- Less is more!
- A picture is worth a thousand words. It’s gold dust when your limit is 100 words. It avoids long-winded explanations and creates added interest.
- Avoid jargon (or admin-speak) Write “helped” instead of “facilitated”, “complete” instead of “holistic”.
- Ask your visitors questions: “Can you imagine the reindeer’s endless search for lichen in the winter?”, or “Hero or villain, what do you think?”
- Limit your use of adjectives. Use descriptive, emotive words (joyful, gentle, determined, abrupt, pristine, etc). Nouns (words to describe a place, person or thing) should be powerful enough to stand on their own. Mark Twain once wrote to one of his students: “When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them then the rest will be valuable”.
- Use the first person in your narratives (I, me, we, us) to tell the story from their perspective. It’s instantly more personal and engaging.
- Avoid clichés (as old as the hills, every cloud has a silver lining, etc.). Many people find them tired and unimaginative.
- Don’t teach or lecture visitors, instead, in the words of Freeman Tilden, provoke, relate and reveal. Provoke with an attention-grabbing title, relate using comparisons and metaphors to connect with people’s lives and reveal deeper meanings through your carefully crafted theme.
- Be ruthless and concise! Write, read and reread, eliminating any unnecessary filler words. Test a sentence without the word. If it still has the same meaning get rid of it.
- Be patient! Writing is rarely done in one day. Take a break, come back tomorrow and you’ll always see something to improve. After the deadline, you always spot something that could be better. That’s the beauty of writing, it’s a continuous process to develop your language skills and critical thinking.
The Sign Doctor » Step 10: Additional tips, techniques and golden rules
