From Woman Writers, Women’s Books
You undertook the grand adventure of writing and publishing a book. And now you’ve either learned, or will shortly learn, that the final page of your book is not the end of writing, but the segue from writing the book into writing about the book. Today’s publishing market is a media-content glutton. Whether you’ve written a novel or a nonfiction book, you’ll find yourself churning out essays, blogposts, presentations, interview questions and answers, newsletters, and memes.
Regardless of audience and format, your credibility is everything. You want your words to ring strong, true, relevant, and original. That’s how you grab and hold a reader’s attention, how you make them want to read more from you, how you build an ongoing readership—how you become an established author with a following.
Nothing will stamp you as unoriginal, bland, and of dubious authority as will the use of cliches that cast aspersions on your creativity and believability. Here are seven to avoid.
- “I’m not gonna lie”
A pediatric dental hygienist once told me, “The worst thing you can say to your child is, ‘don’t worry, it won’t hurt.’ Chances are your child wasn’t worried about pain until you brought it up.”
The same goes for telling your reader you’re not gonna lie. Before you qualified what you’re about to say by suggesting there are times when you do lie, your readers assumed you to be a trustworthy source. Now they wonder why you felt you had to say that, and whether it means that statements you don’t preface with “I’m not gonna lie” are untrue.
Gotta love one of Urban Dictionary’s definitions of the phrase: “A term that when prefixed to a statement does more damage than good.”
Whether you’re trying to establish credibility for your opinion, reveal an endearing vulnerability, or defend yourself against an unpopular stance, a strong standalone statement will have more impact on your readers.
And beware of doubt-casting cousins like “I’ll be honest,” “In all honesty,” and “Truth be told,” and . . .
- “Trust me”
There’s good reason why writers are admonished to show, not tell. If you have to fall back on “Trust me” to gain the compliance or confidence of others, you haven’t taken actions or provided the information or perspectives that instill trust. Show us. You have to earn trust; it’s never an entitlement. We show, not tell, as demonstration of integrity and engagement. There’s no shortcut directive for that.
- “ . . . of all time”
The Big Bang was more than 13 billion years ago. And even that’s not all of time, because what about the moment before the Big Bang? Time is infinite, human recorded history is only a few thousand years. How infinitely silly it sounds classify something like television shows, football players, mobile apps, and running shoes as the best “of all time.”
If you’re talking about a favorite something, it needs no qualification. “Cherry Garcia is my favorite ice cream” is quite clear. If you must qualify, “Atticus Finch is the greatest hero in film history” carries more weight than a film “of all time” when film has been around less than 150 years.
- “Let that sink in.”
The use of this junk phrase means you either didn’t use language clear enough to make your point, or you believe your reader lacks the intellect to know when you’ve made an important point.
It’s condescending. Let that si . . . see what I mean?
A clear, succinct statement needs no command tag, but if you just can’t let go of the sinking-in idiom, you can take the conceit out of it by flipping it onto yourself:
When I let that sink in, I was able to take a step back and look for solutions.
I let that sink in, and how very troubling it was. Now what?
Letting something that heavy sink in took a while.
Now your reader is empathizing with you rather than feeling irritated or patronized.
Link to the rest at Woman Writers, Women’s Books
*snort* And yet these are all things lawyers say to their clients. A lot.
I see you leave it to us readers to decide whether this reflects badly on Ellen Notbohm (the author) or on the lawyers saying this to their clients. I suspect that it is the lawyers who get the “distrust” vote. No reflections on you or PG intended.
Just remember: There are only three lawyer jokes.
The rest are all true. (Trust me.)
(I get to — arguably, I’m obliged to — criticize the legal profession pretty harshly because it’s my second profession, and one with considerably lower standards than my first one.)