The Holy Trinity of Writing
Formating is one of the most neglected skills.
When it comes to writing and posting online, presentation matters.
It’s not enough to be witty and tell a fascinating story, although that does help. If you don’t pay attention to the needs of your reader, they will drop you quicker than a hot potato.
Here are some ideas to improve your presentation.
I like to go through a checklist that I call the Holy Trinity.
(My apologies to Sister Mary-Anne from my Sunday morning catechism class.)
- Title and Subtitle. Does your title grab your reader’s attention without being clickbait? Why should they read this article, when there are so many others.
- Image. A compelling image, properly credited will often pull a reader in. They are enticed by the mood, the colors, and the content of the image. Some writers won’t click into a story with a shocking image. Others are attracted by soothing colors.
- Formatting. This is one of the most important, most neglected parts of writing a compelling article. For more on formatting, read below.
Before you publish, take a moment and think of your reader.
If I make a formatting suggestion, as an editor, I’m trying to help you out. Don’t take it personally.
Here are some basic suggestions I frequently make.
“Please add a subtitle. Right now, your display subtitle is the first 5 or 6 lines of your article, which doesn’t look very good. Once you’ve added a properly formatted subtitle, go into edit mode (click on the three dots), choose Change Display Title/Subtitle, and make any needed changes there.”
“Please work on formatting. Imagine that your reader is using their phone (most people do). They will be daunted by these large blocks of text. My rule of thumb is 4 or 5 lines maximum.”
“Format to break up your text. Sometimes you can feature a single sentence in between two blocks for emphasis. You could create subtitles for the main sections as well.”
Give the reader a place to rest their eyes.
Find a quote about your topic and include it somewhere in the story using the single quote format tool to feature it. The advantage of quotes is they provide another perspective and they give the reader somewhere to rest their eyes.
Use videos to engage your reader.
- Add a link to a relevant YouTube video that adds to your content. Position the video after the midpoint of your article so the reader doesn’t leave you.
Overused or repeated words.
- I search for words that I overuse. Words such as ‘like’ and ‘that’. Use Ctrl F and search for THAT. Right away you see there are 19 uses of the word in your article. Make a few changes to improve your writing.
Direct vs Indirect.
- Your first sentence begins indirectly and could be stronger if you reword it to be more direct.
- Instead of: ‘In his memoir, the famous author Ryan Holiday shared…..’, TRY ‘Ryan Holiday, the famous xxx recently shared …….”
Your message must be clear.
- What are you trying to say? A story that rambles on and on with no clear idea is like being seated beside your Great Uncle at a family dinner. You know, the one that tells the same story you’ve heard a million times before.
- A clear and concise introduction helps draw the reader in. Give them a short takeaway at the end.
- Tell them what you are going to say. Then say it. Then tell them what you just said.
One last tip to entice your reader:
Add a kicker to give your article that extra kick.
- If you are editing the article on Medium, put your cursor at the beginning of the main title, hit enter, and then move your cursor up into the space you’ve created.
- Type a topic, such as Writing, then highlight it and select the small T subtitle format. That’s a kicker.
- You can add a couple of words, with a divider between. We use | which is created using Alt 0124 on a PC. The Mac might have different keystrokes but the rest of the kicker setup should be the same.
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