Although anyone can write, not everyone can write well. There’s a lot more to it than simply typing your thoughts onto the screen. While spelling and grammar are important and help to give your thoughts more authority, these alone don’t make for good writing. When I teach students how to write, I always emphasize what I call the SOAP—the Subject, Occasion, Audience, and Purpose.

• Subject: the WHAT you’re writing about. While you can write about anything, you generally should a have strong interest in your subject before trying to write about it.
• Occasion : the WHEN and/or WHERE—the context for your writing. For example, are you responding to some world event? Are you writing an email or a report to a government committee?
• Audience: the WHO you’re writing for and HOW you approach your subject. Although you’ll probably never meet your readers, who are the people you want to speak with and how do you get their attention?
• Purpose: the WHY you’re writing. The reason(s) your audience should care about what you’re saying. You’ll usually have many purposes (e.g., informing and persuading) to your writing.

While all four elements interact with each other, the audience is the most important. You could write the most brilliant piece on a subject that everyone cares about, but if you mess up who you’re writing for and how you approach the subject, your efforts will probably be wasted. I’ll have another post that looks at the audience in more detail soon.

Writing well is a skill that comes with years of practice. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be successful right away—I’ve seen students improve dramatically in a number of weeks simply by keeping these four elements in mind.