When I was teaching writing, students who were having problems completing an assignment would often come to me for help.
They would show up in my office with laptops, hard copies of their drafts, books, articles and start pulling them from their backpacks. They had tons of stuff with them.
I would ask them to leave all that alone for a moment and just sit down at my desk and in their own words tell me what their paper was about.
If we could spend some time working that out, they usually could see a way to fix the writing problems they were having.
Like our question about who you are writing for, this one sounds simple. And in a way it is.
Pick up any nonfiction book, and on the back cover you’ll usually find a short paragraph or two that describes the book’s main idea.
Can you answer this question for your writing project?
Pretend you are talking with a trusted colleague or your significant other and trying to explain to them in a few sentences what you are writing about.
Actually sit down and write it out. Three sentences max.
And no fair saying, “It’s hard to explain” or “It’s really complicated.”
Why is it helpful to state the main idea in a sentence or two?