1st Edition
Writing for Planners A Handbook for Students and Professionals in Writing, Editing, and Document Production
Writing is never easy, but this book can make it easier. With attentiveness and experience, Claudia Kousoulas gives readers applied writing, editing, and production approaches that provide a clear path to completing a document and tools that ensure it is engaging and professional. The book follows a project’s path from initial assignment and conception, through sorting out what’s significant, shaping it into a message, and guiding readers to an action. It addresses the different types of documents planners have to create, the different media they use, and the different audiences they address. Its strategies will help writers start a project and see it through to a clear and coherent piece of work that serves its purpose.
This book will help planners meet the challenges of creating work that is accurate, creative, and useful. Students will find it helpful in providing professional standards and quick reference information, and professionals will carry it through their careers as a reference, and as a way to establish workplace standards and improve their own work.
Introduction; Before You Write: Developing Expertise; Know the Context; Know the Audience; Writing: A Writing Process; Madman: Generating Ideas; Architect: Structure and Story; Carpenter: Words, Sentences, Paragraphs; Judge: Red Pens and Sharp Knives; When to Stop; After You Write: Communication Beyond Words; Document Elements; Production Techniques; Presenting; Afterword
Biography
Claudia Kousoulas has worked in urban and rural communities on master plans and community development projects, always with the idea to engage participants in the process and outcome by communicating ideas in meaningful ways. She has taught and presented to students and professionals, and is also a freelance editor and author of Contemporary Architecture in Washington, D.C. and Bread & Beauty: A Year in Montgomery County’s Agricultural Reserve.
