Recently, I wrote this article about how single tasking can dissolve stress. I let my wife review it. We ended up having a long discussion that started with the stress topic but quickly drifted off to other realms. It was a trigger for a shear endless conversation. This made me think of how I initially wrote the article, without losing focus of its purpose and maintaining a concise writing style.
The answer is simple: before I start to write, I set myself a content box, a container that can be described in the title. If the article is longer, with multiple chapters or even sub-chapters, I would set the initial title framework, without any content. This process of course is very flexible, I add or remove chapters as needed, but never leave the overall topic of the article.
I use this kind of approach not only for writing articles, but also documentation, code, notes and even lists. If something is in mind that doesn’t quite fit in the container, then it’s probably off-topic. It helps me to write and organize my thoughts. The challenge of it all is creating those smart containers where I can express my thoughts concisely, so that they can easily be understood by others. That is the first key.
I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
Blaise Pascal
The second key is to re-read the article multiple times, continuously removing unnecessary content, until full conciseness is achieved.
A concise writing style is surely not suited for every kind of text. Sometimes exemplification, circumscription, listing or emotionality may be appropriate. Conciseness usually implies omitting any kind of those things. It usually fits well for formal, technical or rough writing.