Good editing tips!

The folks over at lifehack.org have another great article for Toastmasters...

"Improve your writing with these editing tips!"

The more speeches I write, the more important an effective editing and refining / improvement process is to the quality of my speech. This is especially critical (or at least most noticable) in Toastmasters speech contests where, assuming you win, you get a chance to give the same speech multiple times and edit/improve it between each speaking opportunity. (That also highlights a drawback of just doing a different speech every time as you move through a Toastmasters manual... you don't get to develop your editing skills as much.)

Here is what they say over at Lifehack.org...

... if writing isn’t taught well enough or often enough these days, editing is hardly taught at all. This is too bad, since editing is where the real work of writing is at. More than just proofreading, good editing improves the clarity and forcefulness of a piece.

Here’s some tips and tricks to help you make your writing more effective:

• Read out loud
• Read in reverse
• Sleep on it
• Cut, don’t add
• Justify yourself
• Eliminate pretentious language
• Throw out and get rid of unnecessary redundancies
  [blog editor's note: See the unnecessary redundancy in this tip?]
• Kill unsightly adverbs
• Avoid Passive sentences

Lifehack.org sums it up this way...

Good editing, like good writing (or, better, as part of good
writing), is an art. It takes time and practice to develop a real talent for editing, but the end result is worth it — your writing will be more alive, more effective, and ultimately more likely to be read. And that is, after all, what’s important: that your audience reads and, just as crucially, understands your
work.

Click here for the complete article!

Good suggestions for anyone writing their next speech ... or an article for the Yankee Activator !!

... or even a blog !

Mark Twain's rules for writing...

I came across the following "Mark Twain rules for writing" and thought they might be of interest to Toastmasters writing speeches!

Note ... If you are in the Tall Tale contest, be sure to read #6 (and disregard as needed).

Mark Twain divides his rules into large rules and little rules:

Large rules:
1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.

2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help develop it.

3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.

5. When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.

6. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.

Little rules:
7. An author should say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

8. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

9. Eschew surplusage.

10. Not omit necessary details.

Thanks for The Happiness Project blog for bringing this to our attention!