This issue has popped up in a few of your posts/comments on the blog, so I wanted to follow up in a more visible way. Read on for some tips on how to produce a text in a conversational (as opposed to formal/academic) tone.
It’s not easy for many of us to write in a conversational tone–you’re not imagining that. In large measure, our writing style is the product of our education, and you’ve spent a lot of years being trained to write in a formal, academic style (and perhaps chastised when you produced something other than that). Furthermore, much of our writing lives have been defined by minimum word counts, which drive us to embellish our writing so we can inflate our word totals.
Conversational writing, therefore, means cutting against our habits and conducting ourselves in ways that are counter to our training. We need to develop new habits in order to do this effectively.
So, a few words of advice
- as you try to figure out what you want to say and how to say it, talk it out–open up a voice memo or other audio recording on your phone, and pretend that you’re talking to someone about your topic. Prompt yourself with something casual like “what I’m really trying to say is….” and see what you come up with. The recording ensures you won’t lose the nuggets you come to.
- freewrite–try not to edit as you compose, but rather let yourself keep writing for a set period of time (10-15 minutes is a good starting point). This helps you to maintain your chain of thought and to get more comfortable hearing your ‘voice’ on the subject. Once you’ve written, then read your text aloud. Look for the key ideas, then …..
- pull out the key ideas into a fresh file, and start building a text around them. This helps you to avoid feeling wedded to the first words you wrote, which are often just verbal treading-water as we try to get started on our thinking.
- when you’ve got something to work with, take your time revising, and do so with a particular focus on
- employing visual organization (section headings, lists where appropriate; brief, focused paragraphs)
- leading with the big idea (in each paragraph and in the text as a whole)
- using visual representations of information where appropriate (infographics, charts, graphs, etc.)–this allows readers to engage in the ways that are most comfortable for them
Note that the revising will take time and discipline. One of your tasks later this week will be working through a guided revision process. Check out the Review and Revision worksheet in the Unit 3 dropbox on Blackboard.