street, writing does not fulfill its purpose until someone reads and understands the words.

Remember the Venn diagram in the introduction: what you want to write, and what the reader needs to see?

To find the area of overlap, you must understand the reader's needs and context. For many writers, this is the most pressing and difficult problem to solve.

So, who's your reader?

If you've honed your writing skills in an academic context, this question may be easy to answer. Whether writing papers for classes or peer-reviewed journal articles, you have a fairly accurate sense of the audience, including their background knowledge and why they're reading your work. The same holds true when you write for people in your industry; you understand their roles and needs.

This background knowledge is missing when you address a general, unknown audience. The potential world of readers is as broad and wide as the ocean. Authors who are expert in their fields can fall prey to one of two conflicting temptations in this situation:

• They stick to writing for readers they know, such as colleagues or people like them. Academic researchers who present dense, scholarly works to a general audience limit the potential scope and impact of their efforts.

• Conversely, they may attempt to write for everyone, assuming that the reader brings nothing to the conversation. This approach often results in a generic, dull description that interests no one.

No matter how compelling you find your topic, you won't reach everyone — that's a given. The more specific you are in visualizing the target reader, the more effectively you can write. Put aside your fascination with the subject and pick a target audience.

Pick an Audience, Any Audience

Thinking of a specific person activates your built-in communication skills, using your life-long training in human interaction to make decisions about the writing. Knowing your reader influences the words you choose, the sentences you craft, and even the approach you use to present your ideas.

Many writers make the common mistake of being too vague when picturing a reader. When it comes to identifying a target audience: everyone is no one.

You may worry about excluding other people if you write specifically for one individual. Relax — that doesn't necessarily happen. A well-defined audience simplifies decisions about explanations and word choice. Your style may become more distinctive, in a way that attracts people beyond the target reader.

Andy Weir wrote The Martian for science fiction readers who want their stories firmly grounded in scientific fact, and perhaps rocket scientists who enjoy science fiction. I belong to neither audience, yet I enjoyed the book. Weir was so successful at pleasing his target audience that they shared it widely and enthusiastically. Because Weir didn't try to cater to everyone, he wrote something that delighted his core audience. Eventually, his work traveled far beyond that sphere.

It may be counterintuitive, but if you want to reach a larger audience, consider concentrating more closely on a specific segment of it. To broaden your impact, tighten your focus on the reader.

Once you've chosen a target reader or two, make a list of the identities, beliefs, or experiences you may have in common. Particularly when you're trying to reach people outside your field, or readers with different beliefs, these connection points offer clues as to how to proceed to earn and sustain the readers' attention.

Forging a Shared Identity with the Reader

In the Prologue of her memoir, Lab Girl, Hope Jahren starts by asking you (the reader) to look out the window and contemplate a leaf on a tree. After discussing possible factors to explore (its shape, color, veins, and more), she prompts you to pose a specific question about your leaf. Then she makes a surprising assertion.

Because you asked a question, you are a scientist and one of her colleagues — and therefore have stake in her story.

We get so caught up in our subjects, we often forget about the readers. When writing about sensitive or challenging subjects, the readers may be the most important part of the story. People who feel they share something in common with you are more likely to be open to your ideas.

In 2016, a team of researchers led by the Harvard School of Education surveyed ninth-grade teachers and students in a large, suburban high school in the U.S. More than 300 students and 25 teachers answered a series of questions as part of a psychological study disguised as a "getting to know you" exercise. After receiving the questionnaires, the researchers gave students and teachers alike feedback (manipulated, of course) about their shared characteristics and preferences. Some were told they aligned on three key points, others on five.

The researchers checked back five weeks later, asking students and teachers alike about their experiences so far. Those teachers and students who were told they shared five points of connection reported better relationships, while students earned higher grades.

Human beings come with built-in us/them filtering. Family members are our closest groups, followed by community members, work colleagues, citizens of cities or states, and so on. We also sort and categorize people by behavior and appearance: those who look like us, dress like us, behave like us, root for the same sports teams, worship in the same way, etc.

When we first meet someone, we instinctively look for ways that we are the same or different. We're not aware of many of these us/them filters. Deep in our primitive minds, we are trying to determine if the person poses a threat.

Despite our strong need to form groups, people also shift identities and switch between roles quickly: parent, child, sibling, work colleague, singer in the choir, member of the neighborhood, etc.

Our social identities are fluid.

When reading fiction or nonfiction, we virtually inhabit different groups, perspectives, and identities. So, take your readers' roles and identity into consideration when writing.

For complicated or global topics, you may choose to reframe the reader's sense of belonging from a smaller group to a broader one. The famous Blue Marble photo of the Earth from the Apollo 17 space flight altered our perspectives. Rather than being members of neighborhoods, cities, and nations, we saw at a glance the larger group made up of the inhabitants of this globe. For a moment, at least, viewers experienced a shared global identity.

Even as you define a target audience and understand their differences, remember the roles and identities you share. That perspective will be invaluable if you want to forge a stronger connection with the absent reader.

* * *

Methods for Writers: Identifying Your Audience

Spend some time thinking about your ideal audience, the people you most want to address with your writing. To help you narrow in on reader profiles, borrow a practice from marketing.

Identify ideal readers

In the technology industry, where I spent my career, businesses create buyer personas, or detailed profiles of buyers and decision-makers. Personas begin with job titles and add general demographic and psychographic information, such as attitudes and aspirations, to create a fictional character who represents a segment of buyers. Armed with this insight, marketers generate content to meet the needs of specific groups of prospects and customers.

Persona development forces marketers to contemplate customer needs and context rather than the thing they are selling. Writers can benefit from doing something similar.

