Webinar: How to become an exceptional writer by Shani Raja @ YouTube

Good writing skills aren’t a gift; they evolve over time, shaped through guidance, refinement, thoughtful revision, and steady practice. 

As an editor and journalist, Shani Raja has worked with some of the world's most prominent news organizations, including The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Financial Times, and Bloomberg News. 

He has also contributed his editing work to top technology organizations and professional service networks, such as Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers, among other global companies.

Even at school and college, Shani was convinced he was already a brilliant writer, as his teachers often praised his writing ability. That is, until his rude awakening made him realize he wasn't as brilliant a writer as he thought he was at the start of his career.

Writing to impress vs. writing to communicate

"On my first day on the job, I thought I'd try to impress my editors by submitting a well-written story. To my surprise, however, the editor returned my story with lots of questions, comments, and, most discouraging of all, changes," Shani shared his experience in a LinkedIn Learning video.

"It turned out that my news editors, while not quibbling with the substance of my article, didn't care too much for my use of formal academic language to tell much of the story. Neither did they appreciate my use of rather elaborate sentences, which I'd perfected in college essays, for which I'd usually gotten good grades," he added.

Writers vs. Editors

"As I pored over through the story I'd submitted during the so-called readback that the editors offered reporters, it seemed that my editor had pretty much torn apart what I'd written and then stitched it back together to read completely differently.

It was nothing like the way I'd written it. Gone were the fancy and flowery words that I'd proudly inserted. They'd been replaced with plainer, more familiar, sober language.

My elaborate sentences, which I had thought would display sophistication to our audience of high-profile industry executives, had been flattened out to forge a series of bluntly straightforward points that even a child could understand.

Some sentences were clipped to appear less wordy. Others had been stretched to give the writing a completely different pace and rhythm. Several paragraphs had been removed altogether, while others had been exiled to a different part of the story.

In short, the article I was reading now was entirely different from the one I'd proudly submitted just a few hours earlier. Needless to say, this hurt my ego," Shani expressed his frustration at that time with how the editors "destroyed" his piece.

Rude awakening: A wake-up call of an "exceptional writer"

The experience for Shani was the opposite of what it was for him in college, where teachers would "gush over his dissection of complex ideas and wax lyrical about an elegant turn of phrase" that he happened to write in his short stories.

The radical reworking of his article by editors when he was a journalist was a rude awakening for him. It was also upsetting to his perception of himself as an "exceptional writer." The experience made him doubt whether he was any good of a writer at all.

And while the light at the end of the tunnel seemed to dim all hope for Shani to even consider continuing his pursuit to become the kind of writer he aspires to be, there was still a glimmer of hope left in him. He was not ready to give up his passion for writing just yet…

Editors salvage, not savage

In my own experience working as an editor for a news company, I've also had to explain to writers that editors are not on a personal mission to "destroy" writers' masterpieces. On the contrary, editors want to save all the hard work, or rather, "heart work" writers put into their stories.

The negative perception of editors held by writers is usually resolved after editors explain sound writing principles, practical communication fundamentals, in-house style, legal guidelines, and other factors involved in the process.

Shani's journey to writing mastery has also shed light on the actual task of an editor, which is to salvage and not savage a writer's heartfelt expressions while also ensuring the intended message, more than the craft or the artistic skill of the writer, can reach and resonate with their readers better.

It's more about mindset than tactics and craft

As Shani continued, he learned that:

"Once I'd gotten over the pain, I forced myself to look at the situation objectively, and I soon appreciated that my editors were actually making my articles read a whole lot better.

And very soon, I began to see these experienced news editors of this type as having a rare, hidden talent and being aware almost of a secret science that most people outside the journalism profession had little or no idea about.

Knowledge of this science gave these editors a huge advantage in breaking down the ideas they wanted to express to their audience and communicating those ideas brilliantly.

In that moment of realization, I decided to make it my mission to figure out how great journalistic writers like those editors did what they did so that one day I could become an exceptional news writer as well."

Last but not least, Shani advised that when it comes to writing, it's more about mindset than it is about tactics… 

… and the most fundamental question that a good writer asks themselves every time they sit down to write, either consciously or subconsciously, is this question: 

“Do I really have something worth saying?” 

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Watch the video below to see Shani's “secret sauce” for great writing with just four essential ingredients that can turn even the dullest nonfiction into engaging, compelling prose; a simple yet powerful formula that has helped thousands of students get their writing noticed.

The four core ingredients for exceptional writing are:

• Simplicity
• Clarity
• Elegance
• Evocativeness

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Shani Raja is a profoundly experienced editor and writing trainer. He has taught over half a million aspiring writers, including top journalists and professionals, how to improve their writing.

Sign up for Shani Raja's invaluable yet affordable courses, especially those I've personally taken on LinkedIn Learning and highly recommend below to produce better, smoother, and more elegant narrative flow:

• Crash Course: Writing Well with More Style, Flair, and Impact
• Editing Mastery: How to Edit Writing to Perfection

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