Brandon Royal Little Red Writing Book

Brandon Royal Little Red Writing Book

Saturday, January 25, 2014

5:00 PM

Structure:

1. Top-Down Approach (most important first)

Expository: summarizes/explains (put the conclusion first)

2. Break Things Down

Lead sentence (like topic) but summarizes the whole essay not just a P

3 is a magic number (2-4 OK)

3. Use Transitions

Signals: continue, contrast, conclusion, illustrations

4. 6 writing structions:

 categorical, comparative, evaluative, chronological, sequential, causal

5. Keep Like things Together

6. Support what you say:  specific, concrete examples   exercise

7. Personalize your examples: not generic, details: quotes (esp famous) exercise

8. Keep it Simple: exercise

9. Cut Down Long Sentences:  clearer to reader,

10. Eliminate Needless Words:

Redundancy  is not good.

Occasionally use qualifiers, but don't overuse.

Don't say "I believe or in my opinion"

Exercise

11. Gain Active Power

Need to use active voice most of the time (exercise)

12. Favor Verbs, Not Nouns

Nominalization: Don't turn verbs or AJ into nouns

Exercise

13. Use parallel forms

Exercise

Elliptical expressions: with verbs and prep. OK to take out second v/pr if it's the same as the first.

Exercise

14. Capitalize on Sentence Variety

Vary openers;

Subject, phrase, clause, article, verb, adverb, adjective, gerand(ing), infinitive, correlative conj,

Exercise

15.  Choose an Appropriate Tone

Positive and personal

Formal vs informal (pronouns/not, contractions/not, longer/shorter,

Exercise

16. Keep your writing gender neutral (PC)

17. Capitalize on Layout/Design: SPACE increases readability

18.  Employ Readability Tools: make key words/phrases stand out

           bold, italic, dashes, bullets,numbers, shading

19.  Use Heading and Headlines to divide and summarize

20.  Go Back and Rework

a. write it

b. edit it

c. 24 hours later, edit sections

It's finished when you're satisfied you don't need to change anything.

Appendix: summary  of the 20 principles above.