What Professional Writers Actually Prioritize: The 5 Essentials for Powerful Nonfiction (Ep. 14)

You're putting in the work—rereading sentences, second-guessing word choices, trying to get it just right. But each fix creates new problems, and something always feels . . . off.

It's not a lack of effort or talent. You just don't know what to prioritize.

This episode will help you close that gap between effort and impact—so you can stop feeling overwhelmed and start writing with clarity and confidence.

I break down the five essentials that matter most for great writing—true across genres, but especially for nonfiction—so you know exactly what to prioritize and how to achieve each on the page.

These five are at the heart of strong writing, and addressing them creates a cascade of improvement. It’s kind of like treating the underlying cause vs a symptom: only one leads to a cure. Focus on these, and everything else starts to fall into place.

If trying to improve your writing sometimes feels like a game of whack-a-mole, this episode is for you!

For more specific techniques to level up your writing craft today, grab my FREE download “From Good to Great: Ten Tips to Write Like a Pro,” along with an accompanying video training, at www.maraeller.com/tentips.

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Transcript

0:03

Welcome to the Soul and Science of Great Writing, where the mastery of craft meets the mystery of creation. I'm your host, Mara, er, freelance editor, book coach, and writing teacher with over 16 years of experience. I'm obsessed with the transformative power of words and with understanding what makes writing truly exceptional. Not just to help my clients, but to grow my own craft too. So what makes writing truly great? Is it the spark of inspiration, the unique voice, the intangible soul that breathes life into words? Or is it the careful structure, repeatable strategies, and attention to detail that turn an idea into something readers can't put down? In truth, it's both. The soul and science of great writing brings creativity and craft together, exploring the soul and the science with equal parts, awe and analysis. Today I am addressing a common problem. I hear from my clients and students. I feel like my writing isn't quite working, but I don't know why or what to fix. I'm trying to do all the things I was taught in English class, but it feels overwhelming and sometimes it feels like I'm only making things worse. If that's you, I've got you. In this episode, I'm breaking down the five most important qualities for compelling nonfiction, so you can stop wondering what to prioritize and start writing with clarity, confidence, and impact. Part of what makes writing such a uniquely difficult art is that there are so many things to consider at any given point. You have to be thinking about literally dozens of qualities at the same time in order to produce truly great writing. And that's why it can easily become overwhelming when you're trying to figure out how to improve. Which of the 17 things should you focus on? and sometimes they seem to be in competition with one another. that's part of why editors and teachers will always recommend doing multiple passes through your writing in order to, focus on different things at different times. Even professionals can't keep every quality for great writing in their minds at the same time, but you may still find yourself wondering which of the things matters most or feel like. You just don't know what to focus on in order to improve in your limited time in a way that's gonna actually move the needle. In order to answer that question, we have to start by asking another, namely, what makes writing good? I wanna answer this question in a way that transcends genre and style preferences, but we are focusing here on nonfiction, most particularly what is often known as prescriptive nonfiction, which means not narrative nonfiction like memoir and. Not academic nonfiction, although actually these tips do pertain to academic nonfiction, and they do pertain to narrative nonfiction and to a lot of fiction as well. But they are particularly curated to. Highlight what I see as the five essentials of powerful Prose. Prose as opposed to poetry. we're skewing a bit more towards the science side of things today. Which, if you've listened to episode three, all about the science of great writing, you know, is something that I see as supporting the soul. The science is what provides the structure and support that the soul part needs in order to thrive. Now whenever we're considering. What good writing is or what makes writing good? We have to begin by asking ourselves what the purpose is, what is the goal? I don't think you can judge the quality of something without first asking what it is attempting to achieve. If you judge a science fiction novel, according to the standards for academic nonfiction, it's going to utterly fail and vice versa. Likewise for music, if you wanna judge a pop song according to the standards for, let's say a classical symphony, it's never gonna stand up and vice versa. So I think we have to judge each individual creation against what it is attempting to be. So when we're talking about most nonfiction writing, at its core, the goal is communication. I do believe that is the primary goal for writing in general, but particularly for most nonfiction writing The primary dominant goal is to communicate