3 benefits of concise elearning scripts

The best writing is concise. My favorite authors are Tolkien and Hemingway. It’s no surprise that their best books, The Hobbit and The Old Man and the Sea, are their shortest. This is probably true of your favorite authors as well.

Whether it appears in a novel or elearning, bloated prose is a form of confused egotism.

Conciseness is the key to quality elearning scripts. Why?

Conciseness allows you to vary how the content is delivered. Let’s say you are giving an overview of a process. If you have two fat paragraphs of content, you’re pretty much limited to delivering it as text-on-screen. However, if you have a lean paragraph of say five sentences, you have options – you might set it as voiceover, or text-on-screen, or a combination of both. 

Concise prose makes good voiceover copy. A long, poorly written sentence is an annoyance when it appears in print. When set as voiceover, however, it becomes downright painful. Which always reminds me about that quote originally made about opera libretti but equally applicable to pop music: “Anything too stupid to be spoken is sung.” If you are an elearning pro, you no doubt have been haunted by one of your monstrous sentences that somehow escaped the laboratory and made it into your course as voiceover.

Conciseness is related to engagement. Assuming equal quality, what do you think your typical learner would find more engaging – a ten-minute module on required safety practices, or a 20-minute one? The shorter one, naturally. Conciseness lets you leave them wanting more. 

Leave them wanting more.