Choose a few "ideal readers" for your work. Come up with specific examples of individuals you would like to reach. Aiming for a market segment isn't enough. We don't write for data or segments — we write for people. Picturing an individual (whether fictional or real) connects with your innate social instincts, guiding decisions about what to include, what style to adopt, and which stories might resonate.

If you're not sure of your ideal audience, start by selecting people based on their backgrounds and motivation for reading. For example, you might start with:

• People who read the New York Times and are interested in housing policy

• Educated baby boomers seeking to understand the recent advances in medicine that are relevant to their lives

Then find real or fictional characters that fit in those categories. When you can envision a specific individual, you can start to call on cognitive empathy — the subject of the next chapter.

Look for shared experiences and identities

Michelle Tillis Lederman, author of The 11 Laws of Likability, coaches corporate executives and nonprofit leaders to connect with others through shared experiences: "Realizing we share a connection with someone else puts us at ease." According to Lederman, "When we find one place of agreement, it's easier to get to the next place of agreement. For example, we might present a universally acceptable objective, such as ridding the world of cancer, while acknowledging controversy over the mechanisms that we to reach that objective. Even if we're not on the same page about how, we agree on why."

Three rules to remember

These are my three essential rules for choosing your ideal reading audience:

1. Your audience is never "everyone." Writing for everyone pleases no one.

2. Having a specific audience makes your writing better.

3. Personas, demographic classifications, and customer segments aren't people. Write for people.

WRITING ADVICE FROM A BESTSELLING NONFICTION AUTHOR

Name: Daniel Pink

Experience: Author of six best-selling nonfiction books

Specific Skill Set: Writing effectively about complicated topics for a wide audience

* * *

Daniel Pink writes about topics ranging from neuroscience to human motivation to chronobiology, explaining these subjects for the general reading public. His books rise quickly to the top of nonfiction best seller lists and stay there for months. Plus, they are always a pleasure to read.

How does he cover these geeky topics while making them appealing to a broad audience? I asked him. It turns out that he applies many of the writing practices described in this book, while focusing relentlessly on the needs of his audience.

Identifying his ideal audience

Says Pink, "I write for readers who want to understand big ideas and findings but who aren't experts. I do the time-consuming work of figuring stuff out so they don't have to. What's more, one of my own tests of whether I understand a concept is whether I can explain it quickly and clearly to someone who knows little about the subject."

Getting outside opinions

To write for others effectively, we have to get outside our own heads. Pink does this extensively during the idea-generation phase. "When it comes to generating and testing ideas, I like to talk to people — to bounce notions off of them, get their reactions, have them find weak spots."

How about during the writing process? "In the writing itself, my circle is quite small. The most important reader is my wife, who is also my business partner. She reads every word I write — often multiple times. She is an extremely sharp-minded and astute reader who — and this is important — doesn't shy away from telling me I'm not making sense. My book editor, too, plays an enormous role in both talking through ideas and reading and editing pages."

Balancing story and data

In each of his books, Pink draws readers in with stories and anecdotes told well. When begins with the launch of the Lusitania. Drive begins with monkeys unexpectedly solving puzzles. I asked him how he found the balance of story, data, and exposition. His response: "I don't aim for specific ratios. But I think hard about what combination is the best way to get across an idea. Sometimes doing that requires leaning more heavily on one particular element. Also, the balance is sometimes dictated by the quality of the material. If I've got a great story, I'll use that and supplement with research. If I've got a mind-boggling study, I might rely less heavily on the story and let the findings speak for themselves."

Other important writing advice

What other advice does he offer to nonfiction writers?

"Three things. Rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite."

CHAPTER 2

THE ABSENT READER

Why writers need cognitive empathy Your reader isn't entirely rational — and neither are you How improv develops empathy for the reader

WHEN WE CONVERSE with another person, we receive real-time feedback into whether or not that person understands us (if we bother to pay attention.)

In a face-to-face conversation, we can detect when the listener's interest flags. We see them reaching surreptitiously for their phones or their eyes glazing over. Perhaps a puzzled expression makes us pause, giving the listener a chance to ask a question. When writing, however, we lack those cues, so we have to understand and empathize with someone who is not actually in front of us.

How can we train ourselves to think about that absent reader and their needs? We need to develop empathy for people who are not present.

Empathy for the Reader

People throw around the word empathy loosely, so let's distinguish between a couple of variations on the term.

Cognitive empathy refers to the ability to take another person's perspective. When someone says, "I see where you are coming from," they are claiming cognitive empathy.

Affective empathy is the ability to summon the appropriate emotional response for another person's emotional state. The common refrain for affective empathy is "I feel your pain."

Writers don't have to feel or directly respond to readers' emotions, but they should at least have a sense of the readers' feelings. As an obvious example, if you're writing about end-of-life care, you're aware that readers inhabit highly emotional environments. But if you're writing about technology advances, you would want to know if the audience approaches technological or behavior change fearfully. That insight would change the way you write.

As a writer, cognitive empathy helps you understand readers' perspectives: what they already know and need to know, what they are doing when they encounter this information. And while you do not need to feel their pains, you should consider the emotional context.

What's Going On in the Reader's Brain

Most nonfiction writers operate in the realm of the rational, analytical thought. The reasoning mind is a wonderful thing. All around us, we see evidence of the miraculous results of human reasoning and problem solving: airplanes that appear to defy gravity, medicines that cure unseen illnesses, or manipulation of matter at the atomic level.

Yet, always remember that human thought is a complex combination of abstract thought, linear thinking, associative processes, emotions, sensory perceptions, mental shortcuts, and ephemeral memories. You are not an entirely rational being. Nor is your reader. By planting yourself firmly in the field of rationality and ignoring emotion, you reduce the effectiveness of your writing.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Writing to Be Understood"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Anne Janzer.
Excerpted by permission of Cuesta Park Consulting.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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