ideas, information, experience, perspectives. So good. Writing then means that it is effective communication. There are five essentials that I have identified over my 16 plus years of experience as a teacher of writing and professional editor that, again, across most genres, most sub genres. These five essentials are the things that set great writing apart from mediocre. They are clarity, precision, concision, consistency, and voice. Now you might be asking, what about correctness? Why isn't that on there? Doesn't punctuation, grammar, and all that technical stuff matter. Absolutely. We do have to follow the rules of modern English, but it's a lot less important than you might think. Clearly publishing something that's littered with comma errors and misspellings and incorrect capitalization Would not look good and it would not be very effective because all those things would distract the reader. So there's a basic level of knowledge and attention to those concerns of correctness. That is certainly essential, and that's why punctuation and grammar and usage and all that stuff are part of what I teach when I teach writing. But that's not on my top five list here, because first tools like Grammarly can take you a long way. And of course AI now can also help with that But, you know, be careful about AI use. there's a lot of risk, there's a lot of ways to use it badly. Probably do an episode all about AI and writers and how to use it well and how to avoid misusing it. At some point is certainly a hot topic with a lot of strong opinions. And second, every writer needs a proofreader. And third, believe it or not, learning the basics of punctuation and grammar is relatively easy in comparison to these other qualities. So yes, you need a basic level of proficiency with punctuation and such, but after that, it really doesn't matter that much. It's not gonna set you apart, Especially in the age of ai, when any AI tool can turn out grammatically correct material, what it will struggle to do is to produce writing that is clear and precise, concise. It can probably do pretty well. but especially voice. Voice is all the more important today because that is something that. AI cannot do. And if you're wondering what that is, we'll get there in just a moment. Okay. first, clarity, that's my number one. I do put it first on my list because that is the goal that in my mind, trumps. Every other goal. The number one priority for good writing is and always will be clarity. If your reader can't understand what you're trying to say, then none of the rest of it matters. It comes back to that primary goal communication. If you can't communicate your ideas because they're not clear, then any of the other fun stuff ceases to matter. Clarity for the reader begins with clarity in your own mind, because if you're not sure what you're trying to say, there is no chance the reader will grasp it. Clarity is essential at two levels, the macro and the micro. Macro meaning, big picture and idea level, the flow of ideas, the clarity and the articulation of your ideas, and micro meaning, the sentence and phrase level. You've got to start with the macro. There are lots of different ways to do it, but you've gotta do something before you are ready to write a first draft, what I call a first draft, which means something that is ready to really assess and revise in a meaningful way, where you've got all of your ideas on the page and like more or less the right order. When you take the time to clarify your ideas before you write that first draft, you'll save a lot of time and hassle in the long run. Professional writers always have a pre-writing strategy to help them clarify their ideas. It might be some form of brainstorming, some form of outlining. It can sometimes involve a free writing or a. Sometimes called a vomit draft to use a slightly gross term, you know, where you're just kind of dumping it all out of your brain onto the page. But that's not a first draft. That's a part of the pre-writing process. And then there's always some time taken to assess and improve the clarity of their ideas. Some of them are gonna be more important than others. They're gonna need to be refined in the way that they're articulated. And then you can start to move on. Professional writers know that before they can get anywhere close to a final draft, they have to be crystal clear on their main idea, what their supporting points are, and how those points should be organized. for fiction or narrative nonfiction, including memoir, these would be themes and scenes. what is the most important theme or idea that your book is trying to communicate? What are the supporting ideas and how should this be illustrated on the page in the form of scenes or chapters? As Liz Morrow and Ariel Curry of Hungry Authors say, you have to be clear on what your transformation tale is. Your transformation for the reader and or for the main character or author. If it's memoir, then the main character is the author and that main character is going through a transformation where they are different by the end of the book than at the beginning. And then the reader's transformation mirrors that main character transformation. In more prescriptive nonfiction, the transformation is directly aimed at the reader you are walking the reader through. Here is where you are at the beginning. This is where you're struggling. This is how you want to be different. And then the book walks them step by