Unity is the anchor of good wriitng.
- Unity of prnonoun
- Unity of mood - casual or formal
Ask yourself some basic questions before you start.
- In what capacity am I going to address the reader?
- Reporter? Provider of information? Average man or woman?
- What pronoun?
- first person as a participant or third person as an observer?
- What tense?
- Past tense, present
- Need to choose a tense that you will principally address the reader in, but you can go backwards and forwards in time.
- What style?
- Impersonal reportorial? Personal but formal? Persona and casual?
- What attitude am I going to take towards the material?
- Involved? Detached? Judgmental? Ironic? Amused?
- How much do I want to cover?
- ==What one point do I want to make?
- ==Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn’t have before.
- ==One point will give you a better idea of what route you should follow and what destination you hope to reach
- ==One point will affect your decision about tone and attitude
- ==Some points are best made by earnestness, some by dry understatement, some by humor
- It often happens that you’ll make prior decisions and then discover that they weren’t the right ones. The material begins to lead you in an unexpected direction, where you are more comfortable writing in a different tone.
- Trust your material if it takes you into a terrain you didn’t intend to enter but where the vibrations are good.
- Don’t become the prisoner of a preconceived plan. Writing is no respecter of blueprints.