I’m in the editing phase of my thesis, half of which is a critical commentary and half of which is a novella. One resource keeps coming up in discussion: How to Edit Your Own Lousy Writing by Julian Gough.
It’s a brutally helpful essay on how to make editing count in creative writing, but as I return to it, I see that a lot of the principles could be applied to editing UI copy.
To be clear: I dislike when people say “UX writing is creative writing.” It’s not. It’s creative in the sense of problem solving, and thinking of new ways to present the situation, but the fundamental purpose is different. Wihle UI copy should be clear, creative writing should be interesting, meaningful, and, yeah, also clear. Don’t lose sight of that.
I recommend reading Gough’s full article, even if you don’t care about creative writing. But here are my main takeaways:
“If you wrote it, what you see is not what you get”
Gough uses the example of your childhood home. You can say “the home brought back memories,” and when you edit that paragraph, you’ll be happy with the punch of it. But your readers aren’t bringing your experiences to the table.
Same with UI copy: It’s easy to become desensitized to how things will sound to someone looking at it for the first time, because we’re tackling the problem with research and conversations and lots and lots of drafts.
His advice? Read the words in slow motion. Put it away and come back with a fresh pair of eyes, or show it to someone who’s never seen it before.
Obsess over the order of information
We’re logical creatures. We need to piece together the setting from the get-go, in the right order.
“If you walk your character through a door in a new location at the start of a chapter, don’t have loads of exciting stuff happen to the character before telling the reader what kind of room they are in. The reader may well have imagined they are in a kitchen, or a warehouse, long before you tell them it is in fact a submarine, or the Sistine Chapel, and they will resent you for putting them in the wrong.”
“We’re not telling a story with UI,” you may be saying, and you’d be wrong. It absolutely is a story. Where is the user coming from and where are they going? What are they expecting, and what do they know when they start? Make sure they have all the right bits of information so that the title or toggle you’re writing makes sense.
“Don’t fix commas when the plot is broken”
Sometimes we love to argue over whether something should have a period before the actual substance is final. Don’t.
First drafts are garbage. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad (UX/creative) writer. A lot of people want to give up after getting those first words on the page, but the tricky part comes in the editing.
Gough recommends going through different types of drafts: a plot draft, a character draft, a dialog draft, etc. For UX Writers, this may mean going to an editing session and being clear about what kind of feedback we need: the overall flow and story, the sound of the words, or the placement of a comma.
Comentários