While we talk a lot about what to write — More stories! Fewer words! Shorter sentences! — we don’t focus so much on how.

Most of us were never taught to write. We were taught instead to rewrite: how to spell, punctuate and use the right grammar. As a result, we try to do three things at once: Figure out what to write, write it and get it right. No wonder writing is so hard!

But if you’ll break your work up into three stages of the writing process and write step by step, you’ll write better, easier and faster. This process has saved me thousands of hours of writing time over the course of my career.

Are you ready to write better, easier and faster? Here are the three writing process steps:

I. Pre writing

Pre writing is where you get ready to write, or develop a plan for your story. This step includes everything you do to prepare to put the first word onto the page:

A. Research. You’ve heard the phrase “hog in, sausage out.” That means that what you get out of the grinder will be no better than what you put in it.

That’s certainly true in writing. No matter how accomplished a writer you are, your story will be no better than your material. To research your message, conduct:

1. Background research. Think of this as homework. This is all the research you do to get ready for the interview — from reviewing your subject-matter expert’s deck to asking Google to define cochlear implant. That will help you:
   • Save time gathering information. Why reinvent the wheel?
   • Prepare for the interview. (No more embarrassing questions!)
   • Dig up juicy details that bring your story to life.
2. Interview. When you nail down the basic facts in your background research, you can use the interview to add humanity and detail to the story. Instead of covering the five 5 W’s, you’ll spend your precious interview minutes getting anecdotes, analogies and compelling quotes. Think Terry Gross, not your high school journalism teacher.
3. Observational research. You’ve heard of MBWA, or management by walking around? This is WBHA, or writing by hanging around — going to the scene to observe. Take a tour, watch a demo or see your subject in action. There’s nothing like being there to add compelling detail to your story.

B. Story angle. Like a tree, your message can branch out in different directions. But it should all come back to a single trunk. That trunk is your story angle.

Here’s a quick trick I use to come up with my story angle: Write your walkaway sentence — that’s the one sentence you want your readers to walk away with — in a single sentence, on the back of your business card. Use that sentence as your headline or deck, nut graph and wrap-up paragraph.

Then tape that business card to your monitor while you work. If a single paragraph, sentence or word doesn’t work to further that walkaway sentence, take it out.

C. Structure. Spend a few minutes organizing your message upfront, and you’ll save hours agonizing over it later

Put your effort up top. Most writers invest little time in the pre-writing process, focusing instead on fixing a lame draft during the rewriting phase.

Turn that investment upside down: Spend the bulk of your time getting ready to write, and you’ll spend less time fixing what you wrote. As a result, you’ll write better, easier and faster.

II. Free writing

There comes a point in any writing project where you have to follow Ernest Hemingway’s first rule for writers, and apply the seat of your pants to the seat of a chair. You have to write.

And that’s second stage of the writing process: free writing, or getting your rough draft on paper or the screen. It’s much easier to revise your work when you have a piece of writing to revise.

To free write your message:

• Get your nose out of your notebook. Typing up your notes isn’t writing; it’s typing. Moving your notes around in a Word document isn’t writing, either. The only way to write is to write. You know this stuff! Get your nose out of your notebook and write.
• Banish the grammar police. Use a dash instead of a semicolon? Write “you’re” when you mean “your”? Even misspell the CEO’s name? Don’t worry about it! You can always go back and fix your mistakes later. What you can’t do is go back and breathe life into a rough draft that never really got written in the first place.
• Write quickly, without stopping. In free writing, you want to achieve what creativity experts call “flow.” In that state, you’ll feel as if you can hardly type fast enough to keep up with your ideas — as if the words are flowing from your fingers. The only way to achieve that is to let momentum carry you along. So keep writing.
• Take a break and percolate. Stuck? Don’t just sit there. Do something! Get up. Move around. Get some fresh air. In a minute or two, you’ll find yourself back at your desk, eager to capture your next idea.

III. Rewriting

Here’s where you fine-tune your message: revising and editing and nailing grammar, spelling and punctuation.

This is what we used to call writing!

Spend enough time pre writing and free writing, and rewriting should be a breeze. Instead of heavy lifting — cutting and pasting and moving and fixing — rewriting becomes tweaking and polishing.

Why 3 stages of the writing process?

Writers who divide their writing into these steps are:

• Less likely to suffer from writer’s block
• More likely to meet their deadlines
• Unlikely to get stressed out in the process

Want to write better, easier and faster? Why not try pre writing, free writing and rewriting today?

___

Source: Richard Andersen, Writing That Works, McGraw-Hill, 1989

The post What is the writing process? appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

You can’t cram size 10 hips into a size 4 skirt. And you can’t cram too many messages into a single piece. Try either, and the results can get ugly.

