You’ve heard the phrase “hog in, sausage out.”

To get good at getting the goods, conduct three kinds of research:

1. Background research

Before heading to the interview, spend some quality time with your BFFs and research assistants, Google and ChatGPT. You might:

• Define a term. Search for “define:[TERM] in Google. I once found a cochlear implant compared to a bionic ear and was able to use that analogy — though not, obviously, those words — in my article.
• Find a data point. I recently wrote a lead for a client in the utilities business on severe weather using stats I uncovered via ChatGPT. (Of course, you are not a New York lawyer at a court hearing; you will check the facts you get from ChatGPT before using them.)
• Get an explanation. I love HowStuffWorks.com for technical ‘splainers. #BecauseSometimesIDon’tUnderstandEngineers.

This is also a great place to get questions for the interview. My sister asked ChatGPT for questions to ask retailers on a conference panel. The results were nuanced and fascinating.

2. Interview

When you nail down the 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, look for anecdotes, analogies and compelling quotes.

Ask questions that get to:

• Story. Ask “when” questions that go to moments of pain, moments of change, moments of crisis and moments of decision. That’s where the stories are.
• Examples. For a blog post on how to get rich slowly, I found all the information I needed online. So I was able to devote the interview to getting examples. I left with stories of a college dropout who started a software company, married teachers who lived on his paycheck and invested hers, and more.
• Color. “Get the name of the dog,” says the Poynter Institute’s Roy Peter Clark. Use the interview to make sure you can name names and number numbers.

3. Observational research

Try WBHA, or writing by hanging around. Being there adds color and detail to your message. So go to the scene and observe.

• Ask for a demo. One of my students was writing a post about an autistic adult who was the top salesperson at his company. I suggested she ask him to sell to her via Zoom.
• Go someplace. I once joined a billionaire for lunch in his company’s cafeteria. He ate a brown-bag peanut-butter sandwich while I, a non-billionaire, paid for cafeteria food.
• Be on hand. My team got to observe a cochlear-implant surgery for a health system blog post. We saw a father and daughter hear each other say “I love you” for the first time in decades.

Get good at getting the goods.

“Without great reporting, a story is like one big comb-over,” writes Ann Hull, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post. “You can see it from the third paragraph.”

Make sure your message can’t be compared to a comb-over. Get good at research and information gathering.

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When I’m feeling whiny about how hard writing is, I turn to my file of quotes from the pros. It seems that no successful writer, from Ernest Hemingway to Kurt Vonnegut, could resist kvetching about the craft.

“When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”

— Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse-Five and other black comedies

“I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.”

— Peter DeVries, American editor, novelist and wit

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit down at a typewriter and wait for drops of blood to form on your forehead.”

— Gene Fowler, American journalist, author and dramatist

Writing is tough. Always has been. Always will be.

Now that we’ve got that out of our systems, what can we do to make it better?

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

But if you’ll break your writing time up into steps, you’ll write better, easier and faster. Here’s how …

Develop a good writing process.

Process is important: The way you write affects how well you write. As a writing trainer and coach, I can always tell when a writer has:

• Written a story before organizing it
• Edited a story before writing it
• Failed to edit the story at all

I can tell when a writer writes by typing up her notes and moving them around in Microsoft Word — or when he sits with his nose in his notebook for too long.

The writing process makes a huge difference in the quality of our copy. Problem is, most of us were taught a lousy writing process.

How we were taught to write

Writing is hard because we weren’t taught to write, says Richard Andersen, author of Writing That Works. Instead, we were taught how to edit — how to spell, punctuate and use the right grammar.

As a result, when we write, we try to do three things at once:

• Think of what to write
• Write it down
• Get it right

How to write instead

Instead of trying to do all of this work at the same time, we need to take writing step by step. (Or Bird by Bird, for Anne Lamott aficionados.)

