Writing Skills

Capturing Your Thoughts

• Defining the scope of the document using mind-mapping to isolate the thinking you want to capture
• Applying techniques, such as the pyramid principle, to encase this thinking in a logical structure
• Identifying the narrative in the structure so that the route through writing about it is clear and draws the reader in, keeping them (and you!) focused

Structuring and Vertical Logic

• Identifying the governing thought and from it the questions that your document needs to address
• Developing a hierarchical structure that gives you the core narrative and the reasoning on which it rests – a compelling combination that will carry the reader with you
• Breaking the thinking and resulting structure down into the building blocks of a convincing case, which can be applied to any document
• Understanding the patterns of argument and explanation needed to lay out your thoughts in a compelling way, using both inductive and deductive logic
• Supporting the core structure with relevant material that best engages the reader, selecting facts that strengthen but don’t clutter your argument
• Knowing how to capture this visually so it is easy to keep in mind as you write and if necessary to explain to others

Editing

• How to maintain a critical distance from your writing so that you can deconstruct and reconstruct it where necessary as you work on a draft
• Ensuring strong and positive language is used to convey clarity and confidence in the thinking
• Acquiring the discipline and confidence to change and adapt what you have written to preserve its critical purpose
• Stripping text of distracting and unhelpful abstractions and keeping the language active
• Keeping sentences and paragraphs short so the writing is optimally accessible and the thinking clear
• Copy-editing to ‘clean’ the prose so that verbal distractions are minimised and the ideas come through as transparently as possible