What about a surprising intro?
As a runner of workshops at a busy language consultancy with a funny name (Schwa*), I get asked a lot for my top tips on business writing. And it’s tempting to beguile with a promise to lift the veil, pull back the curtain and reveal the dark arts and mystical secrets. But as we all know (or at least suspect), there’s no secret. No magic formula. No key that gets us to the next level. So why do we all imagine that there is?
It’s because most professional writing is really dull. It might be satisfactory. It’s probably correct. But it’s not outstanding. So in a world of beige, when somebody shows us a rainbow we think it’s magic. How do they do it, we wonder?
The power of magical thinking and tasting the rainbow
The real wonder and the tangible magic is that by looking at our language use as a form of behaviour, we can all make changes that work. It’s a challenge – a lot of things are stacked up against us changing. The power of habit is a force for good and for bad. But then there’s our education, our work environment, our status anxiety, our culture, our expectations of our audience/customers/clients. These all push and jostle our instincts and make us risk averse.
In our lives, we all know we read the world in technicolour, in many dimensions. So why not write it that way? Why write in black and white?
What’s special about research?
Nothing. Okay, not entirely true. But every specialism, area, profession marks its territory with jargon, acronyms and linguistic formulas. Does anybody really mind if we just write really well? Nobody has ever asked me for help in making them sound puffy, dull and long-winded. And yet every area of professional life that I’ve worked in has asked for help to sound more engaging, clear, compelling, memorable, vivid, and so on. If we work on the assumption that writing well means writing something anybody can enjoy reading, we’ll be on the right road.
If we work on the assumption that writing well means writing something anybody can enjoy reading, we’ll be on the right road.
First things first – what’s the job?
Give your words a job to do. You’ve likely got a mixture of words, numbers (data), pictures. There’s not much else to play with – so what are they for? If you as a writer don’t have a clear job to do, then your reader is really unlikely to get it. Be ruthless. Is it to inform? Inspire? Explain? Reassure? Challenge? Provoke? What job is this bit of content doing? Once you’ve got one, you can edit to the brief.
Make it scan, help me skim
Map out the journey you want to take your reader on. Your brain will likely want to do it in a familiar way: background, methodologies, assessment parameters, results, conclusions. That’s likely to be the worst order for your reader. Give each section a heading and play around with the order until it tells the story that fits the job. It helps to use Post-It notes – make it physical. By making the structure tangible, you can show the reader something that you would otherwise have told them.
Find the story – no pain, no glory
‘What’s the story?’ is a really good question to ask. We tend to present information in the way that it is often presented to us, as blocks of numbers and text in PowerPoint presentations. The story is flat: here’s a thing, here’s another thing, and this is a thing, and this a thing, too. And here’s another thing.
Where’s the bump? Where does the reader go? What will they remember?
Stories are shapes. They move us from one place to another. And if we do it well, we remember the journey, too.
Stories are shapes. They move us from one place to another. And if we do it well, we remember the journey, too.
Beware the curse of knowledge.
When you know a lot about something, it’s hard to imagine what it’s like not to know what you know. This is the curse of knowledge – a phenomenon so-named by Stephen Pinker, the cognitive psychologist. That’s why when you read back something you’ve written, you’re likely to overestimate its quality/effectiveness. It’s come from your brain, so it must be good, right? That’s also why looking at the headings and the story of what you present can really help. You get a chance to look at the shape and communicate the mini-version. We can safely assume your reader will skim read. We all do. So do we still get it, if that’s all we read?
Sting in the tale?
You’ve heard of the old theatrical adage, “leave them wanting more”. It’s not bad advice. Writing is a performance, after all.
* And if you’re wondering what Schwa means, it’s the most common vowel in English.
