What is concrete writing?

Writing built from nouns you could photograph, count, or point at, rather than from abstract categories. Three engineers quit in March is concrete; we experienced retention challenges is abstract. The concrete version carries information the abstract one only gestures at, and it is the single largest quality difference in most non-fiction.

Why does my writing sound vague?

Usually abstract nouns doing work that verbs and specifics should do. Words like framework, solution, outcome, and landscape name categories rather than things, so a sentence built from them can be entirely true while telling the reader nothing. Test it: could anyone disagree with this sentence? If not, there is nothing in it.

How do I make my writing more specific?

For each abstract noun, ask what actually happened, then substitute: a number instead of significant, a name instead of stakeholders, a date instead of recently, an incident instead of challenges. Where you cannot supply the specific, that is information too — it usually means you know the subject less well than the draft implies.

Is abstract writing always bad?

No. Abstraction is correct when it is the precise level of description: genuine generalisation across many cases, technical claims that hold for a whole class, or a bridging sentence before descending to detail. It becomes a problem when it substitutes for a specific you could have supplied but did not.

What is the difference between showing and telling in non-fiction?

Telling asserts a conclusion; showing supplies the detail that produces it. The team struggled with communication is telling. The deploy went out on a Friday because nobody had told the on-call engineer is showing — and the reader reaches the conclusion themselves, which is why it persuades and sticks.

Concrete Writing: How to Replace Abstractions With Things

Q: Can AI make my writing more specific?

No, and this is the clearest limit on what any writing tool can do. Replacing significant improvement with a real number requires knowing the number; replacing stakeholders with names requires having been in the room. A model given an abstract sentence can only produce a different abstract sentence, or invent a specific — which is worse, because a fabricated number reads exactly like a real one.

Abstraction is the most common reason competent writing feels empty. How to spot it, what to swap it for, and when the abstract word is genuinely correct.

Here is a sentence that is completely true and completely empty:

Our organisation faced significant challenges in the implementation of the new solution, but through effective collaboration we were able to achieve positive outcomes.

Every word is defensible. Nothing in it can be checked, argued with, or remembered. Read it twice and you still do not know what happened.

Now the same event, concretely:

The migration took four months instead of six weeks. On day nineteen we found the customer records had two phone number formats and neither was documented. Two engineers spent a fortnight writing a reconciler. It works, and we have not touched it since.

Longer, and it contains actual information. That gap is the single largest quality difference in most non-fiction, and closing it is more valuable than any amount of rhythm work.

What abstraction actually is

An abstract noun names a category rather than a thing. Challenge, solution, outcome, framework, capability, resource, stakeholder, initiative, landscape, process.

None is a word you could photograph. Each is a container that could hold almost anything, which is exactly why it feels safe to use — a sentence built from containers cannot easily be wrong.

That is the trade. Abstraction buys safety at the cost of information, and in most writing it is a bad trade.

Why it happens

Rarely laziness. Usually one of four pressures.

You do not actually know the specifics. The most common cause, and the most useful to notice. If you write "several stakeholders raised concerns" because you cannot remember who or what, the abstraction is hiding a gap in your own knowledge rather than in your prose.

Specifics can be checked. "We reduced costs" is unfalsifiable. "We cut hosting from £4,200 to £1,800 a month" invites someone to verify it. Institutional writing drifts abstract because abstraction is unaccountable.

You are generalising from many cases. Legitimate — sometimes you genuinely mean the category. The failure is generalising when you have one case in mind and could just name it.

The register seems to demand it. Professional writing sounds abstract, so people write abstractly to sound professional. This is the same instinct that produces "utilise" for "use," and it is worth resisting for the same reason.

The test

Could someone disagree with this sentence?

"We faced challenges" — no. Everyone faces challenges. There is nothing to dispute.

"The migration ran four months over and cost about three times what we estimated" — yes. Someone could say the estimate was wrong, or that four months was reasonable. It is arguable, which means it is informative.

Writing nobody could disagree with is writing nobody needs to read. This is the most useful single question in this article.

What to swap in

Six substitutions, roughly in order of power.

A number. "Significant improvement" → "cut review time from two days to three hours." Numbers are the highest-density specific available and the easiest to supply.

A name. "Stakeholders were consulted" → "we asked the finance team and two of the three regional managers."

A date or duration. "Recently" → "in March." "It took a while" → "eleven weeks."

An object. "Resources were allocated" → "we bought two more servers and hired a contractor."

An incident. "There were communication difficulties" → "the deploy went out on a Friday because nobody had told the on-call engineer it was scheduled."

A verb. Often the abstraction is a nominalisation — a verb wearing a noun costume. "The implementation of the system" → "we implemented the system" → better still, "we switched over in April."

Where abstraction is correct

Blanket rules produce their own problems, so it is worth being clear about the exceptions.

Genuine generalisation. If you have looked at forty projects and the pattern holds across all of them, "projects with unclear ownership run late" is the honest sentence. Naming one would misrepresent the evidence. The give-away for illegitimate generalisation is that you have one case in mind and are dressing it as a pattern.

Technical precision. In a paper on algorithms, "the data structure" may be exactly right, because the claim holds for the whole class. Swapping in a concrete instance would narrow a claim that was meant to be general.

Summary and orientation. Section openings sometimes need a sentence at category level before descending to detail. That is fine as a bridge, not as the whole passage.

Deliberate discretion. Sometimes you genuinely cannot name the client. Then abstraction is a considered choice rather than an evasion — and it is usually better to say "a client I can't name" than to write around it.

The distinction: abstraction is fine when it is the precise level of description. It is a problem when it is a substitute for a specific you could have supplied.

A worked pass

Original: Our team has been leveraging various strategies to enhance user engagement across multiple touchpoints, resulting in meaningful improvements to key metrics.

Mark the abstractions: team, strategies, engagement, touchpoints, improvements, metrics. Six containers in one sentence, and one nominalisation.

Ask what actually happened. Suppose the answers are: three people, two changes, email and in-app, sign-ups, up 12%.

Revised: Three of us tried two things: a shorter onboarding email, and moving the sign-up prompt from the footer to the top of the page. Sign-ups went up about 12%. We think it was mostly the prompt.

Twice as long, roughly ten times as informative, and it admits an uncertainty the original concealed — which reads as more credible, not less.

Ten minutes on your own draft

Pick one paragraph and underline every noun.
Mark each as concrete or abstract. Concrete means you could photograph, count, or point at it.
For every abstract noun, ask what actually happened. Not what category it belongs to — what the specific instance was.
Replace the ones you can. Some you will not be able to, and that is information: it means you do not know that part as well as the draft implies.
Check the ratio. A paragraph of nothing but abstractions needs work; a paragraph with three or four concretes is usually fine.
Read it aloud. Abstraction is oddly hard to hear, which is why this step comes last rather than first here — the underlining does more work.

Step 4 is where most of the value is, and step 3 is where the discomfort is. Discovering you cannot supply a specific is the useful outcome, not the failure.

Why no tool can do this for you

Rhythm, filler, and hedging can all be fixed mechanically — our Text Humanizer does that, and it genuinely helps a flat draft.

Concreteness cannot be. Replacing "significant improvement" with a number requires knowing the number. Replacing "stakeholders" with names requires having been in the room. A model given an abstract sentence can only produce a different abstract sentence, or invent a specific — which is worse, because a fabricated number reads exactly like a real one.

This is the part of writing that stays yours regardless of what tools exist, and it is the part that determines whether anyone finishes the piece. Everything else is arrangement. The wider set of habits is in how to write like a human.