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How to Write Easily and Quickly

by Dr Jennifer Jones – Writing Coach 

If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you know that some days you just can’t figure out where to start. Then, you worry that you won’t post anything at all this week and that one missed week will become several missed months. We’ve all been there.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Using the system I teach in this post will help you write easily and quickly. You’ll start by stating your point in one sentence, then you’ll ask and answer questions about that point. Finally, you’ll write your introduction and proofread your draft. Knowing you have a system that works will help you get your ideas out of your head and onto the page!

Step 1: Statement of Argument

Don’t let the word argument scare you here. In writing, your argument is the point you’re making. So, your statement of argument is a sentence that states what you’re going to prove to your reader in your post.

Don’t skip over this step because one sentence doesn’t sound like it’s all that important – this is the most important sentence in your whole piece and it’s a very particular kind of sentence. It needs to be

  • arguable,
  • provable, and
  • focused.

What do I mean by arguable?

I mean that your statement of argument should not be a statement of fact. Imagine you were writing a post about why you should eat chicken noodle soup when you have a cold. This wouldn’t make a good statement of argument:

            Chicken noodle is a kind of soup.

Why wouldn’t it work? It’s a fact. Once you’ve stated the fact, there’s really nowhere else to go. It doesn’t make any sort of claim that could be proven or disproven – there’s no reason for your reader to continue reading.

This would work:

You should eat chicken noodle soup when you have a cold because it has been shown to have healing properties.

This statement makes a claim, chicken noodle soup has healing properties, that can be backed up by evidence that you and your reader can evaluate.

What do I mean by provable?

I mean that you can offer some evidence to back up the claim you’re making. To return to the chicken noodle soup example, you would need to discuss scientific studies that prove that you should eat it when you have a cold. These would look at the healing properties of particular ingredients and possibly at specific recipes.

In your post, you would need to evaluate how the studies were conducted and their trustworthiness. By using evidence from these studies you would, hopefully, convince your reader of your argument.

What do I mean by focused?

I mean that your argument needs to be blog-post sized. A blog post is far too short to write a complete history of soup or of home remedies for the common cold.

When you think about the focus of your statement of argument, you need to be careful not to promise more than one little blog post can deliver. If you find a larger topic you want to explore, either devote a series of posts to it or write a book about it.

However, one book would be too small to explore the entire history of soup or cold remedies. For those, you’d likely need to limit yourself to a particular geographical region or cultural tradition.

Step 2: Ask questions

I don’t know about you, but when I was at school, we were expected to hand in essay plans, but we weren’t ever really taught how to produce them. I tended to write my essays early and then reverse outline them – which saved my grades but missed the point of having a plan!

When I was training to teach writing, I was finally introduced to a method that works! It’s easy to apply and it makes writing easy. To implement it, just write your statement of argument at the top of a sheet of paper and then list questions you’ll have to answer to prove your claim.

How does this make writing easy?

It makes writing easier and quicker because we’re really good at answering questions. Pay attention the next time you have a conversation with a friend – you both ask and answer questions easily because that’s how conversations work.

There’s no reason your writing can’t flow just as easily – the only difference is that you’re both asking and answering the questions.

What does it look like in practice?

We’ll use our chicken noodle soup example for this:

Statement of Argument: You should eat chicken noodle soup when you have a cold because it has been shown to have healing properties.

Questions:

  • Does chicken have any healing properties? What are they?
  • How do you know that the other ingredients aren’t the reason the soup is healing?
  • How reliable is the research – was it conducted by a university lab or by a company that sells chicken noodle soup?
  • Is chicken noodle soup really any better for a cold than any other kind of soup?
  • Is there any benefit to having noodles in the soup?
  • Is this soup just chicken, noodles, and water, or are there other ingredients?
  • What is chicken noodle soup?
  • What kind of noodles are best?
  • Who has done this research?

This probably isn’t an exhaustive list, but it’s enough for our purposes – after all, this is for a blog post, not a book!

You don’t need to answer all of these questions, and on review, you’ll see that they can be grouped into larger sections: what research (evidence) you’re basing your claim on, your evaluation of the research and your claim, and a section on what ingredients you’re looking at.

So, you could simplify your first brainstorming list of questions like this:

  1. What healing properties does chicken noodle soup have?
  2. How reliable is the research – was it conducted by a university lab or by a company that sells chicken noodle soup?
  3. What is chicken noodle soup and why is it special?

Then, check the logic of the order of your questions: 3, 1, 2 would be more logical here.

Step 3: Answer the questions

This is when you start writing your draft. In explaining what chicken noodle soup is you’ll have to discuss what’s in it (this covers the questions about noodles, other ingredients, and so on from the first list in section 2). Mentioning why chicken noodle soup is special will lead you logically to the next section which is on its healing properties. After you’ve laid out the research, you’ll be ready to evaluate it and drive home your point that chicken noodle soup is good for you when you have a cold.

As you answer the questions, just write – don’t judge what you write, this is only a first draft.

Step 4: Write your introduction

You can’t introduce a person you haven’t met, so don’t try to introduce a text you haven’t written! Your introduction should give your reader a roadmap to what’s coming that starts with the statement of argument.

Look at my opening section. The second sentence of the second paragraph is my statement of argument. The next two sentences are the road map. What comes before the statement of argument introduces the topic – you don’t want to just drop your reader into the middle of your argument! The last sentence of the introduction sums up what’s in it for the reader.

Conclusion

As you can see, this method helps you decide what to write and keeps you from wandering off topic. In answering the questions you’ve listed, you’re unlikely to wander off on a tangent about the time your grandma’s dog jumped on the table and ate your chicken noodle soup – that would, however, make a brilliant opening anecdote, so don’t leave it out altogether.

Once you finish your draft, reread it to make sure you’ve said what you meant to say.

Jennifer Jones is a writing coach and the author of There’s a Book in Every Expert (that’s you!): How to write your credibility-building book in six months. Download your free copy here.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

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