7 Impressive Practices of Elite Writers

That improves readers retention

A couple of years ago I came across a book titled The Subtle Art Of Not Giving a F**k. I was blown away by the style, voice and parlance, that I had to do a quick google search of the author. And the name Mark Manson appeared. After I finished the book, I scoured through other of his books. I was hooked right from the get-go. This guy has got to be a freaking outlier. From the start of the book to the last page, there was no dull moment.

It is wise to know when it comes to literary work, there is more to just proper formatting and grammatical error–free pieces like I wrote in my other articles. There has to be some element of magic, that helps increase your audience attention–retention scale. And this magic doesn’t come from your grammatical skills, it comes from your personality shining through your work.

Your literary piece is a piece of art — you are the artist. And the common theme of Art is that it is not just an expression, but also an extension of the artist — you!

As you move forward in acquiring mastery for your writing, below are a few tips that can help position you for success.

Personal Anecdote

What could be more personal than sharing a story of your life, something that you’ve lived through? The girl you took out on your first date, would surely tell you this; you want to create attraction and get that chemistry going? Then drop some seasoned personal experience. Don’t be cocky though.

Readers love hearing the stories of writers in their work, because who doesn’t like to feel connected, that they share some level of humanity with others, especially writers.

Malcolm Gladwell shared a personal story of his root as a half black and half white English Canadian male. The story was so personal that as the reader, you could feel getting closer into the actual real-life space of Malcolm. It creates those “Whoa! I did not know that! Umm!”, moments in your reader’s mind.

My best performing article on this platform statistically has been The Sail For Destiny. The story of my journey from Africa to Italy by sea. The comments were emotional, people were able to get a glimpse of what it is like travelling through Libya.

There is no better way to engage your audience and build relationships without mirroring your life experience to see how it fits into their own experiences.

Be Authentic

To be authentic is to be true to yourself, your principles and your value. Your works or the idea and principles you seek to put out in the world must be congruent with your higher self.

The infamous interview between Jordan B Peterson and Cathy Newman gives us a good example of having one authenticity tested on live television.

Cathy Newman sought to entangle Jordan in his own ideas and the principles he teaches. Well, the Canadian psychologist has not spoken or said anything that is incongruence with who he is and what he represents. He sticks to his truth, which forms the core of who he is.

To speak falsely or inauthentically erodes our self-esteem. A pile of lack of confidence and authenticity is a good recipe for a career that will soon be shortlived.

The audience finds it easier when they know what you stand for and what you do not. Your thoughts, ideas, and principles are articulated in a manner that is respect-worthy, whether in agreement with some or in disagreement. Write to your strength, but better, write to your truth.

Show Vulnerability

No one likes a know-it-all or the all perfect, life glittering show most motivational entrepreneurs on YouTube portray, trying to get you to register for some course. We find it repulsive, annoying and just too much. I mean if your life is perfect, why do you need my cent for your course?

Going through the poetry section of any platform or library is like holding a basket in hand and shopping through a farm market. At the end of the day, you go home with some authors/poets in your basket. Why? Because poets basically spill their hearts and emotions all over like three-year-olds. And they do it in a way that gets you saying, “that is so, me, I feel she is literally penning my emotions right now”.

Have you ever being in a congregation where the preacher went all emotional and psychological on you, and you are sitting there wondering, what the hell is going on? Is God revealing my shit to this dude?

That is the power of vulnerability — to dig deep within yourself and explore your own flaws and insufficiencies. It means having the courage to show you are human after all. And just like anyone else, you share the same struggle and pain.

Display your failures

A Mightier-than-thou persona is not a good strategy if you wish to evoke a connection from within your audience. This is a technique that has been masterfully harnessed, and that we can learn from the world-renowned speaker Les Brown.

His dream was to buy his mama a home, and when he began to make some money through multi-level marketing, he called his attorney to help him finalise the purchase of the home. During the meeting between the seller, Les Brown and the attorney, Les Brown felt the seller was sincere and acted against the advice of his attorney and went ahead to make the down payment of the property. A few months later the banks called, and Les found out that there was a lien against the property and it has to foreclose. When he couldn’t come up with the money in the given time frame, he lost the house and his down payment.

