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Writing for farm readers is not just putting down your thoughts or making bald statements on paper.  Your purpose in writing is to communicate in such a manner that you attract the attention of your readers, interest them in what you are going to say, making them understand and remember, and finally help them take the decision to act.  Your writing has to serve all these purposes.

The `why’ of writing

You write to communicate your ideas, thoughts, messages and emotions.  When you sit down to write, therefore, you must know why you want to write about a particular subject.  Is it to inform them about something they did not know before or is it to explain and give more information about something they already know?  Is it to tell them how to solve a particular farm or home problem?  Is it to persuade them to adopt a new idea or method, or show them a new aspect of an old idea?  Or, is it to provide them with all the information they need to take up some action?

Unless you have such a definite purpose in writing, your writing will not be clear and it will be ineffective. You will only be wasting time – yours as much as the reader’s.

The `who’ of writing

Your readers are the farm people.  But you must know more about them than just that.  You will write best if you imagine that your writing is addressed to one person, not to a group of people.  You must therefore know who that person is, and try to know him well.

What you must interest him first.  After all, he is a human being first and a farmer next.  Without first securing his interest, you cannot communicate anything to him.  Try to put yourself in his place, and see through his eyes.  Of course, most individuals, in whatever ways they may otherwise differ, have some things in common – common problems, desires, and aims.   They all want that they and their families benefit from the information you give.  So, you will have to make sure that the ideas you want to write about are sound, and suitable for them to know and benefit by.

Your ideas `touch’ the `readers’ ideas.  In other words, if you know what they want to read, you start thinking with them, and start off on a happy relationship with them.  This will also help you in adapting the subject to suit their needs.

The ideal way of knowing the `WHO’ of your writing is to meet and talk to a typical farmer or housewife.  Asking him (or her) questions will get him into a conversation with you.  If you keep your eyes and ears focused on him and on what he is saying, you will easily come to know what he wants to know.  Then you will be able to understand your audience more easily.

The `what’ of writing

You have to select such subjects, as your readers are vitally interested in.  Even here, you need not tell them all that is known about the subject.  That will be a `text-book’ approach to the subject, and textbooks are usually dull and are avoided.

In selecting a topic for writing, make sure that the idea you have in mind is sound, suitable for a communicating to your audience, and what is more important, is useful to most of them.

Choose your subject with care.  Let it be topical.  Let it introduce new facts to farm readers.  If the facts are not new, take up a new point of view in dealing with them.  You have got to influence your readers, and hence select that angle of the topic, which will interest them most.  Give this priority.

After selecting the topic, think more about it.  What do they know already about it?  What will be the likely difficulties and problems that will prevent the readers from taking up and using the idea?  How can the subject be so tackled so that they accept the idea?  How will the readers react to the idea?

Mark the boundaries of the subject; and strictly confine yourself to these boundaries.  If you stray away, there is the danger of your going further away from the subject, and your writing will become too long and `foggy’.  No body will like to read you for hours.

See how much of the subject your readers can take without getting tired of it.  Give only as much as will be easily digested.  An overdose of even a good medicine can be very upsetting, If not fatal.  Give one single series of related and logical thoughts at a time, and do a good job of it.

This does not mean that for fear of being too long you have to cut down the essential facts.  Without these, your writing will not be able to stand upright.  When solutions to problems are available, do give them.  When detailed directions are necessary for taking up a job give them in full.

However, leave out what they already know what they can add for themselves, and what they have no need to know.

The `where’ of writing

News is always welcomed by people.  The newspaper and the radio are two good customers for your news stories.  The news can also be slanted for wall-newspapers.  With some more essential details, it can even be made suitable for periodicals like weeklies and monthly magazines, provided of course, it does not lose its value after a short time.  You can write articles for the weekend edition of the daily newspaper or a monthly magazine.

You can also write leaflets and bulletins, where you make more detailed information available on the subject to the farm reader.  You can write reports and resumes, which will be avidly read when properly written.  You can write circular letters, brief ones, of course, to bring important facts to the notice of farmers and homemakers.

You can write telling captions to photographs and exhibits.  You can build up a story with pictures.  You can write `copy’ for advertisements.

The `when’ of writing

Information communication has to be timely, if farm readers are to make use of it.  Hence, you have to write far in advance of the actual time of or season when the information can be made best use of.  Hence, `time’ your writing.  If any information however interesting or useful it may be, is given too late, it will lose all its utility.  The very purpose of communication is then defeated.

There are, of course, exceptions.  Some kinds of information are communicated after the event.  Follow-up stories of events or success stories of farmers or a community are examples.  But most of what you communicate has to have seasonableness, and hence should reach farm readers at the right time or season when reception to the information will be at its best.

The `how’ of writing

Farm readers (like any others) want a writing that lives.   They like not only to `see’ your ideas, but get the feeling of `hearing’ them `smelling’ them and `touching’ them too.  It gives them a sense of reality and humanness.  Such writing will give them both enjoyment and education.

Farm readers also need writing that is simple and clearly understood, does not tire, is in a pleasant style and makes them feel `it is meant for us’.  Lack of variety and failure to appreciate their points of view make any writing drab and ineffective to farmers though it may contain very useful information.  Much of the agricultural and home science and other writing for farm people that you come across today reflects this failing.

You will only make enemies of your readers when you make it beyond them to understand you.  They may also feel that they are missing something, which is probably very useful to them.

Simple and clear writing also gives no room to the reader either to miss any of your ideas, or to misunderstand them.  The latter is important, because misunderstanding an idea may cost the reader much money, time and labor, or prevent hum from taking any action at all on some important problem.

Your writing, therefore, should be simple and clear to the readers.  Write simply and clearly, and you win half the battle.

