Technology is changing our expectations of writing and it’s a change for the better. The immediate access that the Internet, cell phones and fast food have conditioned us to expect is lowering our tolerance for the historically slow, painfully dry and overly academic approach to writing. I’m glad for the change.
When I was in school, every essay needed to have an introduction, then expand on the first idea, then the second, then the third until slow, painful mental atrophy set in like slow-cure concrete. I suspect that tenure-laden professors still bore their students with this approach even today.
When I buy a book and find that stale approach inside its pages, I get angry. I don’t have the time for it. My stack of unread books is twice as tall as my stack of read books. I have two kids, two businesses, and a time-consuming love of rock climbing. I suspect that I am not alone with this type of “lifeload”. Readers today don’t have the time or the desire to read where the author got the book idea, who inspired it and who they want to thank. They should save it for the back-page index.
The new rules for writing are…
- Introductions must be 500 words or less and add value to the reading experience; a drawn out synopsis of the book is indulgent and unnecessary. Introductions are as antiquated as the roman numerals that mark their pages. If the design firm you hired to pretty up the cover isn’t good enough to communicate the idea in a glance, find another designer.
- Acknowledgments are important to the writer and the people they thank, but no one else cares. Please place them after the index just before your bio.
- Layout the meat-n-potatoes, bullet-point, 45-minute-speech version of the book in the first chapter. Someone should be able to read chapter 1 and know what is in the rest of the book. It will increase the readers desire to continue.
- Don’t hide behind feel-good case studies and anecdotal statistics, especially if it’s a how-to book. Don’t hide your consulting business behind a vague theory. Step-by-step implementation is what your readers are after. Have the confidence in your material to know that if you lay it all out there, people will want to hire you to implement it because of it’s value, complexity, and the demands on their time that they don’t want to commit to.
- Lastly, and most important, make the book as short as possible. Don’t follow Malcolm Gladwell’s example by putting in enough filler to make the book 5″ wide, 7″ tall and 1″ thick. His publisher is wrong to make him do it. Do it right, do it well. Don’t waste words.
Less is more. That reality is old, permanent and needs no introduction. Hopefully your book will be as strong.