Indeed, the more messages you cover in a campaign or communication, the less people will remember. So count the number of messages you’ve crafted. If the total is more than one, you have too many.

Make like The New York Times: Come up with good story ideas that focus on a single point.

1. Start with a single idea.

To find your focus, start with a single idea.

Think of it this way: Like a tree, your piece might branch out in several directions. But you need to build the story on a single idea or trunk. If you find a sapling — a detail or message that doesn’t contribute to that single theme — pull it out.

A topic, obviously, isn’t an idea. “Kansas City” is a topic, not a theme. “PRSA Digital Media Conference” doesn’t make a good brochure headline, because it lacks an angle. Your product name is not an idea.

Build your story on a firmer foundation. What about Kansas City, your conference or your product?

2. Find the core.

What’s the single most important idea that drives your entire company, campaign or communication?

For Southwest Airlines, for example, the core is “We are THE low-fare airline,” write Chip and Dan Heath in their brilliant book, Made to Stick. That single idea drives every decision the company makes, from what to serve for lunch (nothing) to how to load the planes.

Coming up with that one single thing isn’t easy.

“Smart people recognize the value of all the material,” write the Heath brothers.

“They see nuance, multiple perspectives — and because they fully appreciate the complexities of a situation, they’re often tempted to linger there. This tendency to gravitate toward complexity is perpetually at war with the need to prioritize.”

3. Write a message statement.

When it comes to core values, strategies and key messages, less is more.

Southwest Airlines’ message works because it emphasizes just three things: friendly service, speed and frequent direct flights. Most organizations focus on … everything.

One test of a focused message: Does it lend itself to a tagline? If you struggle to write an eight-word message statement, lead or headline, your message is probably too broad.

4. Write ‘single-joke stories.’

The Wall Street Journal’s Barry Newman — who once discussed with a Journal editor whether he could get one-eighth of an inch out of a story — says the key to writing tight is selection.

“When the A-head (the Journal’s famous front-page feature story) went from 1,800 words to 1,200 words, we had to choose different stories,” he says.

In 1,200 words, he says, you can cover “single-joke stories.”

5. Perform message triage.

Political strategist James Carville preaches the gospel of “exclusivity.” That is, to come up with a single message — not two, not three — for your campaign.

Carville famously chose “It’s the economy, stupid,” for Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign. Less famously, he had to talk Clinton out of diluting that message by also talking about eliminating the national debt.

Carville says the communicators’ toughest job is to convince the client to stick to one message or theme.

“People say I fill empty vessels,” he says. “But I empty full vessels.”

6. Keep cutting.

“If you can write a ‘Ten reasons you should …’ headline, you’re only nine subtractions away from an idea,” write the folks at Killian Company Advertising.

7. Keep subtracting.

Adopt GE Reinsurance communicators’ motto:

“Single point, simple message.”

Know what it’s about.

Still having trouble identifying the key idea? Maybe you need to know more, not less, about your topic.

In the movie “Wonder Boys,” Michael Douglas’s character watches the only copy of his novel manuscript blow into the river. A character named Vern asks him what the book was about. Douglas can’t really explain.

“If you didn’t know what it was about,” Vern asks, “why was you writing it?”

____

Sources: Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Random House, 2007

“Communicators kiss Carville,” Ragan Report, Sept. 25, 2000

The post Focus on one angle of the story appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

My favorite scene in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” is when Steve Martin finally blows his stack at John Candy’s irritating character.

The thing that finally sends Martin over the edge isn’t when he finds he’s washed his face with Candy’s dirty underwear. It isn’t even when he wakes up to discover that he and Candy are snuggling together in the hotel room’s only bed.

The thing that finally breaks Martin’s character is when Candy tells a story that rambles on and on and on — without coming to any clear conclusion. And Steve Martin splutters as only Steve Martin can:

“Here’s an idea: Have a point!”

I often think of that line when I’m writing and editing. “Here’s an idea: Have a point!”

Take a tip from The New York Times: An interesting story needs an interesting angle. It needs a point of view. It needs focus.

Why find your focus?

Finding your focus is one of the three main ways to cut your copy. From best to worst, they are:

• Selection, or tightening your story angle
• Redirection, or breaking the story into multiple pieces
• Compression, or editing the piece down

Why is selection, or finding your focus, the best way to condense your copy? Because the best pieces are an inch wide and a mile deep: They cover a small topic, but they do so fully and colorfully.

Edit before you write.

I was reminded of the importance of starting with a tight story angle recently when the editor of an airline magazine asked me to write a piece about Kansas City.

