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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/32969
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm a journalist, and my writing work often involves writing reviews. Similar work in the field often focuses down on the mechanical, objective qualities of the thing being reviewed and that's been my approach for many years.

Now, however, I'm starting to try something different. I want to take a more subtle approach which implies things for the audience, rather than spelling it out to them.

I've started to do this by writing narratives about my personal experiences with products, rather than the more traditional objective, third person assessment. So, for example, in a recent piece I wrote:

> Soon, I'm surrounded by small stacks of cards. Shortly after that, two hours have shot by into hyperspace and I'm sated with my own cleverness and creativity. I haven't looked at the internet once.

Wheres once upon a time I might have written:

> Making a deck with a limited selection of cards has unexpected charm. Everyone just copies ideas from the internet nowadays. But without everything I needed, I had to plan my own instead, and it proved surprisingly satisfying.

The trouble is that I don't really trust what I'm writing to get the point across. When I'm editing my work, I find it difficult to resist the urge to take my narrative and hit my audience over the head with the point I'm trying to make.

This isn't a matter of not trusting the audience, it's a matter of not trusting myself to write prose that achieves the intended effect. What can I do to learn better, or to evaluate my attempts at subtlety so I can be more certain they'll get the point across?

Original score: 3