Keep it Simple…Student
TL;DR Skip the $10 words and flowery language and focus on being clear.
Brought to you by stress baking—dog biscuit edition.
The first structural edit I ever did was for a book on marketing the life sciences. The client may or may not have known this and I did not volunteer the information.
At that time, I hadn’t yet developed a repeatable process. All I knew was that a book either “worked” or it didn’t. And the whole reason I got into book writing is because I had read—or tried to read—so many nonfiction business books that didn’t work I thought there was something wrong with me! But I digress.
In this particular case, the author was a PhD who was used to academic writing. Academic writing is all about precision and providing the reader, typically another PhD with all the information so they can look at it and come to their own conclusion about what it means. Whereas nonfiction trade books are about providing the information through the lense of your point of view or expertise. Again, I digress.
The content got unnecessarily (I thought) dense in places so I did my best to simplify and define terms. The author expressed concern that I had over simplified in places but as the reader advocate, I did my best to convince him simplification is not the same as dumbing stuff down. Simplification is a kindness!
Then, there was some drama with the publisher who convinced the client to run the manuscript past another editor, who ended up admitting there wasn’t anything he would change. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Still, when I got my signed copy of the book I saw that some re-academic-ization had occurred, which I thought was too bad, but at the end of the day, it was his book and he could do what he wanted!
Here’s the takeaway: The kindest thing you can do for your reader is to spend the time to make sure your writing is as clear as possible.
Key word: Time.
There is a quote attributed to either George Bernard Shaw or Mark Twain, that goes, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” It’s really true.
Case/point I’ve already spent 5x as much time editing and clarifying this piece as I did drafting it! And these missives are meant to be super immediate, more like getting an email from a friend. (OK, I admit edit my emails, too.)
Even if all you do is swap out the $10 words for $1 words wherever possible, it will help. This from someone whose spirit animal is Vocabulary. I adore precision, so this is a battle I fight every. single. day.
Point is, if it takes me a minute to write clear and all I do is write all day every day…it’s going to take you longer. Give yourself grace. But be willing to put in the time!
