Lots of great advice here. One piece of advice I got from my publisher when authoring a technical book was to first break down what I was going write into headings and subheadings, and if possible, into sub-subheadings. Then review that to see if your flow is coherent and whether there are sections that are missing, or could be extracted into another text.
Personally, my process after this is to express my thoughts in bullet points, followed by inserting any placeholders and captions for any graphics (e.g. charts or diagrams), and then finally I start rewriting my bullet points into proper sentences, expanding my examples, and adding any interstitial text necessary to make things flow.
Also, I see some comments on keeping things short and to the point. In general, I agree with this, but depending on the medium, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to inject a bit of personality into your writing. Technical writing can be dry at times, and this can deter engagement. Try to use concrete examples whenever possible or refer to other supporting texts.
Wanted to add that relying on an editor is absolutely key. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a professional, a friend or colleague with strong communication skills will do. Edit your own work mercilessly as well, but only after you’ve put your main thoughts down. After a night of intense drafting, put your text in a drawer and come back to it in a day or two.
> Also, I see some comments on keeping things short and to the point
I think this is true. Another way of saying it might be to write things intentionally and make sure each sentence contributes to a goal. You can have humor and personality in the paper, but make sure you don't have filler or meaningless words that you're just writing off as personality.
I love when a document is easy to read and is thorough.
Side rant: I hate when people use an acronym in a document and never state what the acronym stands for. Take the extra 10 seconds and type it out the first time you use it with the acronym version in parentheses directly after.
An acronym glossary up front is often helpful. But the current practice seems to be to add copious whitespace until it fills two or three pages, when a fraction of that would suffice.
Personally, my process after this is to express my thoughts in bullet points, followed by inserting any placeholders and captions for any graphics (e.g. charts or diagrams), and then finally I start rewriting my bullet points into proper sentences, expanding my examples, and adding any interstitial text necessary to make things flow.
Also, I see some comments on keeping things short and to the point. In general, I agree with this, but depending on the medium, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to inject a bit of personality into your writing. Technical writing can be dry at times, and this can deter engagement. Try to use concrete examples whenever possible or refer to other supporting texts.