step through a process of transformation to bring them to a different place by the end where their problem has been solved, or at least improved. So this requires that you are clear on who your reader is, what your purpose is for the piece, and of course what your genre is. You'll communicate all of this through your table of contents. Your introduction and conclusion, and by leaving signposts along the way to help the reader follow along on the journey of your argument. An argument here doesn't mean like a debate with someone, right? It means your message, if you remember from high school English class, right? Your thesis, what are you trying to convince someone of? Or if it's less persuasive, you know, what are you trying to show them? What are you trying to help them understand? What is the main idea That you want them to understand and know by the end of your piece. Once you've got clarity at the macro level, you can begin to work on clarity at the micro level, professional writers prioritize clarity at the sentence level by expressing their ideas simply and directly, as opposed to trying to make their writing sound fancy or intelligent or flowery. A common mistake among younger or newer writers is to feel like, oh, if I just state my ideas in a clear, simple way, it will be boring or it'll be too simple, or I won't sound smart, but sort of ironically, when we try to sound smart, we end up doing the opposite. The way to sound smart is to have smart ideas and then to express them clearly and simply and directly. this doesn't mean that your writing is basic or boring, but the priority is to state your ideas as clearly as possible, which means using the simplest, most straightforward structure that will accommodate those ideas. The reason you see complex sentences sometimes in great writing is not because they were trying to be fancy, it's because their ideas were so complex that they required more complex expression. okay, so how do we do that? Well, we all tend to perceive a sentence as clear when it is structured as a narrative. In other words, there are characters doing things. I don't mean like a character in a fictional sense, But in the way the grammar of the sentence works, there is something, doing something. I'll share some examples in just a minute. We also tend to perceive a sentences as clear when the subject and the verb are close together and near the beginning of the sentence. Rather than lots of introductory phrases and clauses before we can finally get to the subject and verb, and when the verbs themselves are active and precise. Here's an example of a not clear sentence. The discussion of the group was about the achievement of clarity. So to fix this, we have to ask who is doing what here? Get that. Subject, doing something and get the subject in verb, close to the beginning of the sentence and close to one another. The group, there's our subject discussed. There's our verb, how to achieve clarity, much simpler. Even better because achieve clarity is still a little bit of an odd way of saying things, not the most direct. The group discussed how to write clearly, boom, simple, clear, and much more concise as well. So when in doubt, if you're ever struggling with various ways to write something, ask yourself, which option is the clearest for my reader? And always go with that. Clarity trumps every other concern. The second essential quality is precision, and this really comes down to word choice. Working to select the most accurate, specific, precise word or phrase possible to express your intended meaning. Precision is an important part of clarity, but it also goes beyond that. Precision adds a crispness to your writing that brings it to life, particularly in descriptions. Consider this description. The woman walked to the chair and sat down. Can you picture it? Does that conjure an image in your mind? Maybe. Does it move you in any way? I doubt it. The woman walked to the chair and sat down. Now, consider this revision. The woman stomped over to the brown, overstuffed, armchair, and plopped down. We get so much out of this version, even though the action is essentially identical, stomped tells us that she is maybe angry. We can picture the chair now. It's brown. And it's overstaffed. And it's an armchair, and plopped rather than sat gives us so much more information. She's maybe tired or resigned, or maybe a great place to start when you're working on precision is with your verbs. Which are the heartbeat of great sentences So you wanna look closely at each verb you use to make sure it's the most original, interesting, accurate verb you can choose. Instead of the woman walked. How did she walk? She sauntered, strolled, strutted, wandered, stomped. Like we said on the previous example. But be careful. Don't use a word that sounds fancy just because you think it will make your writing look smarter. Ambulate is not better than walk. It means the exact same thing, only it's honestly just weird sounding right, like nobody says that. It doesn't actually give us any more information. Now, maybe if there's a character in a story who talks and it really Stilted self-consciously, ridiculous way. Then that character could say ambulate. But if you are writing prose, like ambulate should probably never come. Precision is essential because it helps you avoid ambiguity, which is when something can be interpreted in more than one way, which is essential for clarity. So we want