The best writing process breaks writing up into discrete steps:

1. Prewriting. Here’s where you get ready to write. In this step, you conduct your research, find your story angle and organize your ideas.
2. Freewriting. Write it down. Don’t worry about grammar and spelling. Just get words on paper so you can revise them in the next step.
3. Rewriting. Here’s where you polish your final product. Only now do you let the grammar police in.

Both sides of the brain

The writing process is based on the theory that our brains are divided into two parts:

• The logical left side. This side of our brain thinks analytically from one point to the next like a computer, making sure we don’t end our sentences in prepositions or use a colon when only a semicolon will do.
• The creative right side. This side is impulsive and unconventional and gives our copy interest and energy.

Too often, we spend our writing time only on the logical left side of our brain. That’s why too often we write it right … but we don’t write anything that people want to read.

Why the three-step writing process?

The folks who study the writing process say that writers who divide their writing into discrete steps are:

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

Put your effort at the top.

Most writers invest little time in the pre writing phase, focusing instead on fixing a lame draft in rewriting.

Turn that investment upside down: Spend the bulk of your time getting ready to write, less time writing and the least time fixing what you wrote.

The result: You’ll soon be writing better, easier and faster.
___

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

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I don’t believe in writer’s block. Never had time for it. Blank page? I’ll take two, please. I’ve never met the muse. She sounds delightful, but she’s never knocked on my door.

“There is a muse,” writes novelist Stephen King. “But he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station.

“He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there, you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you.”

Amen, Brother!

Still, every writer struggles with times when you’d rather be reading a book than writing one — or heading to the coffee shop instead of the office. So how can you put words on paper when you can’t think of what to write? Here are some writing strategies that work.

Use the creative process.

What passes for writer’s block is usually a process problem. The more you understand how your brain works, the more likely you are to come up with a good method for writing.

I use the five-step creative process, for instance, every day. It looks like this:

1. Forage, or gather information. This is the “feed your brain” step of the process. Here’s where you interview subject matter experts and turn to Google for the raw material that will become your story.
2. Analyze that information. Focus, sift and organize it to see how the pieces fit together. (Bonus: During this step, you are also uploading this information to your brain.)
3. Incubate, or let the information simmer. Let your subconscious mind mull over the message.
4. Break through, or get to the “Aha!” Here, you’ll answer questions like “What should I use for my lead?” and “How am I going to organize this thing?”
5. Knuckle down, or take Ernest Hemingway’s advice and “apply the seat of your pants to the seat of the chair.” In other words, start writing. (In the three-step writing process, this step is called free writing.)

Skip any of these steps or carry them out in the wrong order, and you may have trouble figuring out what to write.

Before you sit down to write …

The biggest contributor to writer’s block is when you skip incubation — that is, you try to force a solution without relaxing and letting your subconscious mind work on your project.

“I’d like to remind you again, Winfield, that daydreaming is only a part of the creative process.”

— Boss to employee in a New Yorker cartoon by Charles Barsotti

That’s easy to do.

Incubation is the most misunderstood — and therefore, the most frustrating — of all writing tools. That’s because it seems as if you aren’t really doing anything.

That can frustrates us — and irritate our bosses. But skip incubation, and you can look forward to some long days staring at a blank page.

Successful writers incubate. Period. Here are three ways to perform this essential writing exercise:

1. Work on more than one project at a time. That’s right, multitasking can actually work in your favor when it comes to overcoming writer’s block. Blocked on that blog post? Switch to social media status updates. While your conscious mind tackles the Project B, your subconscious mind keeps toiling away on Project A.
2. Time it right. My best case scenario: Finish foraging and analyzing one day, then head out for happy hour. When I return to the office the next day, I’m itching to write. The reason: 16 hours of down time have really been 16 hours of incubation. Call it “creative pressure.” Put off that first draft until you need to let off some creative steam.
3. Incubate in tiny doses. No time to put the project away for even one night? Try a fast-food method of incubation: Put your notes in a file. Put the file in a drawer. Then take a few minutes to answer your email, walk to the vending machine or organize your files. Even a tiny change of scenery can be more productive than staring vacantly at your notes for 20 minutes.

