Sean D'Souza: Keep to the point - and not too many of them

You start writing an article, expecting it to stay well within the boundaries, then it just takes off. And about two hours later you're wondering where things went wrong. Why is your article looking like a dog's breakfast?

There are two reasons for article bloat:

* Avoiding outlines.

* Bullet points that cause bloating.

We've already seen how avoiding outlines leads to article bloat (this was the article in Friday Business two weeks ago).

Now let's look at how bullets can cause a migraine of sorts.

In your article, your bullets points can also create the basis for bloating. That's because you've just gone and stuffed your outline with loads of bullet points. And soon the bullet points take on a life of their own. You feel compelled to give adequate detail about every bullet point.

And then it happens: your article is in bloat mode. It can't help but expand in all directions.

And for us to understand this phenomenon, we have to see an example.

So here comes the example of an outline:

Topic: The importance of terse, specific commands in training.

* The rambling teacher.

* Why rambles are dangerous:

- take time;

- prone to misinterpretation;

- cause students to want to do too much, too soon;

- getting one step done.

* Examples of terse commands.

* Summary.

* Next step.

The above looks like a perfectly manageable outline.

Yet let's not focus on the outline but on the bullet points in the article.

Notice this part in particular:

* Why rambles are dangerous.

- take time;

- prone to misinterpretation;

- cause students to want to do too much, too soon.

Each of those bullet points could be articles in themselves.

In effect, you could write three articles with headlines that went like this:

* Why rambling answers in training take up too much of the student's time.

Why rambling answers in training are prone to misinterpretation.

Why rambling answers may lead to students wanting too much, too soon.

So the question arises ... should you remove some of the bullet points that are causing the bloat? But what if you consider those points to be important? What if you feel the article is incomplete if you don't cover those points? Well, keep the points. Don't remove the bullet points. But spend no more than a few lines on each of the points.

So your article should look like this:

* Why rambling answers in training take up too much of the student's time.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah ...

* Why rambling answers in training are prone to misinterpretation.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah ...

* Why rambling answers may lead to students wanting too much, too soon.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah ...

I've allocated no more than four lines of explanation to each of those bullet points.

You may choose three lines. You may choose two. But whatever you choose, be aware of one thing. Bullet points can quickly cause bloating in an article.

And suddenly, if you have about six to eight bullet points in your article, you could have six to eight massive paragraphs jostling for your reader's attention.

And I don't have to tell you what to do. You already know what you need to do next.

1) Write fewer bullet points in your article.

2) If you must write a lot of bullet points, then keep the explanation to a few lines.

And yes, there's no reason why those bullet points can't become articles by themselves later, even though you may have written about them briefly in your current article.

In fact, it's a superb idea to indeed give each of your bullet points the spotlight they deserve and give them an article of their own in future.

That way you cover the bullet points in brief - and later in detail.

Most importantly you prevent bloat.

Phew!

Read the earlier article in this series on "bloat" here.

Sean D'Souza is chief executive of Psychotactics and an international author and trainer. He is the author of The Brain Audit - Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don't).

www.psychotactics.com