Information Overload? Compartmentalize!
Written by Cedric Solidon on October 29th, 2008 at 12:00 PM
When I was just starting to learn playing guitar solos, I was often stumped by the technicality of playing them and the amount of time I had to spend perfecting them.
But it was not until I came across a lesson from one of my most favorite guitarists, Paul Gilbert. He said that if you’re learning a particularly difficult musical passage, you must divide them into separate sections. It would be much easier to play the entire passage if you have perfected every section of it.
So how does writing figure into this? As a writer, it is your duty to help people understand what you’re trying to say. And by compartmentalizing your work into easily-to-digest sections, the easier it would be to achieve this.
How do you compartmentalize your work? Here are a number of suggestions:
1. Make Lists – making a list is widely used by writers especially on the internet. The reason for this is that lists help visually separate the entire piece into smaller and easy to understand sections. It is useful when you’re writing about something that contains several elements (such as this article you’re reading). Lists are easy on the eyes and help your brain process the information much faster.
2. A Different Paragraph for a Different Sub-Topic – paragraphs are used to separate a general topic into several sub-topics. Again, the piece is much easier to understand if it is written this way. And yes, there’s also the visual element. A piece that is divided into paragraphs is easier on the eye than a block of text.
3. Separate Them into Chapters – for an especially lengthy piece, it is not enough that you make a list or separate them into paragraphs. Books are a good example of this. They are divided into chapters to separate one topic or one part of the story from the others. It helps make the entire book easy to digest if it can be read one part at a time.
Image courtesy of sundstrom at sxc.hu
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