In chapter 3 of “Made to Stick,” authors Dan and Chip Heath discuss the importance of using concrete language to convey abstract ideas. The curse of knowledge is a very important cause of poor writing. Sometimes a writer will be doing a story on a subject that they know very well, but the resulting work is confusing and uninteresting. The reader cannot understand the story in the way the writer does because they lack the same knowledge. As writers, we need to learn to take a step back from our work and read it through the eyes of our readers. Using lots of examples and metaphors are a good way to explain your subject matter. The Heaths described a story in which an accounting teacher had great success by using  the example of helping a friend run their business.

The creative team at HP took it to the next level by building a life sized display to demonstrate how its computers could help run Disney theme parks.

So how do we learn to make our writing more concrete? I think the most important this book tries to convey is that we should think like our readers. What do they understand? What would make our writing more interesting? By doing that our ideas will become less abstract and our stories more sticky.