Why Clever Writing Fails When I’m editing someone’s work and a sentence tries too hard, I spot it immediately. The writing contains words like “synergistic” or “dynamic”: words that perform rather than communicate. The sentence loses power. Worse, it confuses readers. Here’s what most writers miss: authenticity creates authority, not fancy language. What this means: Your metaphors, anecdotes and explanations are there for clarity only, otherwise readers struggle to extract meaning and might abandon the content. Cliches are out; personal mottos are in. What is the One Clear Idea Rule? Every sentence should carry one clear idea. When you pack two or three concepts into a single sentence, something breaks. The reader’s brain stumbles. They re-read. They lose momentum. Research backs this up. The American Press Institute studied 410 newspapers and found that with average sentence length of 14 words, readers…

Last week I bought a Kindle book about Mastering your own Public Relations. Firstly, if you use a title along those lines, you will attract people wanting to DIY their brand publicity/PR and expecting some handy tips. Using ChatGPT can help with getting ideas for chapter titles because it will make the titles in a similar fashion that you can then adjust. But for words? Well, let’s see where the use of ChatGPT for book writing all went wrong. There were some real entrepreneur stories of success in the eBook, and these were the ideas I wanted to be taken deeper into. Many other pieces were quite obviously explanations and benefit lists generated by a chatbot. I recognised the boring tone straight away. Now, there are two reasons that this doesn’t work. The first is, ChatGPT and you don’t speak…

There seems to be many myths surrounding writing a book (or a paper, for that matter). Most of these centre on the idea of ‘the muse’ and waiting for inspiration to strike. We mess about all day, thinking we’re adding to our work by reading a bunch of articles, going on Quora, and then immediately forgetting what was found. I don’t want you to be that person. The one thing you might want to stop to read is a book I found years ago. It’s called ‘55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer’ by Roy Peter Clarke. In the preface, it says: “These practical tools will help to dispel your writing inhibitions, making the craft central to the way you see the world. As you add tools to your workbench, you’ll begin to see the world as a storehouse of writing ideas.…