Beads on a necklace: how structure and signposting make you a better writer

Around twenty years ago I received one of the best and most actionable pieces of advice during my entire academic education. 

I was about to complete the third year of a four-year History degree at the University of Edinburgh. We had to complete what was referred to as a ‘long essay’ – around 8000 words on a specialist subject. It was a stepping stone between our usual essays and the looming 12,000-word dissertation that we would have to complete in our final year of study, and a fantastic opportunity to do a deep-dive into a subject of interest.  

I am going to be completely honest here: I can’t remember exactly what I wrote my essay about. I know it was something to do with Edmund Burke and the French Revolution, and my supervisor was Harry Dickinson (H.T. Dickinson), one of the leading experts on the period, and the revolution’s effect on British history.  He was also an incredible teacher. 

So, I do my research, I formulate a question for the essay that I am interested in unravelling, and I get to work writing my essay. It is just challenging enough a task to be satisfying, but not a massive stretch for me as a historical researcher and writer – after all, I had been an undergraduate for three years at this point. I knew how to write an essay and get my arguments across clearly, no problem. 

A few weeks later, and I head to Harry Dickinson’s office in George Square to talk about the essay. He handed it to me from a large stack on his desk. On the front page was the number 68, written in pencil and circled. A high 2:1, two marks off of a 1^st. 

My reaction, which I can remember clearly, was: “Hey great, a 68! That’s a really good mark.” But in all honesty, I was conflicted. Why didn’t I get a 1^st for this? What happened to those two extra marks?

Harry seemed to sense this clearly. He was immediately positive about the score. And then he sat me down and gave me the best advice I had received up until that point. “So this,” he said, “Is what you needed to do to turn your grade from a 2:1 into a 1^st.”

The thing is, writing at this level, if you’re able to get a 68 there isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with your work. Your research is sound, your argument is detailed and well-reasoned. In fact, I could have submitted almost exactly the same content again and achieved a 1^st, only with one small but significant difference. 

It was about signposting. When you’re writing anything – but particularly a piece of more than a few thousand words – the reader has to feel secure in the route you’re taking them on. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, the two things that will keep the reader with you are: intrigue and signposting. In other words – follow this map because there is treasure hidden there, and trust that I’ve laid the correct path to get you there. If a story or an essay is all about the promise of an exciting reveal but the reader has to hack their way through bucket-loads of information to find it, they won’t find it a satisfying experience or, even worse, they might just give up. 

In other words, your job as a writer is twofold: make the audience curious and excited so they keep reading; and make the structure clear enough so they know where they’re going without phenomenal effort. Writing that is easy and enjoyable to read isn’t necessarily simple. What makes it work is that the writer has taken pains to structure a complex and thorough piece well and hook the reader in without them feeling like it is hard work. 

“Think of it like beads on a necklace,” Dickinson told me. “Give the reader a clear sense that you know which bead is coming next. You already have a clear sense of the journey – show them how your thought process works. Give them a signpost for what comes next so they don’t have to hold all of that information themselves.” 

Rather than letting my thoughts and arguments appear on the page without signposting, all I needed to do was express my thinking as I went: “I have argued how this will lead to this. Now I will show you X and Y, and how that will lead to Z.” Obviously this needed to be expressed with a little more flare, but you get the idea. By following this very simple advice, I was taking some of the guess-work out of the reader’s hands and holding that responsibility as the author. And I was leaving enough hooks of intrigue to help the reader want to keep reading. 

Now in fiction, rather than academic writing, this might seem like strange advice. You don’t want to reveal the whole plot straight away and spoil all of that lovely dramatic tension you’re building up in the first third of the story.  But it can be a really useful exercise to interrogate where you choose to drop this piece of information, or where you introduce that character – are they providing a hook, or a roadmap for your reader? 

Imagine this – your audience isn’t a passive character at whom you need to throw information or reveals or jump scares. Instead, think of them as a buddy – you need to take them by the hand and lead them through the story. Give them space to ask questions that you don’t need to answer for them. Leave them space to fill in some of the blanks themselves. But ultimately, you are the guide. If you can find that balance between offering intrigue and providing a safety net, your writing will improve significantly. 

Bonus task:

Take a look back at this post I have just written. Can you find the hooks? There was also a lovely story about Harry Dickonson, a testament to what a great teacher he was, that I wanted to include here but didn’t as I was concerned it would take us off the path for a little too long. Can you guess where that story would have gone? Did I make the right choice?