Creative works.

Gordon MacKenzie, the late, great Hallmark creative guru, told a story in his book Orbiting the Giant Hairball (edited by yours truly!) about a businessman watching a herd of dairy cows.

The guy watches and watches, but all he sees is a bunch of cows leisurely hanging out under shade trees, roaming around a pond or quietly eating grass. Finally, the businessman shakes a fist at the cows and shouts: “You *&%@# cows get to work, or I’ll have you butchered!”

“The man wants to see the cows creating 24 hours a day,” MacKenzie wrote. “What he doesn’t understand is that only a portion of the creative act is visible. As they stand idly in the pasture, those cows are performing the miracle of turning grass and water into milk right before his eyes.”

When you incubate, you are performing the miracle of transforming words and ideas into stories. Don’t skip this step. There is magic in it.

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Can creativity be templated?

Yes it can, according to a team of Israeli researchers.

In 1999, the researchers studied 200 ads that had been award winners or finalists in top advertising competitions. The researchers found that nearly nine in 10 of the ads could be classified into six templates.

Next, they studied 200 less successful ads — those that had not earned awards. The researchers found that only 2.5% of those ads could be classified into templates.

“The surprising lesson of this story: Highly creative ads are more predictable than uncreative ones,” write Chip and Dan Heath in Made to Stick. “It’s like Tolstoy’s quote: ‘All happy families resemble each other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ All creative ads resemble one another, but each loser is uncreative in its own way.”

Traditionally, creative idea-generation techniques have focused on a lack of system and logic. We try to brainstorm as many different ideas as we can. We say, “there are no bad ideas.” We bring in diverse opinions through focus groups and free association.

But what if we’re wrong?

Find the patterns.

A better approach, according to the Israeli researchers, is to identify patterns in successful communications and brainstorm ways to implement those patterns.

This approach itself follows a pattern in creative thinking.

The researchers found that nearly nine in 10 of the ads could be classified into six templates.

Next time you’re developing creative campaign, use these proven templates to jump-start your ideas:

1. Pictoral analogy

This approach merges or replaces your central image with another one. An ad for the French Open Tennis Championship, for instance, featured a tennis ball shaped like a croissant.

You can see the thinking behind this ad:

What images depict tennis? What images depict France? How do I merge the two?

More than one-third of the top-rated ads in the study used this template.

2. Consequences

For this approach, point out unexpected consequences of a product attribute. A commercial for car loudspeakers, for instance, showed a bridge on the verge of collapse when the speakers of a car parked on it were turned way up.

To use this template, ask:

What’s a key feature of our product or service? How can we exaggerate the consequences of using — or failing to use — this feature?

More than 18% of the top-rated ads in the study used this template.

3. Extreme situation

This approach shows a product performing under unusual circumstances or exaggerates a product’s features to the point of absurdity. A commercial for locks, for instance, shows a woman barking at burglars to scare them away.

For this approach, you say:

You don’t have to buy our product. Alternatives for achieving the same results include [something ridiculous].

Some 12% of the top-rated ads in the study used this template.

4. Competition

For this approach, show your product or service winning in competition with something else. One ad, for instance, shows a person trying to decide whether to answer a ringing phone or finish eating the advertised cereal.

Nearly 10% of the top-rated ads in the study used this template.

5. Dimensionality alteration

A woman is arguing with her husband for canceling his life insurance. In a moment it becomes clear that the scene occurs after he has died, during a séance.

For dimensionality alteration, manipulate a product’s relationship with time, space or some other aspect of its environment.

Nearly 10% of the top-rated ads in the study used this template.

6. Interactive experiment

For this template, you invite the viewer to perform or to imagine performing an experiment that demonstrates a need or problem that your product or service can solve.

