My Favorite Writing Hack
The Amplified Impact Podcast
November 14th, 2023
Want to know my secret writing hack? Lean in! I write the way I talk.
Most of us are taught to write formally, but I write like I’m having a chat.
Here’s the hack…speak out your words as you write.
I perform the words, feeling their flow and cadence. It’s about getting the rhythm of your speech into your writing.
Why does this work?
When you read aloud what you write, you notice the melody, the rhythm in your head. It’s like a real-time melody test for your writing.
This might be an advanced tip, but when you speak your words and adjust the flow, real time…you can connect better with your work.
It’s our little secret. Catch you later.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Writing should have a melody, even if you can’t hear it. It has this melody that plays out silently in people’s minds.”
– Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
Yo, what’s up, guys? Welcome back to the podcast. So, come here, lean in. Lean in a little bit closer. I want to share with you guys one of my biggest writing hacks, writing secrets. And I don’t want you telling everybody about this, because this one’s, this one’s so powerful, I think it could change the world if it got out. Okay, maybe not so much, but I stumbled on this writing hack a number of years ago, and I want to share it with you guys because it’s had a massive impact on how I write. And I don’t claim to be a good, great writer by any means. I think I’m solid.
Anthony Vicino:
I know how to communicate ideas, but I think what I do well, maybe even above average, is I’m able to communicate or write in my own voice. And I write in a way that sounds a whole lot like I speak. So if there is one thing that I’m good at, it’s writing. Like I talk. And this is a piece of feedback I get very frequently from people, which is like, if they know my voice, if you’ve listened to this podcast and then you’ve read my writing, you go, I can hear your voice. I can hear you saying these words to me. And that’s the ultimate compliment to me, is that your words on the paper sound like the voice coming out of you. And that can be a real struggle, because coming out of school, a lot of us are taught to write in an overly formal way, especially if you’re, like, in corporate America.
Anthony Vicino:
Like the emails, they read like somebody’s trying to write Shakespeare. And that’s not how people communicate. It’s not clear, it’s not concise, and it’s not authentic. And so the hack that I found for writing the way that I talk is to actually speak out the words that I’m writing as I’m writing them. Is that seriously, that simple? I like to write in a room by myself so nobody else can hear me. But when I’m typing, when I’m writing, I’m almost like performing the words coming out of my mouth as I’m saying them. And then as I hear them, I go back and I can edit, and I’m like, oh, maybe that’s not quite the cadence that I want. And maybe I need to insert some different formatting here to get across the pause or the dramatic nature of this concept, or to mimic the feeling of lowering your voice and getting kind of intense, or the feeling of getting faster and getting excited and wanting to go rapidly down the page, right? Those are just aspects of formatting, but you can really get the feeling of your writing when you’re speaking it as you’re doing it.
Anthony Vicino:
And I found this to be a cool strategy for connecting with your work in a way that sometimes just writing can feel almost like a thing outside of yourself. And I think a common piece of writing wisdom is you should always reread out loud your work before you publish it. And I think that’s a good idea. But then the reason for that is you might write this tweet, you might write this blog post, and then when you read it out loud, you start to notice, like, okay, when I’m reading this out loud, I’m getting caught up on this combination of words. It doesn’t flow, it doesn’t sound right. Writing should have a melody, even if you can’t hear it. It has this melody that plays out silently in people’s minds. And when you just write the words and you don’t speak them, you don’t notice it as obviously as you do when you speak the words.
Anthony Vicino:
So it is that common piece of wisdom. You should always read out loud your work. But my twist on it is to actually speak as you’re writing. And this might, in full transparency, this might be a little bit more of an advanced tip. I don’t know. I haven’t actually taught this to beginning writers. I haven’t seen them using it, because it might be that you need to engage different parts of your brain when you’re writing by hand versus when you’re speaking. And it could just be that I’m at the point now in my writing because I’ve done so much of it that those two things are naturally meshed.
Anthony Vicino:
And so to get to that point, the recommendation would be to write more, do more reps. Right. But I don’t know if that’s necessarily the case. This, I think, could work regardless of where you are on the ability curve. I think just speaking as you’re writing, even if that’s just write the sentence, go back, reread it to yourself, hear how it flows, and then make your tweaks. I think that can have a very powerful impact, but not entirely sure. But again, this is a super secret hack, so keep it between us, don’t share with anybody else, and that’s going to do it for me. Guys and gals, I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Anthony Vicino:
But until then, stay hyper focused, my friends.
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