This video was inspired by a client who brought me a pillar essay for his new coaching program. All his ideas were there, but the document was, he knew, a mess.
So he was expecting a line edit. A comma here, delete this adverb, switch this from the passive voice to the active—ta dah!
But the draft couldn't be fixed at that level.
When you're an expert, you use writing as part of your thinking process. You're not merely transcribing thoughts you've already thought before; you're generating new knowledge. So your thoughts, in this early phase, are a total mess. Like a set of Christmas lights, the expert writing process begins by untangling the web of ideas in your head into a linear pattern that makes sense to the writer.
But a text that makes sense to an expert—one that takes the shape of their thinking—will not make sense to a reader. Indeed, the patterns that experts use to think about their subject actively fight against the patterns readers use to understand. The name of this fight is interference, and that's what this video tutorial is about.
Expect to learn:
- why the more you know, the worse your writing gets (and why that isn't a discipline problem);
- what interference is, and how it explains the unhelpful feedback readers usually provide;
- why line editing can't reach the problem, no matter how good the line editor;
- how to run a diagnostic test on your draft in about ten minutes;
- what a reverse outline catches that an outline never will.