Arotahi

Focus your objective. What is the purpose of the material you want to write? Writing can help you achieve the five I's: It can inform, inquire, influence, instruct and incite.

Focus your audience. Written materials such as reports and brochures can be valuable positioning tools. They should be written with a specific audience in mind -- the audience you wish to influence to buy your products or services.

Focus your content. Make sure that your message is the right message for the right audience. Don't let unnecessary ideas intrude on your principal message. To quote Professor William Strunk Jr., the renowned authority on English usage:

"A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts." Focus your organization. A good piece of writing flows like a symphony. Organize your material so that each topic flows easily and naturally into the next. Focus your clarity. Some writers think they can hide fuzzy thinking by burying it under a mass of words. To have impact, ideas must be expressed precisely and concisely. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address required only 275 words, and 196 of them were of one syllable. Focus your refinement. Perfection rarely emerges from a first draft. Ambrose Bierce once said that "a saint is a dead sinner revised and edited." Great writing is rough copy revised and edited.