Ambiguity is our enemy

If you’re seeking a creative spark to energize your writing, it can’t hurt to follow advice from Kurt Vonnegut. The Indiana icon possessed a rare ability to keep readers hooked, and he shared eight tips on how to do it in the preface to “Bagombo Snuff Box,” a 1999 collection of short stories published individually decades earlier. 

You can read the full list in this web essay, which expounds on each tip. But for our purposes, let’s focus on No. 8: 

“Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.” 

This advice is especially useful in the style of writing we typically do as university communicators. Ambiguity is our enemy. Our audience should quickly recognize what they’re reading and why they’re reading it. Otherwise, we risk boring them or losing them entirely. 

View this email in full here.