to be looking for potential misinterpretation so that we can eliminate it. Pronouns are an important part of that. So, you know, a pronoun is like. Rather than the noun itself, you're using a word that refers to a noun. I always tell my students it's not really important to understand or like know the names of all these grammatical things, except when it comes to learning how to improve your craft. And you need to have words in order to refer to things that we are trying to do or not do. So you wanna have pronouns only referring to one noun that they couldn't potentially refer to multiple things. I'll give examples of these. You wanna have active voice, active verbs to ensure clear cause and effect within your sentences. Remember characters doing things and you wanna have modifiers that are placed directly after whatever they modify. Modify just means like a descriptive word, basically. So here's an example. There is a bird in a cage that can talk. Hopefully you can hear that this sentence is not the clearest and it is not precise. It is not very interesting either. there is a bird in a cage that can talk. Is it the cage that can talk? Well, clearly not, but it takes our brain a second because that can talk is a modifying phrase that is placed right after cage, which makes it like the logical implication. Based on the grammar, is it the cage can talk? Probably the best way to revise this would be the bird. In the cage can talk, still pretty boring. Uh, we could replace those with specifics, To get more precise and bring it to life. As you'll notice, a lot of these qualities overlap with other goals, so when you work to become more precise, your writing also becomes more vivid, for example. Now a word of warning here a little bit like we said before, is you don't wanna pick a word just because it sounds cool if you don't actually know what it means. There can be similar sounding words that have very different meanings. For example, you could find auspicious on the list of synonyms for happy, but that is not necessarily a great replacement. So we do wanna use a thesaurus, but you also have to be careful that you know what the word means. And same goes if you're using ai. Don't just assume, because chat GPT said that this is a synonym, that it's a good synonym that could give you some ideas, but then if you don't really know the word, look it up. Not on ai, like in an actual dictionary or the source. here's an example of two words that sound similar, but have very different meanings. Sanguine and sanguinary, they both come from the same root sang, SANG, which is romantic root for blood. But sanguine means happy, cheerful, optimistic, coming from having like rosy cheeks, sanguinary means blood thirsty or murderous. So these are mistakes you don't wanna make, which all goes back to you don't have to try to use fancy words. Just use clear, precise, simple language to express your complex carefully thought out ideas. Number three is concision. Concision means using the fewest words possible to express your idea as clearly as possible, and it's important here to note that clarity is more important. Sometimes it takes more words to be clear, so you always wanna keep concision subordinate to the goal of clarity. That said, particularly in our day and age, concise writing is basically always considered superior to the opposite. People had a little more tolerance for wordiness back in the day of, you know, Charles Dickens. But today, even in fiction, the style of the age dictates that if you can convey the same information, the same ideas, even the same, images or scenes in fewer words, that's better. Few writers today would get away with the wordy descriptive style of Dickens because there is a fashion in the literary world as to what is widely accepted as good writing and the most acceptable style. Today is going to be a bit more concise, partly because our attention spans are dramatically shrinking. Now we all know the struggle of trying to cut material to make our piece of writing fit a word count, either from high school or college, or submitting to some kind of online publication. But being concise is always essential to strong writing. Whether or not you have a word limit, learning to write more concisely will help you squeeze your message into a lower word limit, but it will also make your writing more powerful, effective, and accessible. I like to think of it as potency, right? Like. If you can communicate the same message in fewer words, that same message becomes more potent, which makes it more powerful. In fact, concision isn't just a goal in and of itself, but is rather a means to clarity. It is a way of making our writing clearer. William Zinzer, the author of On Writing Well, which is one of the classics of Nonfiction Craft says Clutter is the disease of American writing. The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components, and I like thinking of concision As being about eliminating clutter. It's not about making things shorter necessarily. It's about eliminating clutter, and that can take some time because it requires that we figure out what is essential to our meeting and what isn't, and then eliminating anything that isn't essential. And that requires figuring out exactly what you're trying to say in the first place. You cannot be concise unless you really know what you're trying to say. Here's an example of a wordy sentence, a cluttered sentence. The cake