One ad, for example, included a large black square. When the audience member shakes her head over the square, she can see that she needs dandruff shampoo.

How can you demonstrate the need for your solution in action?

About 6% of the top-rated ads in the study used this template.

Can creativity be taught?

Next, the Israeli researchers took a group of novices — people with no advertising experience at all — and broke them into three teams.

1. Team One trained for two hours on how to use the six creative templates.
2. Team Two learned about classic idea-generation techniques like free-association and brainstorming.
3. Team Three received no training at all.

Those who’d learned the templates created more creative, memorable and effective ads than the other two teams.

The researchers tested the top ads with consumers. Team One’s ads were rated 50% more creative and 55% more effective at creating a positive attitude toward the products advertised.

The next day, the customers were asked to recall the ads. Team One’s ads were remembered 45% more often than Team Two’s — and twice as often as Team Three’s.

Why reinvent the wheel?

Call it thinking inside the box: The irony is that frameworks, formulas and templates like these can actually help you come up with more effective creative ideas than “free-thinking” techniques.

_____

Sources: Jacob Goldenberg, David Mazursky, and Sorin Solomon, “The Fundamental Templates of Quality Ads,” Marketing Science 18 (1999), 333-51

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

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What a great assignment I just completed for a technology comms team: I templated their blog posts, intranet announcements, lead generation emails, news releases, speeches, success stories and white papers.

Now all the writers have to do is to fill in the blanks with their fascinating research and delightful prose. No more reinventing the wheel.

Over the years, I’ve templated everything from event invitations to proposals to webpages for my clients.

Save reading — and writing — time.

I love writing templates because they:

• Save communicators time. Story patterns exist, and a savvy writer can deconstruct them. Instead of reinventing them with each piece, spend your time coming up with brilliant facts and figures and polishing your prose.
• Overcome information overload. Once readers are familiar with the template, they don’t have to learn each subsequent, say, webpage’s structure, write Martin J. Eppler and Jeanne Mengis in “Preparing Messages for Information Overload Environments,” an IABC Research Foundation report. That reduces processing time and effort.
• Result in more effective communications. A group of Israeli researchers found that nine out of 10 award-winning ads used templates; only 2.5% of less successful ads had.

To write better, easier and faster, template your press releases, webpages, proposals, case studies — even your personality profiles. The secret is to develop standard structures that are flexible enough to cover a variety of subjects.

Here are 13 templates to consider:

1. Story tables or grids

Are you comparing X number of items by Y number of characteristics? Make your story a table or grid. Here’s why:

The Poynter Institute’s Chip Scanlan and The Sun News’ Josh Awtry offer these grid templates — what Autry calls “nonlinear storytelling” — to consider:

Issues roundups. This grid does two things, Scanlan writes. It lays out the information in a logical format for readers, but, almost more importantly, it frees up the communicator’s time and energy to pursue more complex stories.

Year in review/preview. Top-stories-of-the year roundups “can get long in a hurry,” Autry writes. Instead, how about creating a simple form where communicators fill in the blanks on key issues of the year?

Meeting stories. These are tough. Too often, communicators blah-blah on about who said what in chronological order. “When it’s just a meeting where some things were approved and some action was taken, wouldn’t this information better benefit readers as a grid?” Scanlan asks. I think it would.

Grids are so effective that if a story lends itself to one, I’ll always choose that option.

“Why don’t we, as an industry, embrace different ways of presenting information other than the linear story with a beginning and an end?” Autry wrote. “Why do we take perfectly good information and muddy it up with conjunctions, prepositions, and the like for tradition’s sake?”

2. Lists

Listicles and other list stories make it easy for skimmers to get the gist of the message without doing a deep dive on the topic. No wonder they’re so popular on social media and other platforms.

