Improve Your Writing Style With Evocativeness

Writing with evocativeness stokes emotion and triggers imagery, making the writing more stimulating; below are my top tips for bringing out this aspect that I learnt. 1. Decide the tone before you begin: what is the primary purpose of this writing? Is it to inform, to persuade, to inspire, to entertain or something else? Pick a tone that best suits your purpose: whether factual, formal, funny, humble, respectful, authoritative or something else. Tone gives your writing a distinct flavor. 2. Bring out people and actions: help readers visualize the scene or action you are describing. Write in active voice. Consider the following example of a fire rescue- “Hundreds of anxious people needed to be rescued by fire fighters to safety”—this starts with facts, below is rewriting starting with people and actions- “Fire fighters rescued hundreds of anxious people to safety”—this is easier to visualize 3. Make it vivid: if it suits your purpose, make your writing more vivid by inserting a tone or a sensation. Consider the following example “the foot-bridge on Ganges is at its full capacity and showing signs of breakage” If the above was a part of a persuasive communication, you may write it more vividly as: "the foot-bridge foundation is creaking under the relentless burden of men, women, and children making a beeline on its top; it threatens to burst at the seams any moment, plunging hapless people 30 meters below into the ravaging Ganges” 4. Add variety: sameness is boring; avoid repetition by using alternate words. For example, if you are writing a paragraph on Google that has multiple references to the company, you can avoid repeating “Google” by alternatively referring to it as “Google”, “the company”, “the tech titan”, or “the internet giant” 5. Do not litter your copy with meaningless words: avoid modifiers that do not add much value: “quite good” is same as “good”; “It is somehow simpler” is same as “it is simpler”. Look out for phrases like “it seems” and “I believe”. “It seems that China’s growth this time around is less than impressive”—is a complicated way of saying “China’s growth in 2019 is unimpressive” Even ground-breaking ideas can fail to catch attention unless written evocatively, the above tips will help you spice up your writing. However, evocativeness is a double-edged sword, it can go against clarity and simplicity, so apply it selectively and cautiously.