that we baked this morning was really delicious. It was a chocolate layer cake. Instead, we could say. We baked a delicious chocolate layer cake this morning. It starts with who or the, the subject, the character and what they did. We baked a delicious chocolate layer cake when this morning. This is much shorter, only nine words instead of 16, but it's also much clearer. Writing teacher Michael Harvey says, wordiness is often tied to other problems and the effort to make one's writing concise often brings about other improvements. This is something I see all the time that decluttering our writing helps us to see where we're not being clear. It helps us to figure out what we're trying to say. It helps us to. Be more precise and it just makes our writing better in general, whether or not it ends up being shorter. Number four on our list is consistency after the basics that everyone agrees upon. The conventions of modern English become largely a matter of style of preference. That's why we have so many different style guides. you may have heard of some of them. M-L-A-A-P-A Chicago. It goes on. Each academic discipline has their own preferred style guide and each publishing house will have their own preferred style guides. Chicago style is the most commonly used style guide for prescriptive nonfiction in the United States, so that's a good default if you're not sure what to go with, but. The point is really that what matters after following the basic conventions that are agreed upon everywhere is consistency. Within a given piece of writing. Things need to be done the same way every time. We need internal consistency. If you use a serial comma, that's the one that comes before the, and in a list. So like. Peter, Paul and Mary. You'd have two commas there. That's the serial comma. If you use that, you need to use it every time. If you capitalize a certain term, you need to capitalize it every time. Consistency provides a sense of reliability and builds trust with the reader, even if it's on a subconscious level. It also makes you seem like more of an authority. If you're trustworthy with your writing style, you're probably trustworthy with the ideas too. That's how the thinking can go in the reader's mind. You can think of it like how you dress. You probably have some rules or guidelines that you follow with your clothes. Maybe you always wear earrings. Maybe you never wear a certain color. Maybe you wouldn't never wear something low cut, or you always wear something low cut. There are some rules that everyone basically follows. Like you don't wear a bathing suit to church. I don't know, maybe these are becoming fewer and farther between these days and when anything goes, uh, maybe I need to find a different analogy. But let's say if you're trying to communicate a level of professionalism, right? You're not gonna wear your underwear outside of your pants. It is just not gonna cut it right. The same goes for writing. You know, you've gotta have periods, for example, you've gotta, you know, use a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence. Obviously there are more rules and guidelines than that, but after a certain point, it becomes a matter of individual preference. So while you can, of course, change it up in certain settings when you're trying to make a good impression and let people know what kind of person or writer you are, you wanna give consistent signals. You wouldn't wear flip flops and cut off shorts one day to work, and then a tailored suit the next day, and then a prom dress. It's the same with writing. You wanna let the reader know what to expect and then live up to those expectations With internal consistency, inconsistency is distracting to readers, even on a subconscious level. So because it minimizes distractions, consistency is key to clarity. You don't want a reader to wonder if they miss something because you're all of a sudden using a different word for a key term. For example, Consistency matters at a macro level too. If you usually start a chapter with an anecdote, start every chapter with an anecdote. If your blog posts or substack posts are usually about a thousand words long, try to make them all around that length. And a custom reader will be surprised by a post of only 500 words or one of 2000 words when they're used to 1000. Now, does it have to be exactly 1000 every time? No, of course not. Can it be 1200, sometimes 800 sometimes. Yeah, sure. You know, maybe a, a variation of 20% or something. But the, the goal is not to constrict yourself with these like rigid artificial. Rules as far as style, but again, to create a sense of consistency. our brains, like things to be predictable with a few small but pleasant surprises, like a twist in a story that in retrospect makes sense, but we don't like to be. Constantly guessing at what's coming and what this author is doing and trying to figure it out. That just is never gonna be pleasant. So how do you put this in action? When you figure out how you like to do something, make note of it and create your own style guide. Do you like to use the serial comma? Do you use a second person? You in your writing? So particularly for a certain book, this is a strategy I really, really highly recommend. It's super helpful when you hire an editor, if you can give them your own style guide and say. Hey, I wanna use a serial comma I don't wanna use second person unless I have to, or I do wanna use second person. I