Business Writing: This One Skill Matters More Than All the Rest

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July 5, 2021 Business

Writing in business is required in multiple arenas: marketing, websites, sales presentations, and client and internal communication. It poses a challenge because it demands so many skills: creativity, empathy, organization, style, grammar, and more… That’s one reason there are so many writing apps and writing software tools on the market today. Understandably, people reach for help in the face of all that mental and emotional pressure!

Improving the multiple skills of writing is a lifetime journey, and if you’re honest with yourself you’ll realize that the journey never ends. We must make progress, but we’ll never arrive at total mastery.

Writing is ceaseless learning.

Fortunately, while many different skills help build a writer’s toolkit, they are not all equally important. There is one skill that surpasses all others in its ability to improve your writing and communication. Curiously, it’s a skill that’s little discussed in the many blogs, courses and books about writing that have flooded the world in recent years.

It’s the skill of distillation.

TRUE BREVITY

Everyone has heard “less is more.” There’s truth here, but the truth is half-hidden in this over-used maxim. Brevity is a virtue in writing, but what does “brevity” mean? It’s not a word count. A common mistake is believing your writing will improve by simply setting a limit on length. That can help, but it misses the point.

Brevity is not a quantity. It’s a quality. Homer’s Iliad (around 148,000 words) possesses tremendous brevity. On the other hand, there are thousands of blog posts being churned out every day that lack brevity: they’ll send you to sleep before you can count their 800 words or less.

True brevity is the optimum ratio of information to verbiage. How much valuable information (in the broadest sense of the term) can you pack into the least number of words? This is the question that should haunt every writer. Homer somehow condensed an entire civilization—its ideals, contradictions, aspirations, follies, heroism and tragedies—into one astonishingly fast-moving work. That’s brevity.

LEARN FROM THE POETS

Homer was a poet, and poetry is the ultimate in distillation. Poetry uses every aspect of language—meaning, sound, pulse, associations, imagery—to wring the most out of each word placed on the page. Poets are the masters of doing more with less, no one more so than Emily Dickinson:

Presentiment – is that long Shadow – on the Lawn –
Indicative that Suns go down –

The Notice to the startled Grass
That Darkness – is about to pass –

Now, you don’t need to be a poet to give your writing the virtue of brevity. However, it does no harm to learn from poets if you want to improve your skills. In fact, regularly reading poetry may be the single most useful habit a writer can adopt.

FROM MORE TO LESS

How else can you improve your skills of distillation?

The simplest answer is: learn to summarize. This is way easier said than done. You have to practice, practice, practice. The basics are always the same, though. You’re moving from long to short, from more to less, from many to one.

If you think in this direction, you don’t worry about brevity when you’re starting out. As you get going on a piece of writing, you can relax with a whole mass of stuff, even if it’s quite disorganized. Jot down all the notes and ideas that seem relevant. Spread out with as many words as you feel to use. Let rip!

IT BEGINS WITH THE OUTLINE

The work of brevity begins after that first creative torrent—not before.

What helps you here is the simple skill of categorizing: collecting stuff in different buckets. When you group multiple bits and pieces under a few headings, something miraculous happens. You find out what you’ve got in front of you. You see the forest for the trees. You create a map of the mental territory.

Let’s say you’re writing a blog post for your site about air quality in a particular city. First you tumble down all the ideas that are currently in your head. Then you go scavenging the internet to gather background information, whether about pollution science or local issues. Next, you’re ready to conduct a handful of interviews with key experts and influencers.

By now, you have a mound of material: way too much to transfer directly into a short article. The trick is to group this material into a handful of categories. You look at each element and ask yourself, “What kind of thing is this?” Then you find the best name you can for that group of ideas or data. This simple activity gradually reveals to you exactly what you’ve assembled.

Looking at a handful of headings, instead of reams of notes, helps you think clearly and simply about your topic. You find yourself noticing the three or four main points that need to be made. You’re equipped to write a piece as long or short as may be required.

A TOOL TO HELP

Braincat is a writing tool that can help you with this process. This easy-to-use software was created by a professional with over 40 years’ experience in almost every kind of writing. Braincat is all about distillation. You could think of it as the writer’s brevity-maker. It also provides brainstorming prompts for the creative element of your project.

Whatever tools you use, or don’t use, there’s one thing you can be sure of. The greater your powers of distillation, the better your writing.