Writer's Excuse: Avoiding Clarity

Reader Expectations are unconscious on the part of readers. They don't know that they read a sentence as being the story of the grammatical subject. They don't know that they look forward to the verb's telling them what actions are going on. But since they do these things, you, as a writer, can control their narrative progress through your sentence by making the subject whose story it is and the verb the action that is taking place. You will be guiding hem through your narrative just as surely as if you had paved a path for them and surrounded it by a metallic trellis.

Sometimes the problem isn't that a chapter is bad. It's that it isn't doing enough. You can have all the visible parts in place and still wind up with a passage that just sits there. That's why revision matters so much. Revision lets you stop looking only at what's present on the page and start asking what effect it's actually having on the reader. One of the best fixes is to look for the invisible engine underneath the scene. Is there pressure? Is there change? Is the reader being carried forward, or just informed? That kind of diagnostic pass can change everything. Not because you're rewriting from scratch, but because you're teaching the scene to do its job. #amwriting #writingcommunity #authorlife You know how to write. Learn how to live the life of an author at pxllnk.co/52fm.

I have many thoughts on this. Firstly, think it’s worth noting that the author’s job title was Strategic technical accounts manager at a very large international company during this time. This article is definitely insightful, but in my own 20 year career experience as a user-centred designer it’s more likely to be those layers of management where you find the 20 to 50% irrelevant jobs. The author refers to “a manager who seems to have very few management skills”. I’ve certainly met a disproportionate amount of those! And the use of buzzwords does seem to propell less skilled professionals to more senior roles much faster. I and others saw a combination of those behaviours being rewarded, despite no resulting progress for the organisation, in the Information Services Department of a top UK uni, and in my knowledge from first and secondhand experience its been going on for nearly a decade there, but sadly have also noticed it in government digital projects recently – and very much so in some (though definitely not all) agencies who supply government. Without including the author’s job title in this article I think a huge part of the point they are making is missed. And in the age of AI impacting creatives’ roles it’s an important qualification. Another thought on this is I’m not sure what taking up a job because it’ll be “just like uni” refers to – working with their friend, or what they expected in terms of work life balance? Maybe they enjoyed a lot of study groups at uni, but going into it for this reason feels like they expected quite a lax role with scope for messing around with mates in office hours and lots of after work socialising. It’s also possible the way their contract was set up at the time made it hard to make redundancies. Not giving bright professionals enough to do can itself be a passive way of encouraging self-redundancy.

What makes a reader cry at an ending? Factual accuracy, earned emotional payoffs, and a story willing to address the hard parts of life without softening the edges. The Basement Angel tackles grief, regret, and the long shadow of one split-second decision without substituting culturally comfortable ideas for fact-checked content. For authors writing in emotionally heavy territory, this is a solid example of how grounding a story in truth deepens its impact on readers. Do you find that readers respond more strongly to stories that prioritize accuracy over comfort? #IndiePublishing #WritingCommunity #BookReview #Authors https://buff.ly/fVjYNgG

Editing trick: Read your manuscript backward, paragraph by paragraph. It breaks the narrative flow so you catch typos, repeated words, and awkward phrasing you've been reading past. #BookEditing #EditingTips #AmEditing #SelfEditing #RevisionMode

This is what a strong Paper 2 paragraph looks like, but it might not reach that elusive Level 7 unless it clearly identifies the deeper questions the works leave open for their audiences. Strong responses move beyond comparison and evaluation to articulate the broader implications of the texts by stating, for example, that the writer is “inviting audiences to question…” or “encouraging readers to consider…”.

Week 3 of the 7-part series helps writers build daily word count habits, overcome writer's block, and create consistent progress fast.

We unlocked some DOWNWARD strokes in Gregg shorthand on the channel this week. . Here’s a quick recap if you missed it. . In Gregg, the Sh-Ch-J sounds are grouped due to the similarity in their sounds and where they are pronounced in the mouth. (Try it) . Remember proportions matter! Where J occupies the full writing length, Ch is 1/2 the length, and Sh is 1/4 the length of J. . #learngreggshorthand

✍🏾 READY. SET. ACTION. — Let’s move your manuscript forward. You already have more than you think—insights, experiences, and work that deserves to be shared. This is your reminder that writing doesn’t start from scratch, and it doesn’t have to be perfect to begin. This week, focus on progress over pressure: clarify your idea, pick a direction, and give yourself space to start. Your voice belongs in the conversation. ✨ This is what READY. SET. ACTION. looks like in practice. If you need support moving from ready to action, check out The Script Lab’s LevelUp Services. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/d4aBgf2U #NationalPublicHealthWeek #ManuscriptWriting #PublicHealth #TheScriptLab

💡Efficiency tip for communicators and authors: Stop treating revisions as the only path to a polished draft. When you work with an editor, you get targeted feedback that helps you stop repeating the same mistakes—not just fix them this once. For communications teams, that means fewer internal review cycles. For indie authors, it means a cleaner manuscript faster. See how it works on the Becoming BulletProof blog 👉 https://bit.ly/4skWGQH #EditingTips #ContentStrategy #SmallBusiness #IndieAuthor #WritingEfficiency #NonfictionWriting