The one question that fixed my writing
You probably already know it. I had to learn it the hard way.
For years my drafts came out as essays trying to sound like essays. The fix was a single question I now ask before every paragraph: what does the reader not know yet?
If the answer is "nothing," the paragraph is repetition. Cut it. If the answer is "the wrong thing," I am giving them context before they have a reason to care. Reorder.
This is obvious in retrospect. Most fixes are. The trick is to make it a reflex.
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