3. Case studies

For case studies, testimonials — even mini narratives — try this simple structure:

• Problem
• Solution
• Results

4. Web pages

In a recent project, we created templates for some sections of Saint Luke’s Health System’s new website. Department pages, for instance, included:

• Highlights: A bulleted list of our three most compelling differentiators — firsts, mosts, bests, biggests and onlies
• Nut graph: A one-paragraph summary of the department
• The team: Notable players
• Services: A bulleted list
• Learn more: Contacts and links
• Testimonial: A callout from a patient

Your web pages will be different, but you’ll save a lot of time if you’ll develop templates. We’ve templated web pages for Tellabs and PetSmart Charities, as well as Saint Luke’s.

5. Memos

Procter & Gamble uses this one-page memo template:

• Idea
• Background
• How it works
• Key benefits
• Next steps

If a memo at Procter & Gamble exceeds a single page and doesn’t use this format, Eppler and Mingis write, it’s likely to be returned to the writer unread.

6. Project proposals

Procter & Gamble also uses this two-page proposal template:

• Background
• Objective
• Rationale
• Plan
• Open issues and questions to be answered
• Next steps

7. Solutions descriptions

In their IABC Foundation report, Eppler and Mingis themselves demonstrate the power of templates by organizing their solutions pages like this:

• Context: Who’s doing it
• Main idea: Why it works
• Implementation: How to
• Caveat: Issues to avoid

8. Advertising

Most creative ads use one of these six advertising templates, according to a group of Israeli researchers:

• Pictoral analogy: Replace the central image with another one — a croissant for a tennis ball, for instance
• Consequences: Car speakers that are so loud, they make a bridge collapse, say
• Extreme situation: A jeep driving under the snow to demonstrate its all-weather capabilities, maybe
• Competition: A race between a car and a bullet, for instance
• Dimensionality alteration: A woman arguing with her husband about life insurance — in a seance, after he’s died, for example
• Interactive experiment: the Pepsi Challenge, for instance

9. News releases

These elements of the social media release template would make a good template for any release:

• Headline
• Deck
• Introductory paragraph or two
• List of key facts
• List of quotes

10. Personality profiles

The International Association of Business Communicators and Qualcomm and are among the companies that template human interest stories. In fact, all these organizations get profilees to fill in the blanks, so communicators need only edit the profiles.

IABC’s template includes these questions:

• Which word or phrase do you think is overused right now?
• How would you explain your profession to a child?
• What did you have to learn the hard way?
• If you could choose another profession, what would it be?
• What’s the best reward for a job well done?

11. Critical issues memo

Mike Hall, corporate communication manager for Pioneer Hi-Bred Europe, developed this memo template for outlining critical communication issues:

• Situation: What happened?
• Response strategy: How we are dealing with it?
• Media coverage: What are the media writing about it?
• Media strategy: How we will move forward and with whom?
• Standby statement to press: What do we currently release as the corporate view on the issue?

12. SPIN memo

Here’s another way to template a similar message:

• Situation
• Problem
• Implications
• Next steps

13. Narrative structure

Writing an anecdote or story? Eppler and Bischof suggest this structure:

• The (hero’s) context
• A challenge or crisis to overcome
• A failed attempt
• A successful attempt (climax)
• Resolution
• A moral, or lessons learned

Write by number

Words like template, formula and recipe are sometimes seen as profanities in a creative field like writing. But good writing is at least as much science as art. And you can’t argue with results like “easier to read” and “easier to write.”

No doubt about it: T-e-m-p-l-a-t-e is not a four-letter word.

What template could you use for your next piece?

___

Source: Martin J. Eppler and Jeanne Mengis, “Preparing Messages for Information Overload Environments”, IABC Research Foundation, 2009

Chip Scanlan, “Nonlinear Narratives,” The Poynter Institute, Oct. 16, 2003

Josh Awtry, “Grid Tips,” The Poynter Institute, Oct. 15, 2003

Josh Awtry, “‘There just isn’t a story here,’” The Poynter Institute, Oct. 15, 2003

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I still remember — more than a decade later — one of the thousand heartbreaking stories about Hurricane Katrina victims, an AP report about the Superdome evacuation:

As powerful as that story is — the poor child cried until he vomited, for gosh sakes — the two most wrenching words are “Snowball, Snowball.”

