HBR Guide to Better Business Writing - Bryan A. Garner 2013

Divide the writing process into four separate tasks
Delivering the goods quickly and clearly

Do you feel anxious every time you sit down to write? Your main difficulty is probably figuring out how to begin. Don’t try to picture the completed piece before you’ve gathered and organized your material. It’s much too soon to think about the final, polished product—and you will just make the challenge ahead of you seem overwhelming. The worry can take more out of you than the actual writing.

Instead, break up your work. Think of writing not as one huge task but as a series of smaller tasks. The poet, writer, and teacher Betty Sue Flowers has envisioned them as belonging to different characters in your brain: MACJ.¹ That stands for Madman-Architect-Carpenter-Judge, representing the phases that a writer must go through:

✵ The Madman gathers material and generates ideas.

✵ The Architect organizes information by drawing up an outline, however simple.

✵ The Carpenter puts your thoughts into words, laying out sentences and paragraphs by following the Architect’s plan.

✵ The Judge is your quality-control character, polishing the expression throughout—everything from tightening language to correcting grammar and punctuation.

You’ll be most efficient if you carry out these tasks pretty much in this order. Sure, you’ll do some looping back. For example, you may need to draft more material after you’ve identified holes to fill. But do your best to compartmentalize the discrete tasks and address them in order.

Get the Madman started

Accept your good ideas gratefully whenever they come. But if you’re methodical about brainstorming at the beginning of the process, you’ll find that more and more of your good ideas will come to you early—and you’ll largely prevent the problem of finally thinking of your best point after you’ve finished and distributed your document.

Get your material from memory, from research, from observation, from conversations with colleagues and others, and from reasoning, speculation, and imagination. The problem you’re trying to solve may seem intractable, and you may struggle to find a good approach. (How on earth will you persuade the folks in finance to approve your budget request when they’re turning down requests left and right? How will you get the executive board to adopt a new mind-set about a proposed merger?) Don’t get hung up on the size of the challenge. Gathering ideas and facts up front will help you push through and defuse anxiety about the writing.

How do you keep track of all this preliminary material? In the old days, people used index cards. (I wrote my first several books that way.) But today the easiest way is to create a rough spreadsheet that contains the following:

✵ Labels indicating the points you’re trying to support.

✵ The data, facts, and opinions you’re recording under each point—taking care to put direct quotes within quotation marks.

✵ Your sources. Include the title and page number if citing a book or an article, the URL if citing an online source. (When writing a formal document, such as a report, see The Chicago Manual of Style for information on proper sourcing.)

As you’re taking notes, distinguish facts from opinions. Be sure to give credit where it’s due. You’ll run aground if you claim others’ assertions as your own, because you’ll probably be unable to back them up convincingly. Worse, you’ll be guilty of plagiarism.

This groundwork will save you loads of time when you’re drafting and will help you create a well-supported, persuasive document.

Let the Architect take the lead

You may feel frustrated at first as you’re groping for a way to organize your document. If a sensible approach doesn’t come to mind after you’ve done your research and scouted for ideas, you may need to do more hunting and gathering. You want to arrive at the point of writing down three sentences—complete propositions—that convey your ideas. Then arrange them in the most logical order from the reader’s point of view (see chapter 4). That’s your bare-bones outline, which is all you typically need before you start drafting.

Give the Carpenter a tight schedule

The key to writing a sound first draft is to write as swiftly as you can (you’ll read more about this in chapter 5). Later, you’ll make corrections. But for now, don’t slow yourself down to perfect your wording. If you do, you’ll invite writer’s block. Lock the Judge away at this stage, and try to write in a headlong rush.

Call in the Judge

Once you’ve got it all down, it’s time for deliberation— weighing your words, filling in gaps, amplifying here and curtailing there. Make several sweeps, checking for one thing at a time: the accuracy of your citations, the tone, the quality of your transitions, and so on. (For an editorial checklist, see chapter 6.) If you try to do many things at once, you won’t be doing any of them superbly. So leave plenty of time for multiple rounds of editing—at least as much time as you spent researching and writing. You’ll ferret out more problems, and you’ll find better fixes for them.

Recap

✵ Approach a writing project as a series of manageable tasks using the MACJ method.

✵ Use the Madman to gather research and other material for the project, diligently keeping track of quotations and sources. And allow more of your best ideas to come early by methodically brainstorming at the beginning of the process.

✵ As the Architect, organize the Madman’s raw material into a sensible outline. Distill your ideas into three main propositions.

✵ In the Carpenter phase, write as quickly as possible—without worrying about perfecting your prose.

✵ Finally, assume the role of the Judge to edit, polish, and improve the piece. Do this in several distinct passes, each time focusing on only one element of your writing.

1. Betty S. Flowers, “Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge: Roles and the Writing Process,” Proceedings of the Conference of College Teachers of English 44 (1979): 7—10.