Les Brown shared the above story in trying to persuade his audience to understand that, there are times when you’ll mess up big time. So you must learn to forgive yourself, lift up your head and move on. He gave the story of his failure to create a common ground for our humanity.

How did that resonate with you? It is the best antidote to build faith in your audience and establish a good fan base of inter-connected people.

Avoid absolutes

We all come from different backgrounds; be it race, religion, culture, nationality, tribes or what have you? So to think in absolute is like playing with fire. There is no one answer that fits all. When you write, leave room for the fact that there are more ways to doing things than you think. What may be valid and a norm in your community or city, may not be seen in that same light for other people or in other contexts.

Except you are writing for a certain particular group, or a particular purpose or when it is warranted, avoid absolutes.

I’ll give you an example: As a Christian, the core message I heard constantly, growing up in the Christian community was that happiness and prosperity were true and possible only in God. Well I don’t know about you, but I have plenty of friends who are more successful than myself and many believers, and they’ve never seen the inside of a church in their life. And they seem flipping happier than I am — or I was. Okay, I admit, I am a much happier person now. But you get the gist.

Avoid absolutes to avoid being found out as shallow.

Confidence

You know a confident author through their word choices. By carefully reading a literary piece, I could tell to some degree of accuracy, who is just starting out, who is passive, who is an introvert, who is sensitive, bold and confident. Because our word choice not only reflects our mood but also reflects our personality, whether we are introspective, emotional or not.

Take, for example, these phrases:

“After all have been said and done, you want to see you are not purposefully sabotaging your own life by your indiscipline and inaction. While you are sitting on the couch butt naked and binge-watching videos on Netflix, some dude is beating your ass.” Sounds like what Grant Cardone or Garyvee would say? Yeah I know right?

“As the most intelligent specie on the planet, we must see that we are not unconsciously sabotaging our own potential through unhealthy behaviours that do not serve us. There are usually two types of people; the ones who binge-watch Netflix all day, and the one who really goes out and stick to their commitment. It is easy to see in the long run who would be in a better place in the future.” You got it right, that is Robert Greene talking. Or it could also pass for Malcolm Gladwell.

The gist is, our confidence is reflected in our pool of vocabularies. The type of words we say; are we direct or passive? However, do not mistake a passive tone for lack of confidence. Robert Greene or Gladwell are no pushovers. These are giants in the literary community. Their soft tone of voice and word choice is only an indication of their reserved personality and introversion. Like I mentioned earlier, there are soft speakers, the so-called passive speaker. But the key here is to find ways to inject some vocabularies that shows you are coming from a place of confidence even though you’re naturally a passive person.

Usually, confidence comes from repetition and consistency.

Humour

After going on a couple of dates, and experimenting with google results from the searches I made online, on how not to screw up a date, the most powerful tool I found to be the most effective, in getting people to like you and increase attraction is having a good sense of humour. Ask the ladies, they will vouch for me on this one. Who doesn’t want to have a good time? Life can be stressful, and sometimes people just want to laugh and not think about going to their miserable jobs the next day.

Last week I happened to stumble on Shani Silver, and whether she is a humorist, I do not know. But what I do know is, she cracked me up all through, whilst I read her article. It was an instant likeness I developed for her and her work. I immediately stumbled desperately to find and hit the Follow button.

While some people may not want to add you to their trolley of favourite authors, based on your message, but injecting a little bit of humour could just be the trick that wins them over as it did for me in the case of Shani Silver.

In conclusion

Do not be afraid to be expressive and allow your true voice and personality to shine through your work. Let there be a voice, a face or an image in the background of every piece that your audience connects with. Let your work be a representation of you or a part of you. Be fearless, bold and confident. Never fail to experiment with your work. The best style or etiquette of literary work is not cut in stones. They are flexible and that is the beauty of this work of art.

I call it a work of art because that is what it is to me. It is the means by which I express myself and articulate my being in the universe. The way being inside The Sistine Chapel makes you feel, is the same way I want my literary work to make you feel. That is Michelangelo’s piece of himself, and this is a piece of myself.

Nearly six years ago I sailed the Mediterranean in search of a meaningful life, follow me to read the stories and lessons from my journey through life here.