Writing and speaking (two different skills)

Yesterday, I was talking with a colleague about a scholar we both admire, whose talks just blow people away every time. And, I found myself thinking, "Man, I really wish he wrote like he spoke!" as I remembered slogging through his last article. That made me think about the folks I know whose thinking and research don't quite translate from their oration to their writing. To be fair, it goes both ways. I once went to hear author Richard Foster speak, and was excited for what I thought would be a mind-blowing talk after reading one of his books. However, the talk was humdrum and unimpressive. I was surprisingly disappointed.

I could go on recounting instances, but the truth is that public speaking and writing are both skills that don't necessarily translate. Some folks possess both. Some possess one or the other. And, some possess neither. Although both skills are important in academia, I would suggest that writing is more important. I would say it's essential, but then I'd be ignoring the fact that so much academic writing by successful academicians is bad.

Yet, going back to my pining thought of great speakers writing like they speak, why can't they? I think that maybe they can, but they need to do a few things to make this happen. Below I suggest a few things you can do if you're great speaking/teaching doesn't seem to translate to your writing.

Disabuse yourself of academese:
As a long-time student, as many of you have been, I've found myself re-trained to meet the writing rules of professor after professor. This is an interesting process for me, because as a Technical Writer, I'm partial to my own writing rules. Yet, I play along and translate entire papers into passive, third person or delete headers because an instructor insists that they are a crutch where writers should be writing transitions (apparently having both transitions and headers isn't an option). So, it's no wonder that academic writing ends up so muddled when former students, now academics, write trying to follow the sometimes contradictory and sometimes ineffective writing rules of their teachers.

Thus, many scholars should take a hard look at their writing and work to understand what rules they're following that are unnecessarily weighing down their prose and making them incomprehensible in some cases. Once you realize what you're doing and that it's creating a barrier to clarity, start re-training yourself. Disabuse your writing of these unhelpful notions.

Pinpoint the magic in your speaking:
If you are a talented and compelling speaker, try to identify what you're doing in your talks that makes your thinking so clear and compelling. Then, try to emulate that in your writing. If you have copious notes for your talks, try using the same system to write a speech down and use that as the foundation for your next publication. Or, if you don't use a lot of notes, record your next talk and transcribe it to see if that can give you a jumping off point for your writing. I recently gave a talk that was very well received. Although it was for a lay audience, I had still incorporated citations into my PowerPoint along the way to keep it academic. After a few requests for the presentation, I realized that my talk really could be easily translated into an article outline. So watch out for opportunities in your speaking that you can seize for your writing.

Consider your audience:
Even though writing and speaking are different skills, they both require the writer or orator to understand and deliver to their audience. Thinking through or finding out what the audience expects, what they already know, what would be most useful for them, and what is the context in which they will encounter your writing/speaking, are all important questions to answer before one designs their talk or their writing.

Of course, you may find that all of these strategies lend themselves to one another. For instance, the magic in your speaking may be that you really understand your audience and their needs. But, trying any or all of these strategies may allow you to use your speaking skills to push your writing to a new level.

Resources:
10 tips on how to write less badly - Michael C. Munger