“Kansas City,” I said. “Would that be Kansas City barbecue? An insider’s guide to where the bodies are buried? The perfect weekend for lovers? Kansas City on the quick, on the cheap or for the family?”

“Yup,” she said. “Kansas City.”

Well, I know Kansas City. I lived there for 30 years, and I covered it from my desk as a magazine editor for nearly five. But I’ve never toiled so hard on a simple piece. And I’ve never been so disappointed in the results.

Might as well ask me to write 900 words on traveling to the United States.

My problem, of course, was that my copy lacked focus. And a lack of focus makes it difficult for you — and for your reader — to get through your story.

How to find your focus

To find your focus before you write, follow these four steps:

1. Focus on a single idea.

You can communicate one idea well, a handful poorly or several not at all.

Think of your piece as a tree. Your story angle is the trunk. The tree can branch out in several directions, but when you find a sapling, yank it out. Don’t tie a rope from the sapling to your tree and call it a branch.

2. Summarize your idea in a single sentence.

As one of my favorite college professors used to say: “If you can’t summarize your story idea on the back of my business card, you don’t have a clear idea.”

Your summary sentence will keep you from getting scattered and from including information that isn’t pertinent to the copy.

3. Make your point.

Use your summary sentence as the basis for your:

• Headline or deck
• Lead or nut paragraph
• Blurb for index or table of contents

4. Test for focus.

Finally, make sure every paragraph, every sentence and every word in your piece work together to support your theme.

To test this, reread your copy with your tight story angle in mind. With each sentence, don’t just ask, “Does this sentence work?” Also ask: “Does this sentence work to further my point?”

Focus has more to do with what you eliminate from your piece than with what you leave in it. So if a section, paragraph or sentence doesn’t pass the test, take it out.

That’s focus.

Tighten your angle after you write.

“It’s easier to whack an entire paragraph than a single word,” writes Chip Scanlan, The Poynter Institute’s writing workshop director.

Cut sections, not syllables.

The post What is a story angle? appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

What’s the best way to come up with great ideas? What are the thought processes that drive the world’s most creative individuals?

For many, the secret is the 5-step creative process. The five stages of the creative process include the preparation stage, illumination stage, insight stage and evaluation stage.

In addition, there’s Step 2 of the process: analyzing your information. Once you’ve foraged the raw materials for your idea, focus, sift through and organize them to see how the pieces fit together.

This process helps creative people develop creative solutions to a problem in minutes that might otherwise take weeks or months to come up with.

So how do you get from market research to the aha moment? Here’s how to turn your raw data into creative ideas:

1. Seek connections.

While you’re sorting, look for themes, holes, relationships and structure.

“An idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements,” wrote James Webb Young, the pre-Mad Men-era ad executive who invented the 5-step creative process and put it down in a book called A Technique for Producing Ideas.

“Innovation most of the time is simply taking A, B, C, and D, which already exist, and putting them together in a form called E.”

— Wolfgang Schmitt, chairman of Rubbermaid Corp.

“The capacity to bring old elements into new combinations depends largely on the ability to see relationships.”

Poet Robert Frost agreed. “An idea is a feat of association,” he wrote.

So did South African author William Plomer: “Creativity — the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.”

As did Wolfgang Schmitt, chairman of Rubbermaid Corp.: “Innovation most of the time is simply taking A, B, C, and D, which already exist, and putting them together in a form called E.”

2. Turn the kaleidoscope.

Those who develop the habit of seeing relationships between facts, Young wrote, will produce more and better ideas.

“The process is something like that which takes place in the kaleidoscope,” he wrote. “Every turn of its crank shifts these bits of glass into a new relationship and reveals a new pattern. The … greater the number of pieces of glass in it the greater become the possibilities for new and striking combinations.”

3. Develop your story angle.

To find your focus, start with a single idea.

Think of it this way: Like a tree, your piece might branch out in several directions. But you need to build the story on a single idea or trunk. If you find a sapling — a detail or message that doesn’t contribute to that single theme — pull it out.

A topic, obviously, isn’t an idea. “Kansas City” is a topic, not a theme. “PRSA Digital Media Conference” doesn’t make a good brochure headline, because it lacks an angle. Your product name is not an idea.

Build your story on a firmer foundation. What about Kansas City, your conference or your product?

4. Organize your information.

Save time — and hit your word count the first time, every time — by organizing your piece before you write it.

Upload your brain for Step 3.

You might call this step outlining, writing a walkaway sentence or developing a theme. That’s part of this process, sure.

But the real goal is to upload the information to your brain so it can take over working on this project while you’re doing something more interesting.

That’s Step 3 in the creative process: the incubation stage. It’s one of the most important stages for achieving your creative potential.

