Your Content is Missing This Essential Ingredient

Imagine driving up the onramp of your local freeway. You’re ready to merge with the flow of traffic, but something remarkable has happened:

Cars are driving in every direction.

Some are making donuts. Some are driving against traffic. Some are stopped in the middle of the road. Others are making random left turns.

In a sudden frenzy, you begin driving in circles.

Why You Need to Love your Patterns

Most writers (I’m guessing all writers) can’t resist this impulse. We drive all over the page, spin donuts with our sentences and ideas, and collide into periods with frustration.

Don’t worry. It’s natural.

Our thoughts typically run in many directions, so it’s no surprise that we write in this fashion.

But pattern is the most essential ingredient for all content development--blogs, books, college essays… you name it. Without intentional flow of your written elements, you move your reader toward chaos, minimizing their comprehension.

When your content patterns are loose and fuzzy, your audience struggles to find meaning.

Learn to Recognize your Sequencing Gaps

It’s one thing to say, “Sure, go ahead and write with pattern.” But what does that mean?

I’m guessing that most of you, like me, first write on impulse, moving from one idea to the next, while attempting to remain true to your topic.

I get it. First drafts are the "inspired" drafts, when you need to get the words down.

Too often, however, those inspired drafts end up as the final draft. In other words, when you write the bulk of your content, and accept your single pass (minus a few "corrections") as a finished product, you essentially end up with a "first" draft.

That’s fine if you’re writing a letter to your cousin or your best friend or a diary or whatever, because its the effort and raw value of your words that count.

But that doesn’t mean you’re delivering content that communicates effective meaning to a formal audience.

Readers (your audience) like things to be neat and tidy, and predictable. They don't like to work too hard to understand your point.

As a writer, attending to "pattern" is your first line of defense and audiences love narratives that contain clear patterns.

An obvious method to learn pattern and content design is to read widely, and select dynamic content to study. Choose narratives that grab your attention, and you can examine how other writers create rhythm and flow in their sentences.

Then return to your own writing and examine the flow of your sentences and paragraphs. Study the rhythm (or its absence) in your writing? Do you shape your sentences with intention? And, most important, are you addressing the sequencing gaps in your paragraphs?

Sequencing gaps means one sentence doesn't relate to the next, or one paragraph doesn't relate to the next, or even elements within the paragraph have no place, or the entire segment of your proposal don't fit with the last section... and so on.

Pay Attention to What the Other Hand is Doing

Creating patterns begins when you commit to the relationships happening on your page, whether in the word-to-word, sentence-to-sentence, or paragraph-to-paragraph sense.

This requires you to look.

You must examine your work in this light. Talk to your words, your sentences and your paragraphs. Examine the features of your narrative framework. Learn how to pull back, and study your work, as you would select an outfit for a date.

In other words, STUDY the flow of your content as if your life depended upon it (and your date... with the reader).

Effective writing depends on this level of attention.

Building relationships in your writing requires patience, continual reflection upon your design, and a willingness to examine.

Paying attention means you become sensitive to the needs of your sentences and paragraphs, just as you might consider the needs of any relationship.

If you want to create pattern out of chaos, then resist the temptation to drive in the opposite direction on major highways.

Pay attention to the yield signs.

Slow down and breathe.