I felt committed to the eight Ss when I developed them as principal strategies for great writing. They reflected what great nonfiction writers have always said. They also echoed what young writers learn in how-to books and from editors.

They are no secret. And then I discovered that all of these techniques stimulate the reward circuit. They play not just to people’s opinions about good writing but to biological facts about human desire and aspiration. 

Making Good Choices

The Ss as strategies alone, though, are of limited use. The practical question: What writing tactics fall under each S? What choices should writers make at their desks to keep their writing simple, specific, surprising, and so on? That’s what’s in my upcoming book, Writing for Impact: 8 Secrets from Science That Will Fire Up Your Reader’s Brain.

The book itemizes the most important tactics for executing each S. Let’s take one example, rewarding readers with the strategy of surprise. The brain interprets surprise as a reward because it suggests to readers that they will learn something new, maybe something new that will make life much better. So people pay attention, and they get a hit of dopamine-driven pleasure as they do.

Choices for Surprise

What are some fresh tactics for composing with surprise? From my webpage:

• Make the familiar fresh: Deliver more than been-there-done-that language. Give readers something to think about on the far side of their unexpecting minds. Instead of saying that the autumn day was cold and crisp, John Steinbeck wrote in his travelogue, Travels With Charley: “The air had a sweet burn of frost.”
• Kindle new reactions: Mingle unlike words. Author Louis de Bernieres, writing about a politician in Corelli’s Mandolin: “…he was a poodle amongst wolves.”
• Reverse the grain: Invert idiomatic flow. If people normally say that life takes heart, think about suggesting the reverse. L. Frank Baum famously did so in creating logic for the Tinman in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. 
• Throw a final punch: The power position for emphasis is the last word, sentence, and paragraph. Exit with an unexpected zinger. Lewis Thomas in Lives of a Cell: “Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi…engage in child labor… exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.” 

The tactics all start with the top-line principle: Reward your readers.  

Nature’s Reward

The wonderful thing about the “reward your reader” as a principle is that you can see nature’s elegant design behind it. Having someone else enjoy something rewarding, though simple, is a universal motivating experience. In a sense, you’re simply turning others on by tuning into their joint humanity.

The more you get your approach in sync with the universal design of the human mind, the better your writing gets.

Image credit: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with pictures by WW Denslow, 1900. Public domain.