Watch out for writers who want you to “explain it like I’m five years old.” If you’ve hired a writer who asks you that question, fire them.
On the surface, it sounds like they believe in the power of simple and direct language. And, of course, “everybody knows” simple words and ideas are best.
Except they aren’t.
Dig deeper, and you’ll find a few things.
Writers who ask questions like that are intellectually lazy. Here’s why:
- I’ll tell you now if you’ve never heard it. The question is a cliché. There’s nothing profound about it. A writer who asks it isn’t even bothering to think. It’s just knee-jerk, textbook amateurism.
- An absolute preference for simplicity is philosophically vacant. “Simplicity” doesn’t mean anything. It seems to, but it’s actually just an empty signal for a conventional middlebrow mentality.
- Unless your audience is five years old, it’s an empty exercise. The framing and explanation of an idea should align with the intellectual level of its intended recipient. Introducing imaginary primary school children helps no one.
- Assuming some degree of simplification is needed, it’s the writer’s job to meet your audience where they are. Your writer should apply the cognitive effort to translate your thinking into prose that the right people will understand. That work belongs to your writer, not you.
- If your writer can’t understand what you have to say unless you break it down for them in the simplest of terms, you can be almost certain that the final product will be a mess of irrelevance and common knowledge presented as if it were insight.
