The educational/instruction material is the Achilles's heel of writing. Even when your creative skills are abundant, you still need a method - one of a very specific kind.

In order to create this type of copy, you need to do two things:

• climb down into your reader's mind, understand his perspective, and detach yourself from your own world;
• have a deep understanding of the human learning process and apply it.

We apply our experience of years in training people of all ages and all intellectual abilities. Our knowledge field stretches from art to technical issues. We have written for and trained many types of people, from elementary school children to business owners.

Our What, Why & How method is simple but powerful. It is built on the conviction that people need to understand the concept and its worth before attempting to master a skill or the use of a product.

We have seen too many times inefficient, boring, hard to follow manuals or tutorials, not to be able to build the pattern of their failure. Here is how we address some typical mistakes in instruction copy.

• Strong Structure.
  Gathering some paragraphs under a unique section name does not single-handedley count as good structure. When understanding a concept requires wandering from one section to the other and glue bits together, the writer has failed in offering a good learning experience.

  A good writer follows his own process of learning and takes notes on the way. He sees grasping a concept as a path from Start to Finish, where the route must be clearly defined, in steps and stages, if he doesn't want his reader to wander through the neighbouring woods. He remembers the obsticles he encountered in the way, and grabs the reader's hand when it's his time to meet them.

  We see writing such copy similar to building a bridge. The structure must be clear and in place before you step on it. The path from unknown to known must be well-mapped and strongly built before sending your reader, alone, cross the pit.

• Knowledge of Learning Principles.
  The theory of learning is usually absent from the reading list of many writers. It is a costly mistake. When the writer ignores the way the human mind achieves knowledge, the result of his work will be an inefficient hodgepodge of information, in which the reader will be left to dig at his own cost.

  There are a few pedagogical principles to keep in mind when attempting to lead your reader to understanding. Whether it is follow the path from simple to complex, formulate the problem, then offer the solution, or involve the reader in the act of discovery, we follow them religiously. Deciding on the best strategy to follow (general to particular or viceversa?) is not an aspect you can afford to ignore if you want your reader to leave your copy happily enlightened.

• Simplicity
  We are not the first ones to say that the last bastion of complexity is simplicity. It is a hard task to find the patterns in a complicated concept and reduce them to a few simple lines. Many times writers do not even try: complexity seems to pleasantly tickle their ego. We avoid this mistake. Rather than losing ourselves in our own importance, we prefer the productive simplicity of the things well and shortly said.

• A Bit of Smiling
  Few are those whose favorite book is a manual. The idea that instruction material is boring by definition is so widely accepted that the suggestion of an enjoyable tutorial seems rather frivolous. After all, the common expectation is that tutorials must solve problems, not play the clown.

  We tend to refuse to add more boredom than necessary to our readers' life. Laughing is not counteractive to solving problems. In fact, cracking a joke here and there may grease the wheels of learning, and make the experience memorable.

  And learning is all about memorable copy.

Some examples of instruction material we write:

• Tutorials
• User documentation
• How To's
• Technical/Software documentation

What We Write | Samples