wanna talk directly to my reader. Uh, do you tell stories when and where? Do you use those at the beginning of chapters and then that's it? Or do you try to use lots of stories? Do you use personal stories or only stories about your clients or your, your patients? You know, your, your coaching clients, for example, do you use slang terms or you know, how formal? Is it a formal tone or is it more conversational? Do you use contractions? You know, in like formal academic papers, you don't use contractions. Like, don't you would say do not, uh, do you use fragments and how often? It is not to say that you can't ever try something different, or that you have to give yourself these rules and then you can never break them. I am a firm believer that rules are meant to be broken, but occasionally and intentionally, if you don't have any rules or guidelines, then you can't break them in the first place. And so that's no fun either. So Feel free to experiment. This is not meant to constrict you, but to provide guardrails that help you to be intentional about your choices instead of haphazard. Our fifth quality is voice and consistency is key to creating a strong voice. Voice is basically your personality on the page. For example, Charles Dickens. Sounds nothing like Ernest Hemingway. James Clear sounds nothing like Emily p Friedman. You know, three different writers could write about the same basic situation or idea, but the way they articulate it, the way they write it, would be completely different. Think for example, about brushing your teeth. How would you describe it? One writer might describe it in a terse, straightforward way. Another might go into minute detail about the best way to do every tiny aspect. A third might find a way to make it humorous. The writing is different because their personalities are different and their personalities are coming through on the page. Voice is made up of your choice of words, your tone. Is it contemplative, humorous, inspirational, conversational, academic, or journalistic. Your sentence structure long and complex versus short and simple, and your point of view. An author's voice will change a little depending on the publication type, you know, email versus a blog post versus a book, but there's something consistent across all venues and genres when a writer has a strong voice. Take this email copy as an example. This is from Ashlyn Carter, who's a pretty established, copywriter. She writes this week, and I'm gonna, there's some, some all caps in here. I'm gonna. Emphasize those for you since you can't see them this week. I'm announcing something I'm so excited about. We're gearing up to bring you a resource straight from the woman who taught me to manage money in my business back in 2018 TLDR. I had no idea how to pay myself, so I just didn't. Spoiler dumb idea. This is definitely conversational. It's got a young snappy feel to it. It makes me feel sort of excited and friendly like she is, you know, wants to be my friend or already is my friend. Versus you could say this exact same idea in a very straightforward, simple way. I'm pleased to announce that we are releasing a new resource to help you manage your finances. Same idea, very different voice. Here's another example of strong voice This time from Mark Manson. Problems don't go away. They change and evolve. Today's perfection becomes tomorrow's swampy cesspool of Crap. And the quicker we accept that the point of life is progress and not perfection, the sooner we can all order a pizza and go home. Lots of personality there. And here's an example from KJ Ramsey, another author that I personally love. New book coming out soon. Highly recommend you check it out. She writes, we need water that flows when we are fragile. Grace that girds when we are weak. Hope that holds us when our hands are empty, holiness that hears and shatters our pride. And a faith far deeper and more mysterious than mere affirmation that God is good. In this example, we have lots of alliteration and poetic devices. It's more lyrical. We've got a much longer sentence structure, sort of a rhythm that That keeps us moving through the prose and sort of pulses with this quiet depth, Very different voice in these three examples. So there's no wrong or right with voice, and it's not something that can be taught. It's something that you have to discover. And this one does veer into the soul side of things because it really comes from. Connecting deeply with who you are and how that person expresses herself most authentically. So I recommend that you start by noticing the styles that appeal to you as a reader and making note of what those authors do that you like. And also. Taking note of how you tend to express yourself when you're feeling really comfortable and when you're not, you know, thinking about the way you're expressing yourself when you're just speaking or writing in a more of a flow state. Now our written words shouldn't read exactly the same as the way we would speak, but they also shouldn't sound like a completely different person. So, especially for a more conversational tone, if that's what you're going for in your writing, it is a great idea to write down things that you tend to say, or ways that you tend to say things. you can sometimes ask your friends and family, like, how would you describe the way I talk? you know, sometimes that can be hard to describe, but. they might be able to tell you, oh yeah, you, you