From the course: Tips for Better Business Writing
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Anticipate your readers' questions when writing
From the course: Tips for Better Business Writing
Anticipate your readers' questions when writing
- When you start to write something, you usually have a general sense of what facts and ideas you should include, but you need to determine exactly what ideas and facts the readers need. Start by putting yourself in your readers' shoes and read the key message you wrote already. Now, write down every question that comes to mind. At this stage, it's important to write quickly without evaluating the items on your list or blocking the flow of ideas. Don't worry about whether an idea will go into your final draft. Just keep going until you believe you've written down every question the reader might consider asking. You will eliminate unnecessary or redundant ideas later. Here's an example. Let's imagine that I'm writing to the director of IT security to ask for permission to access a resource outside our firewall. First, I'm going to think about my reader and their concerns. I know that they're chiefly concerned with cybersecurity now and that my request for access might be summarily…
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