Expository Writing: Not Skipping Steps

The term “expository writing” includes most factual writing.  When you write instructions for people, explain something, describe something, report on something, or provide information, you are doing expository writing.  You use expository writing every day.  The steps in your LEGO kits that tell you how to build a spaceship are examples of expository writing.  Likewise, the instructions on the back of your shampoo bottle are expository writing.  So are newspaper articles, book reports, state reports, and a huge proportion of the writing that you do at school.

One of the most common mistakes that people make in expository writing is that they “skip steps.”  When giving some directions or instructions, they may literally skip a step, which leaves their reader wondering what to do.  In other types of expository writing, writers don’t literally skip steps, but they leave out parts of their argument, leaving their readers wondering how they got to their conclusion.  In general, arguments that leave out logical “steps” are not convincing to readers.  It’s easy to leave out “steps” when you’re making an argument because it’s YOUR argument.  You already understand how you get from your question to your conclusion.  But if you’re trying to convince someone else, you have to lay out all your logical twists and turns, very explicitly, in order to get them to see (and maybe even believe!) your point of view.

We often take for granted that people know what we’re talking about.  But, good writers don’t leave anything open for interpretation.  They don’t want their reader to “guess” at what they wrote and what their argument is; they want to tell their reader exactly what the argument is!

Other Expository Writing

Although there are many technical writers who make a good living writing instructions (and we reap the benefits of their skills every time we try a new board game!), most people don’t write many lists of instructions.

Step-by-Step writing skills can, however, by applied in many, many types of writing.  In fact, most young writers skip important steps in much of their writing.  The types of writing in which skipped steps cause the most problems are:

• Explanations of how things are done or how they work.
• Arguments that require readers to follow a writer’s logic
• Summaries that try to convey another person’s logic

We’re going to focus on explanations of how things are done or how they work.

Getting EVERY step is crucial in explanations precisely because your readers are reading your writing BECAUSE they don’t understand the activity or process that you’re describing.  If you skip a step in your explanation, your readers will finish reading just as confused as they were when they started.