Be brief in your writing.  No one, much less a farm reader, will have the time or patience to go through a long drawn out writing, unless it is fiction – a story or a novel. The longer your writing is the more difficult will it be for the reader to locate your purpose, and pick out the things he wants.  You will also end up by repeating your statements, and get this lost in a maze of words.  Editors don’t like very long write-ups either.Anything you want to say can usually be said briefly.

Make your writing specific.  Generalization is always vague, and does not help the reader make decisions. `It is very necessary and sow the crop within the optimum period’, `take preventive measures,` `disease-resistant varieties help’ and `follow healthy practices, are all general statements, and do not help much.

There is also the undesirable way of making `half-hearted` or `halting’ recommendations.  `Keeping a light trap at night may help`, and the farm reader will not like to risk wasting his oil.  Such writing is ineffective.  If you are not sure that the recommendation will definitely solve the problem, you gain nothing by passing it on to the farmer.

Address the reader.  A direct approach to the reader creates friendliness between the writer and the reader.  Instead of `the fertilizer has to be applied`, a direct `apply the fertilizer’ is certainly better.  Similarly, instead of `this pest can be controlled by…’ say, `control this pest by…’

Be accurate in the content of your writing.  Take care not only to collect accurate information; but also to state it a correctly.  Guard as much against making a partially correct or wrong statement, as against omitting an important idea altogether.  Beware of placing of wrong emphasis and of overcolouring facts, which mislead the reader.  There is always the chance of your wrongly interpreting a fact or making your own prejudices influence what you write.  Take care that your conclusion is based entirely on the facts you have stated, and not only on your own personal feelings that it is the right one.  Also be accurate in giving the names of people, places and products to help readers identify them easily.

Sound convincing.  Quote sources and authority for your statements.  Readers always like to believe that what they read comes from someone who knows the subject.

Don’t `Talk down’ to the readers.  No one likes a superior attitude or preaching.  Even if you have to preach, make it sound as if you are not.  Avoid using `should’, `ought to’, `need to’, `must’.  Give the information and leave it to the reader to think out for himself what he should do.  He will like it best that way.  It is in bad taste and poor psychology to sound as if you are condescending to talk to your reader.  You will then receive the poor response you deserve.

Be practical in your information.  The farm reader has not much use for information if academic interest.  He wants something that he can put into practice.  Give practical information, which you know your reader can use with his knowledge, ability, time and resources.

Avoid exaggeration at all costs.  However exciting the situation or important the information, state the facts without being carried away by them yourself.  Don’t use superlatives.  Once you get into that tendency, it will be hard to check it.  A single exaggerated word or sentence puts even the most intelligent reader quickly on his guard and makes him suspect the truth of all your statements.

To make your writing interesting, you have to make use of other techniques.  One is to introduce the human element in to it, or `humanize, it.  `I’ `you’ `he’ `she’ `they’ `Mr. Singh’ `Ram’ `farmer’ `farm wife’ are personal words that create interest in the reader.  The human touch makes your writing friendly, personal and lively.  In other words, it becomes interesting and entertaining.

Words

Words are the tools with which you have to work.  There are words and words, but you must know how to select the right ones to construct your story in such a manner that it will be liked.

To bring exact images and emotions to the reader through words, you have to know something about the reader’s nature and his experience.

Use the usual or common, which the reader uses in his own daily conversation.  Words which the reader is familiar with and which he can recognize as his own give him a feeling that you have remembered him and thus he will be deeply inclined to read your story.  This is where again reader-knowledge helps.  Use common words, but not common place words.   The latter being you down in the reader’s esteem.

Combine these familiar words to provide a clear picture of your idea, and stir up the reader’s imagination.  Familiar words also help take him back to his own experiences, making him stop and reflect.  Thereby you create a good link between him and yourself.

Sometimes you cannot help but use an unfamiliar word.  This is likely to happen when you are writing on a technical subject in an Indian language.  Normally, the unfamiliar technical word cannot be replaced by a familiar word because the technical word is the right word and says exactly what you want to say.  You therefore have to use the unfamiliar word, and explain it in familiar words when you use it for the first time.  Some writers put the meaning within brackets the first time they use the unfamiliar word and after using it a few times, expect the readers to have become familiar with it.  You too can introduce a new technical word to your reader in this way and after a time it will become a part of the reader’s everyday language.

Sentences

The sentence is a group of words that makes meaning.  This requires that you relate each part of the sentence to another in a clear and definite manner.

One sentence should contain one idea and no more.  It should follow logically from the sentence that has come before it, and should lead to the sentence that follows it.  In other words, sentences should be in a logical order.  Then reading becomes smooth and enjoyable.

Sentences too, like words, should vary in form, structure and length.  Since your sentence will be printed in the column width of a newspaper or magazine, which is normally narrow, it will look longer than it actually is.  This will give a feeling to the reader that it will be difficult for him to read such a lengthy sentence.  Hence avoid writing very long sentences.  But that does not mean that the sentences should all be short.  Vary the length to bring out variety and contrast.

Use short sentences to give clearness and to emphasize an idea. Present the average thought in a sentence of medium length.  But use such sentences sparingly.  If you use too many of them, your writing becomes monotonous.

Use a long sentence to give details or to summarize your points.  It moves slowly in contracts to the rapid short sentence.

Paragraphs

Just as the sentence expresses one idea, the paragraph is a group of related ideas.  Make your paragraphs short.  Short paragraphs break the blackness of type, give pauses to the readers, and make your writing look, attractive.

Paragraphs, like sentences, need not all be of the same size.  Some can be short, and some longer.  Each paragraph of course will contain a group of sub-ideas related to the main idea.  Thus, though separate from other paragraphs, it never stands out by itself.  A paragraph, more or less, leans on the paragraph that precedes it.

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