Some Thoughts on Writing

Some Thoughts on Writing

I attended the third class of the nine-week technical communications class on Tuesday night. I had a pretty good time with it. Bonni is an excellent lecturer. We discussed our VARK scores, and mine came out leaning towards read/write and visual. You can take the test yourself at www.vark-learn.com.

The lesson was on the writing process, and Bonni introduced us to the concept of personas. Personas are personalities the writer invents that, in the case of tech writing, should be representative of the target audience or users.

It's been fun to see the congruence between tech writing and fiction writing. The personas are a type of character. I won some points in the class by bringing up Judy's technique of "interviewing" your personas to get to know them. That's a novelist's technique, but it certainly can be used in the non-fiction realm.

Another characteristic of writing that Nancy used to bring up is that "People like to read about people." As Bonni says, "Everyone is the hero in his or her own story." Even some form as bland as technical writing still is about people--people act on things, not the other way around.

Tomorrow, I'm going to the zoo in the morning and then Jan will come visit in the afternoon. My parents will be visiting that night. Harold will be over, as usual.

By the way, I got my van back! It looks great--I just need to get it Teflon-coated before winter hits. We had a fair amount of rain this week, which I enjoyed immensely, but it does mess a car up!