Writing and editing for a popular audience

I believe writing today for a popular audience means, among other things, not writing as if every reader has the same learning style. Whether due to a lack of aptitude, the press of circumstances, form of education, or some other reason, many people are not particularly adept at tracking closely with an extended argument presented in big blocks of prose. (Most authors and editors do this for a living, so we don't notice.) We must not write as though the reader is unintelligent or childlike, but if there is one kind of person I generally “edit to,” it is the busy parent who only has (or only makes) 20 minutes on a Thursday night to read this kind of book on the couch just before bed. He is tired. He is likely reading this book in part out of a sense of obligation, and he only vaguely remembers the six pages he read three days earlier at lunchtime. How do you serve him? You don't need to dumb down the content. In addition to good, clear, direct writing, you need to use structural elements like heads and subheads to highlight the sub-points of the teaching.

Secondary and tertiary subheads, with the occasional list of smaller one-off points, help the reader in two ways. They allow him to see the logic of the argument unfold forward, not just in blocks of prose but with visual reinforcement (for visual learners). They also allow him to review the recent content backward with the same ease. He can flip back a couple of pages and—without having had to mark up the text as he goes—be able to recall quickly the gist of the author’s argument.

Two common techniques that rarely serve readers are 1) paragraphs that begin with “First,” “Second,” etc., and/or 2) a single italicized word buried in the middle of a block of text and intended to serve as a label for the central concept of that section. To me, a reader of a popular book should never have to mark up a chapter to be able to scan for the basic elements of the argument. We should not ask readers to do more than purchase a book in order to own something that rises to a baseline level of ready intelligibility—and (this may be flipping the metaphor) I believe that bar has been raised several notches in just the past several years.

People expect high-quality content. Given the influence of the web and the pace of life, they increasingly expect that content to be as easily digestible as the concepts will allow. Editors and publishers owe readers: quality content + ready intelligibility, which = surprise and delight. In exchange for their cash and attention we owe them excellent material, as accessible as possible, without dumbing down or compromising.

Quality, plus ready intelligibility through a structure that serves more than one kind of learning style: I  believe this is what popular communication means today, and this is what people expect their money to buy them.

Editors must reject the Author-Reader agreement

Recognizing bumps in a manuscript is an essential part of having the editor's eye. It is very easy to get swept up in the language and implicit authority of the author and simply let him lead you. This is because readers are naturally inclined to regard authors as experts in a particular area. After all, didn't someone pay this person to put opinions between covers?

As a result, there are unspoken author-reader agreements, the most common of which goes something like this: As a reader I give you, the author, access to my brain, because I believe, implicitly or explicitly, that it will be more helpful to me to think your thoughts about a particular subject than it will be to think my own, or at least I want to use your thoughts as a place to start. (This is obviously a simple and very general comment about a complex subject, as fans of Mortimer Adler can attest.)

The editor's job is to respect the author's subject-matter expertise and insights, but to recognize that expertise is only one of several factors critical to creating a good book. An editor has to consciously set aside all author-reader agreements and try to be objective enough to recognize that, in almost every case (that I've come across, anyway), even though the author's work may be fine, or pretty good, or even perfectly satisfactory, if you are willing to think hard, be objective, and where necessary take it apart and put it back together, it can actually become far more helpful to the reader. It can become excellent.

More thoughts on using quotes

Scholarly Christian authors, well-read and well-intentioned, often feel compelled to share favorite quotes on whatever subject they are currently covering. They love and have been affected by this or that particular quote, so they just have to include it so their readers can love and be affected by it as well. This goes to the purpose of the book, article, or sermon. Is it intended to be a review of the collected wisdom on a topic? Is that quote really the best way to say what you want to say, at this point in your narrative, to this particular audience, at this point in history? Is this touchstone to the past actually needed? Don't let your humility and your admiration for other writers misdirect your efforts, allow you to take the easy and (often) less effective way out, or limit the work of the Spirit through you.

Imagine if most Christian authors down through church history had taken that approach. What if, instead of striving to express themselves — to write — they continually quoted their predecessors, over time effectively quasi-canonizing the impressive but ultimately human insights and culturally bound expressions of those who had gone before? How well would that have served the church? Where would it have left us? Far less inspired, far less theologically attuned, and with far less ability to understand or speak to the present culture.

I know an extremely gifted and effective preacher who, at a particular point in his ministry, was so impressed by a dozen or so of the most perceptive and insightful writers, preachers, and theologians of the past that for a while his sermons consisted almost entirely of quotes from them. Despite appeals from his friends, his rationale for maintaining this approach had some merit: He could not have said it better himself. That was probably true, but only in a limited sense — not at all necessarily as it applied to the particular circumstances of the particular audience he was seeking to reach.

Once again, what is the purpose of the book, or the article, or the message? What is the most effective way to accomplish that purpose? These are always important questions to answer, and often surprisingly difficult ones. At a more granular level, is this particular quote, regardless of its objective merits, the very best thing to put right here, on this page, right now?

Should I use lots of quotes from other authors?

As a general rule, I would only quote others 1) when your claim is liable to be met with skepticism by readers so an outside authority is needed to lend credence, or 2) when the quote itself creates a particularly compelling or masterful underscore or paraphrase of your point.

For a popular readership, quotes that are neither striking nor necessary create friction in the reading experience with no real value-added. Better to say the same basic thing (if you're not essentially plagiarizing) in your own words, thus maintaining a single style for the reader who is not used to switching between multiple styles. For scholars and bibliophiles, a mix of styles can be delectable, like spices in cooking or different sections in an orchestra, but for many popular readers it is seen as increasing the work involved and decreasing the entertainment value.  After all, as a rule fast food doesn't have complex flavor, and pop songs specialize in having a single groove. So while you don't want bland, you do want to emphasize your style and maintain a certain degree of consistency.

It's All About Precision & Clarity

Editing, for me, has always been driven by a passion for precision and clarity. Certainly language can be wonderfully vague and evocative, but (putting deconstructionism and critical theory aside, where they probably belong) it is also our best hope for a broad means of communicating clearly and precisely, on topics where that sort of thing matters, to the broadest possible audience. For this reason I love the field of information design. Strunk and White, Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think, Edward Tufte's Envisioning Information, really good signage, a great headline, effective ad copy, a nice brochure, a solid blog post, a great installation guide, an amazing magazine redesign, and even the small-business process checklists championed by Michael Gerber, all have a great deal in common. Their focus is precision, clarity, and effectiveness in communication: the transfer of information to bring about as predictable a result as possible. The goal is no different when I help an author refine a manuscript, and the same basic techniques apply.

At the moment, most of my freelance income is from book editing. But I have done a fair amount of copywriting, speechwriting, and periodical and package design, as well as some advertising, procedure manuals, information architecture, and the like. I hope to be doing more of each of these in the future. I could easily be wrong but, speaking in general terms, I suspect the core skill set is about the same for all of them. Certainly there are refinements that apply to each specialty, but in none of these endeavors will you be successful unless you can put yourself in the place of the reader and ask, "How can this product communicate as clearly and succintly as possible, on the first read, toward a desired result?" But that skill seems rare. At a minimum, it is rarely exercised well. It's unusual to possess it, it's difficult to hone it, and it's almost never easy to use it.

I am aware, of course, that language is a pure abstraction. In fact, to a limited extent, I would agree with the deconstructionists;  as a salaried editor I would frequently offer this maxim when we faced our daily challenges: "There is nothing more difficult than unambiguous human communication." How much more amazing, then, that it can become so effective?