By Holland Webb @WebbHollandLyle

At the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference 2022, Karen Porter told us to keep our writing reader-focused. The audience of Christian writers shouted back “Amen.” If we’d only had funeral fans and a sawdust floor, you’d have thought we having a revival. (We kinda were.)

Writer-focused text is great for your private journal, but it doesn’t work for a publication. We need to keep the reader front and center in everything we write.

Like many writing truisms, that’s easy to say but tough to do. How do you know when your piece centers on your reader and when it’s really all about you?

Let’s take a look at five questions that can help you decide:

Are you writing what your reader needs to know or what you want to say? Ideally, the message you want to share will overlap with the one your reader needs to receive. Like a Venn Diagram, however, you’ll probably see that part of your writing doesn’t really meet your reader’s needs. It meets yours. Cut that part out when you’re making revisions.

Pro Tip: I have found that a writing coach can help me see when I’ve written something because I want to say it, not because my reader needs to hear it.

Are you writing a hit job on someone else? If you designed your piece to rip into another person’s life like a torpedo from a submarine, don’t publish it. Can you call out sin with your writing? Absolutely! Should you use a Christian devotional publication as a way to lash out at someone you don’t like? Never.

Sometimes, you’re treading a fine line.

In my first article for Focus on the Family, I wrote about things to do and not do for children whose fathers have died. Most of my “don’t do” list came from what my mother did. Even though she was too sick to read the article when I wrote it, I made sure to disguise the fact that she was the culprit. No one needed to know that. (Now you know that, of course, but this is a different article with a different focus. Besides, we’re friends, and you’re not going to tell on me.)

Is your voice fresh and unique? Unless you’re a scholarly researcher by profession, your content is probably not original. In fact, if you’re writing for a Christian publication, your idea shouldn’t be original. We have a word for too much originality in religion — it’s heresy. You don’t want to go there. You can, however, be original in your presentation of a classic idea.

An original presentation shows respect for your reader because you’re not just rehashing something beneficial you read or heard. Rather, you’ve incubated your idea until it has taken on a new life of its own.

Does your tone sound like a drill sergeant or a frustrated elementary schoolteacher? Maybe you are a frustrated elementary schoolteacher. Oh, my friend, I have been where you are. I understand.

But …

You can’t reprimand, belittle, or condescend to your readers — ever. What sounds like an inspirational challenge to you could sound like scolding to the person on the other end. Readers will only tolerate so much of that before they start to feel that you don’t like them. And then you can lose them. Permanently.

Have you told the truth? Do not lie, exaggerate, dismiss, or plagiarize. While this list seems obvious, every one of them has gotten a well-known Christian writer into hot water.

If you have stretched your prose beyond provable facts or reasonable logic, you have exaggerated. If you dismiss relevant facts to bolster your point, you have dismissed evidence prejudicially.

Just don’t do it. Don’t lie. Don’t cheat. Don’t steal. Often, we do these things without malicious intent, but we still do them even if it’s by accident. That’s why a good coach, writing partner, or even an online plagiarism checker can be a valuable investment.

As you’re revising your work, keep your reader’s needs — not your needs — top of mind. After all, your work is all about them, not about yourself. Can I get an amen on that?

What questions do you ask to keep your writing reader-focused? Share them with me in the comments!

Holland Webb is a full-time freelance writer and editor whose clients have included High Bridge Books & Media, Sweet Fish Media, Compose.ly, and RedVentures, and his articles have appeared in Focus on the Family, Influencive, Devozine, and Keys for Kids. With his friend Carlton Hughes, Holland co-authored Adventures in Fatherhood: A Devotional. Almost 20 years ago, Holland adopted two boys, both now grown, and he recently married for the first time at age 45.