The post Analyzing is the 2nd creative process step appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Famous story about a pitch gone bad:

A PR pro at Warner-Lambert Company calls an editor at Inc. magazine. When, she asks, is Inc. going to run that story she pitched on W-L’s new flavor of Trident gum?

The editor explains that Inc. is a magazine for entrepreneurs and that every story the magazine runs is designed to help its readers build their businesses. Given that, the editor asks the PR pro, why would our readers be interested in a story about Trident?

The PR pro replies: “They chew gum, don’t they?”

With pitches like these, it’s no wonder journalists’ biggest pet peeves are releases that aren’t relevant to the audiences they serve, according to a survey by Greentarget.

So how can we write relevant releases?

1. Write about the reader.

A few years ago, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch did a study to learn who or what was most important to readers.

“What I really like about a [release] is when it scratches my reader’s itch and not your client’s itch.”

— Trade journal editor quoted in Public Relations Tactics

“Their answer was in some ways surprising. Many did not say their families, children or God,” writes Dick Weiss, former writer and editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Instead, their answer was: ‘Me.’”

If that’s what reporters’ readers care about, that’s what reporters care about too.

“What I really like about a [release],” says a trade journal editor quoted in Public Relations Tactics says, “is when it scratches my reader’s itch and not your client’s itch.”

So write about the reader. Not about “us and our stuff.”

2. Offer value-added service stories.

More than half of business-to-business editors surveyed seek more feature releases, according to a study by Thomas Rankin Associates. Those include value-added stories like case studies and how-to stories.

“Present the key element … that explains how your story can benefit Forbes readers.”

— Bruce Upbin, senior editor at Forbes

Greentarget learned the same thing in its study: Journalists find releases that contain thought leadership — surveys, tipsheets, case studies, etc. — most valuable.

As Bruce Upbin, senior editor at Forbes, counsels: “Present the key element … that explains how your story can benefit Forbes readers.”

That’s write about the reader.

And yet, PR pros persist in writing about themselves.

“Organizations write press releases for themselves, not for readers.”

— A frustrated PR pro

“I recently got a message from a reporter working at a small local paper who received 80 press releases in one day,” writes digital communications strategist Jeremy Porter, “of which only two were relevant to the information his paper covers.”

Keep doing this, and we’ll be as successful as Warner-Lambert with its Inc. pitch.

Even if they do chew gum.

Pitch a story, not a product

It may be my favorite pitch lead of all time:

This Korbel pitch — a PRSA Silver Anvil Award winner — sells a story, not sparkling wine. And that’s what you want to do, too.

The writer goes on to offer:

• A timely angle(more people get engaged on Valentine’s Day than on any other day of the year
• A helpful tipsheet(“Top Ten Signs He’s about to Pop the Question”)
• Provocative story angles(a “be prepared” piece, an article telling men how to avoid giving away the big surprise, the results of a proposal survey, an interview with an “engagement expert.”)

Then contact information and a signoff — “Cheers!” of course.

Take a tip from Korbel: Use your pitch to sell a story, not your product. Focus on entertainment, a benefit to the reader or a timely survey. Don’t just pitch a commercial.

Write a story, not a sales piece.

To make sure your pitch is relevant to reporters and their readers:

• Find a poster child.Instead of writing about your product, service or issue, write about someone who’s affected by it.
• Focus on what your spokesperson will say.Instead of running a lengthy bio, pre-interview your subject matter expert. Does she have a contrarian opinion or offer a fresh point of view? That — and not a list of which boards she sits on — is the story.
• Leave your company name out of the headline. Newspapers rarely put company or product names in headlines. To do so on your pitch “shouts to the journalist that this is a commercial for blank,” says Jeff Crilley, founder of Real News PR and author of Free Publicity.
• Skip the trademark symbols and repeated capitalized product and company names. They’re not necessary in an informal emailed pitch, and they scream “commercial,” says Michael Schiferl, senior vice president/director of media relations for Weber Shandwick Worldwide.
• Focus on the story.“Go buy a bunch of the current magazines in the field, peruse those, get in the mindset of the editor and see how things are framed,” advises NASA PR pro Nicole Cloutier. “Then step away and let it gel.”

NASA pitches space food.

That approach allows NASA’s Cloutier to go beyond “what’s happening tomorrow” by digging up real stories like this one for media pitches:

I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out. Because it’s a story, not a commercial.

____

Source:

“Perfect Email Pitches: Master PR Scribes Reveal How to Craft Copy That Turns Heads and Earns Media Ink,” Bulldog Reporter’s PR University teleseminar, Sept. 18, 2008

The post Define target audiences in public relations pitches appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..