always say this kind of thing, or you say this all the time. You know, start looking for those things and write them down and then start to recognize patterns and play with those things. Experiment with them in your own writing and take note when something you write feels really you. American author Les Edgerton says, by being yourself on the page, you'll more than likely attract more readers because of your individuality than you would by hiding your personality behind a neutral style. This is more and more true today as AI comes onto the stage. No one wants to spend time with a robot, and the clearest way to prove that you're not a robot is by writing with voice, writing with some personality. If you're feeling nervous, that maybe your style or your voice. Isn't good enough or is too weird or just isn't whatever, fill in the blank. Remind yourself that your readers are there for you, and the people who don't like your voice are not your readers. So the more of your voice you can bring into your writing, the more powerfully you're gonna connect with the people that you're meant to connect with. And conversely, if you don't write with your authentic voice, you're actually preventing your readers from discovering you. Now, you do wanna keep in mind the other four qualities that we've discussed today. Clarity, precision, concision, and consistency. But the way that you accomplish those goals can still be done in a very unique Voicey way. Get clear about what you wanna say and say it directly, but still say it in your unique way. Choose the most precise word you can find, but also your precise word. There might be a couple of options, and one of them is gonna be more you than another. Strip away anything non-essential to your meaning, but remember that your voice is essential. Personality is essential because writing isn't only about information. It's also about an experience. It's about emotion. It's about transporting the reader out of themselves and into the mind and heart of another person, Even for prescriptive nonfiction. So that personality or description or metaphor that is or certainly can be essential. once you figure out your voice and your style preferences, create a style guide. Write it down, get clear for yourself again, not to constrict yourself, but to provide yourself with some guidelines so that you know who you are and you know how you write, and you can more easily communicate those things to editors or to yourself when you start to forget. And through it all, remember that clarity is the number one most important goal. None of the rest of it matters if your reader can't understand what you're trying to say. So if you ever find yourself unsure of which option to go with, start by asking which option conveys my meaning in the clearest way, which option eliminates ambiguity? If you're not sure, looking for the most concise option can often be helpful. Which is often going to be supported by finding a precise verb that allows you to eliminate adverbs and make your sentence active with a subject doing something. and then the next question is always, how would I say this? I know from personal experience and from teaching for over 16 years, that. It is really easy to start writing like we think we're supposed to write, so you will probably need to regularly return yourself to your own voice. Sometimes if you find that you're really struggling to say something clearly and simply. Or it just is sounding weird and you don't know how to fix it. A great strategy can be to step away from the screen or the page to clear your mind for a moment, and then return to the idea you're trying to communicate, and imagine that you're just speaking it to someone who is right in front of you in the room. How would you explain this idea to them? You might even record yourself on your phone and then play it back and write down what you actually said. So many times. The way we explain it to a person is so much clearer than the way we've been trying to write it. I hope you found these pointers useful, clarifying, encouraging, maybe even inspiring. These five essentials are not the end all, be all Of how to write well. But they are going to take you a long way toward making your writing powerful, beautiful, and impactful, so that your writing can stand out from the crowd, impress editors, and jump off the page into your reader's hearts. And that's it for today's episode. I hope you found something useful that you can apply to your writing. And that you are encouraged to write the clearest, simplest, most authentic version of what you have to say. If you want a few more pointers in order to sharpen your pros, I have a free download called From Good to Great 10 Tips to Write like a Pro Row. It's slash 10 tips. Put the link in the show notes. You can sign up with your email and you'll get A free PDF download plus. A link to watch the recording of the mini course I did. Teaching you those 10 tips. You'll get lots of examples. They'll take you deeper on several of these five essentials that you learned today, And they're a relatively quick way to level up your writing craft for nonfiction in just an hour or two. If you've been enjoying the podcast, you can show your support by leaving a review by sharing it with a friend. I will be back next Wednesday to take you deeper into the transformative power of writing. Until then, remember, words are more than ink on a page. They are a path to wholeness.