Ancient Mesopotamians used pictures of basic objects to preserve and describe their culture. The Phoenicians pivoted from pictures to symbols around 1600 B.C., a harbinger of our modern alphabet. Each symbol represented a spoken sound, but the reader read the symbols from right to left.
This method spread to Israel and Greece, where the Phoenician alphabet was refashioned into the Greek alphabet, but the Greeks invented vowels and redirected the reader from left to right.
The Romans then used the Greek alphabet to make the Latin alphabet, and hundreds of languages have sprung from the Latin alphabet, including English.
When the Phoenicians invented the alphabet and written communication, they invented a method to exchange and preserve thought, long after the thinker has stopped thinking. Words live on the page, where they reverberate beyond our physical and temporal reach. A device that teleports ideas through space and time. Yes, it sounds like Star Wars, but I only mean to say that shouting distance was no longer required to make a point. As a result, we can read the Gettysburg Address in 2024, even though President Abraham Lincoln died in April 1865. Lincoln understood this power and described it well:
Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world[,] enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. The distance of time and space between readers and writers produced new challenges, which I call the Absent Reader and the Absent Writer.
An absent reader for the writer.
First, a writer writes alone. Readers are absent when writers craft and recraft their words and sentences. The reader is not in the room during the creative process, peering over the writer’s shoulder to ask questions and raise concerns:
What does this mean?
Why are you discussing that point?
I’m losing interest.
OK bruh, I’m lost.
And because the reader is absent, writers cannot deploy their innate communication skills—that empathetic reflex hardwired into the human brain over thousands of years. When humans speak face-to-face, the speaker can read and react. He may change words or tone based on the listener’s facial expressions and body language—a nod from the listener and the speaker continues forward; a blank stare and the speaker revisits the point. Not so when writing.
An absent writer for the reader.
Second, a reader reads alone. Writers are absent when readers read and process their words and sentences. A reader may need guidance, but the writer is not present in real time to field questions:
When I wrote this, I meant that.
I’m discussing this point because of that.
This point is related to that point.
You might be lost because I forgot to tell you something.
A mindful writer knows he no longer controls how a message is delivered once his words and sentences are released into the ether. For that reason, he crafts from the perspective of his readers, anticipating their wants and needs.
I think there is writing genius as well—which consists primarily of the ability to place oneself in the shoes of one’s audience. To assume only what they assume; to anticipate what they anticipate; to explain what they need explained; to think what they must be thinking; to feel what they must be feeling.
—Justice Antonin Scalia
Know and Motivate the Reader
To overcome and even exploit the distance between reader and writer, persuasive writers toil to understand their readers. Each reader consumes information through a different lens, customized by their background, knowledge and experience. A persuasive writer calibrates and fine tunes his approach to meet that reader’s unique expectations.
Persuasive writers use their life and professional experience, along with their pre-programmed communication instincts, to draft with prescience and intention. They anticipate and answer reader questions before they are ever posed, spotting the points or arguments most likely to confuse or overwhelm the readers, and easing the path to comprehension.
Meditation: It’s not like you’re incapable of thinking like a reader. You are one! In fact, you’re reading right now. So use that inside advantage to your benefit. Write to others as you would have others write to you.
Picture the readers and write for them. Ask around. You might not have met your reader personally, but you can find readers with similar backgrounds, values and interests. Test drive your argument and narrative with them. Look for their reaction. What motivates them? What persuades them? What must they know to understand the next paragraph? It’s like Carnac the Magnificent or a mentalist routine in Las Vegas.
Persuasive and legal writing have a long and diverse bench of readers who fall into one of three groups—judges, lawyers and non-lawyers. Each member of each group, however, shares at least one thing in common. All readers have a brain! Persuasive prose accounts for the frailties of the human brain.
Meditation: Your message and approach are influenced if not directed by your audience.
The Reader’s Brain
A. Reading Taxes the Brain
Reading is hard on the brain. To read text, the reader must engage and coordinate distinct, complex cognitive functions located in distinct parts of the brain, including the sensory and reasoning systems. Language and thought are processed by different regions of the brain.
Readers must recognize words from prior encounters, decipher meaning, recall information, overcome ambiguity, and merge new information into the world of old information. Readers assign roles to words in a sentence, and examine those words against other words in the sentence. This empowers the reader to anticipate how the sentence will play out, structurally. And this weighs on the brain.
Learn more in the new book, Zen and the Art of Persuasive Writing. Purchase now where books are sold, including Amazon.
