By Lance Winslow
Technical writing is not easy and we should not be too overly critical of the people who write such manuals, and yet, many of them could use a little bit of advice. For instance, where is all the humanistic side to things? If a manual is too dry people fall asleep, no one likes it, and that can even cause humans to dismiss a new methodology or have proper buy-in to see that it works.After all, the best system in the world will fail if the users don't like it or will not use it. Just like an old archaic idiotic procedure will work no matter how inefficient if everyone uses it, accepts it, and likes it. Story telling is important although most technical writers will not see it, most readers of their manuals understand what is good and what is some of the driest bunch of writing they have ever seen on the face of this Earth.
How might you weave some creative writing or storytelling into a piece of technical writing? Well, very similarly to the way that companies do when they write white papers to sell their wares. You create a scenario, or a problem and you discuss the hardships and dilemmas and then explain how to fix these problems and more importantly how to avoid them.
Best of all a little story telling goes a long way into retention of the material for the reader, thus you are doing them a very big favor and saving them time, and money by preventing mistakes and inefficiencies. So I hope you will go out of your way to consider this and act on this advice on your next technical writing project, and convince those above you how important this is. Please think on it.***
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Lance Winslow enjoys community philanthropy - Lance Winslow likes small business. Lance Winslow has also been involved in the Oil Industry; http://www.oilchangeguys.com/aboutus.shtml/.
