With the mass educational/informational stuff I'm writing, I try to manage accessibility, information density, and "sticking power" to optimize all of them at the same time. I'm not sticking to it 100% because the format doesn't allow for it, but I've taken a few key ideas from Pedagogy of the Oppressed and tried to adapt them to short-term booklets/zines.
- Don't act as a Holder of Knowledge™ depositing said knowledge into an Empty Brain
- Don't assume that people can't figure out complicated jargon where it counts- your audience is people with brains just as neuroplastic as yours
- At the same time, don't just hurl academic language at them with no context, or else you're just cutting them off from gaining knowledge- if you can't understand most of the key words, you can't understand the new insights
- Do treat your writing as a sort of conversation, explain terms in plain English and provide multiple angles, and allow the readers to analyze things themselves a bit
As I find my writing style while trying to keep to these principles, I'm realizing it's kind of like my favorite professors from college. Just the right amount of info, not really lecturing, but not trying to be too friendly, either, and not a whole lot of ego behind it. It might be kind of dry but it's almost satisfying in its dryness, like coming from Maryland to California during the summer.