How to Make Your Writing Sound More Conversational
If writers want to do anything, it’s to connect with and intimately engage their readers. They want to give people the gifts of escapism, inspiration, or education and make them feel deep things.
So, why do so many writers fail to achieve that goal?
One word.
Conversationality.
What is conversationality?
Conversationality means that whatever you’re reading feels casual, like you’re chatting with a buddy. The words reflect the way people really talk, without any jargon or platitudes.
You can immediately see the difference if you compare the above paragraph to the one below:
Conversationality in writing is defined as providing readers with a sense of informality, as though you are speaking with a dear friend. The words reflect how people engage in everyday spoken interaction, and jargon and platitudes aren’t used.
As you look at the paragraphs, notice that the first is more succinct. People tend to try to get their ideas across quickly in speech, and the contractions help with that. Although I won’t argue that brevity is always the best option (Victor Hugo, Charles Dickons, Cervantes — they’re all Exhibit A), it’s smart to be realistic about how people consume text and what the limits of attention have become because of the Internet.
Just spit it out
The mistake most writers make is that they don’t bring their speaking voice onto the page. They think too hard about the technical elements of how to craft the document or how their work “should” sound. As a result, they can’t just clearly spit out what they want to say and often lose the natural flow they normally have in verbal communications. Second-guessing themselves is common.
In my work with executives and other professionals, the norm is for me to record interviews. Whenever possible, I integrate direct quotes, making only minor tweaks to clean and tighten the speech. If I try to paraphrase or rewrite, it typically doesn’t add all that much. I’ve learned to trust the initial expression of the concepts and to summarize in my own words only when the ideas needed to be more centered and get to the point.
Image credit: Lukáš Jančička from Pixabay
Most people don’t do this. Instead of working based on transcripts of their speaking, they write and then speak the text aloud to double check that it flows. When they stumble over something they’ve written, they’re often not sure how to fix it, because they keep referencing what’s on the page as a base instead of restarting based on their ear.
My recommendation to anyone who has to write is the same as the advice from communication expert Vinh Giang — record yourself chatting with someone to learn what your spoken language really sounds like. Once you know what the spoken language is, draft in that, not your written language.
Simply put, don’t approach the page as the page at all.
The rule of thumb when you then go to edit is that anything you add or change has to add clarity or improve meaning. If the shifts don’t do one or both of those jobs, leave the text alone. Although there certainly are cases where it takes a few tries to nail the accuracy and impact you want, my experience has been that people tend to edit way more than they have to.
Don’t let your inner editor take over
As you work with this new process, if you lean too much on your strict cognitive understanding of language, your inner editor might scream at you. For instance, saying “the guy I talked to” technically should be “the guy to whom I talked,” but almost nobody would follow the proper written convention while speaking.
This is the conundrum — to sound conversational, you have to break the writing rules you know. Doing this can feel scary, because it feels like you’re abandoning structure. But when you really listen to how people speak, verbalization still has its own rhythm and rules that people know and trust. So, you’re still leaning on solid, comprehensible linguistic scaffolding. It’s just that written and verbal scaffolding are different.
When in doubt, take the page away
Part of great storytelling on the page is making people feel like there isn’t a page at all. Sometimes, the only way to get that feeling is to take the page away in the beginning and say what you have to write. The more you practice this technique, the more you’ll learn to transcribe your thoughts without much — if any — self-correction. Eventually, you should feel like all you are doing is observing, listening well, and taking dictation for yourself, those you’re writing for, or, from your imagination, your characters.
The one thing you can’t do? Name your business after the process. I beat you to that. 😉