Tips to Keep Consistency When Writing: the WW Structure
Whatever your audiences are, consistency is crucial to deliver effective communication. How do we ensure that consistency?
What does “consistent” mean? Following the Cambridge Dictionary:
In agreement with other facts or with typical or previous behavior, or having the same principles as something else.
Consistency relies on some rules that remain unchanged through the diversity to which they apply.
For example, a map is consistent because the rule to measure distances between places is everywhere the same. This consistency ensures that the map is reliable in locating sites.
Another example is a whatever language, where grammar and semantic rules are always the same through words and sentences: this consistency ensures that the language works.
Consistency is the foundation that roots in repeating the same structure through changes.
The WW structure in writing
Structures speak meta-language; this is why they can stay the same through changes: they include changes and bring consistency to the table.
Two “Whys” make up what I call the WW structure in writing:
- Why do writers write their content?
- Why should readers read that content?
Regardless of the genre, think of the best writing you have read in your reader’s experience. Perhaps, the first “why” may have remained unknown; in the end, who knows writers? Instead, you have understood the second “why” well, simply because you read that writing until the last word.
Why do writers write their content?
The “why” for which you write is the background. There is no need to declare that inner “why” explicitly. Nevertheless, it must be there since the first draft and inform the whole message.
The purpose is all when it comes to communication; it gives sense and meaning to a story, an essay, and whatever kind of writing.
Think, for example, of the “need” that some people may have to write down their experiences and share their failures and intimate feelings. That “need” to share reveals that the writing is about something foundational or a discovery that was somehow a game-changer in the writer’s life. That “need” is the “why.”
Publishing gives writings the freedom to reach the world; from that moment on, what you write gets its own life independent of you. As the child you grow up, the “why” you wrote your piece remains a part of it beyond the writing period.
That is the first W of the WW writing’s structure.
Moreover, the reason why writers write and publish grounds the other “why” of the WW structure, which is the reason that pushes people to read.
Why should readers read?
The “why” readers should read your pieces is constantly communicating with the “why” you wrote them. It is a connection between purposes. As far as writers and readers are human, they are all moved by intentions: the writing game is about aligning the intentions of writers and readers, even when intentions are not yet conscious.
The purpose is all when it comes to communication; it gives sense and meaning to a story, an essay, and whatever kind of writing.
The king way to invite people to read your pieces is by providing them with a solution to a problem.
For example, this article promises in its title some tips for maintaining consistency when writing, which is a real problem in delivering writing that the readers perceive as a whole and with a personality.
It is a mirror game that the writer has to put in place. Readers need to mirror their purpose into the first W-”why” the reader has to read-which, in turn, needs to reflect the second W-”why the writer has to write.
In that mirror game, writers tackle problems by providing new formulations, melting down the problem’s complexity, and presenting those new formulations as solutions. Readers find their path toward the answer to the problem by reading because writers wrote it as a learning path toward the purpose they care about.
Even novels are learning paths through words, where characters and events intertwine precisely to unravel the skein of the story they tell.
That is the second W of the WW writing’s structure.
Conclusions
The dialog between the two “whys” is where the writer and reader align their purpose.
Back to the definition of consistency, the WW structure ensures an agreement between the writer’s and the reader’s purpose. Consistency may even happen unconsciously, meaning that the writer is not explicitly taking care of it. Still, words indeed do, as far as the writer is a good writer for their audience.
Eventually, back to the metaphor of writing as a map, the WW structure is the rule to measure distances and give a location to facts and thinking. When do you read a map? When you need to reach a destination. That destination is a common purpose that the writer and reader have about a piece of writing.
Consistency in writing is the dialog between you, the writer, and your readers in harmony with purpose.
Ultimately, writing creates worlds where readers can live, learn, and mirror their lives to get a step forward.
That is the WW structure in writing.
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