Why? Because details drive stories.

As The Poynter Institute’s editorial guru Roy Peter Clark counsels:

“Get the name of the dog.”

Three ways to conduct a good interview

Sure, there’s a place for open-ended questions in your interview process. But good stories also require specific, tangible detail. So ask specific questions. Make sure the interview subject names names and numbers numbers.

1. Get the name of the dog.

Clark writes:

So “get the name of the dog, the brand of the beer, the color and make of the sports car,” Clark counsels.

William H. Broad named names when writing about the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in an article about how engineers use disasters to learn to improve structures:

Poor Tubby.

Notice how “black cocker spaniel” is more effective than “dog” and how “Tubby” is more effective than “black cocker spaniel” alone.

The other day, I was working with communicators at a financial services organization on their content marketing pieces. For a story on the organization’s financial camps for kids, they’d written:

Pretty abstract; pretty dull. I encouraged them to find a concrete detail to liven things up.

What have your kids done when they were bored? I asked. And from the back of the room, one communicator yelled out:

“They painted the schnauzer.”

Oh, I think we have a lead, I said. What color did they paint him? The communicator answered:

“They used Pepto-Bismol.”

Oh, I know we have a lead.

Just one more thing … What’s the name of the dog?

Frisky.

Make sure your list of questions includes those that go to concrete detail. That’s more important than whether you use a recording device.

2. Ask ‘What’s it like?’

Sometimes, all you need to do to get a comparison is to ask. The question to ask to get a metaphor is “What’s it like?”

That’s the approach Roger von Oech, author of A Whack on the Side of the Head, recommends. His workshop participants ask: “What’s it like?” to create metaphors for the meaning of life.

Two of my favorites:

“Life is like an unassembled abacus. It’s what you make of it that counts.”

“Life is like a maze in which you try to avoid the exit.”

What’s popcorn like?

In my storytelling workshops, participants practice “The Popcorn Project,” where they explain popcorn in part by asking “What’s it like?” Some of the images:

Caramel popcorn is like “honey sliding off a ski slope.”

Stale popcorn smells “like it’s been sitting under a table in a pre-school for 40 years.”

Make sure your interview questions include ‘What’s it like?”

Your subject matter expert may be able to answer this question for you. One good question to ask in the interview is:

“If you were explaining this concept to a class of third graders, what would you say it was like?”

3. Ask the subject to set the scene.

So you weren’t lucky enough to be there when the story unfolded? Ask your subject matter experts to set the scene.

• Start with questions that get to description: “What was the weather like?” “Were you wearing a coat?”
• Take the subject matter expert through a timeline. Ask, “What happened next?” “What happened after that?”
• Switch to the present tense to put the source in the scene: “What are you doing now?”

One technique for fleshing out a story during an interview is to take the subject to the scene of the story and ask her to show you what happened.

I suspect that’s the approach the writer used for this passage, from a story from AMD Advances, the marketing magazine of Advanced Micro Devices:

Scene-setting is one way communicators at AMD Advances do the seemingly impossible: They make technology compelling and understandable through storytelling. As Managing Editor Daniel Koga writes:

“By showing the human side of the high-tech industry, we … convey AMD’s emphasis on customer support and being a company that touts its people as much as its technology.”

men.

Questions and answers

Concepts are great, but concrete details, metaphors and scene setting make or break a story. Make sure you plan to spend part of the interview getting these golden nuggets.

____

Source: Roy Peter Clark, The American Conversation and the Language of Journalism, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies (St. Petersburg, Fla.), 1994

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Call it an aha! moment:

Aha! moments — aka moments of truth or desk-pounding moments — like this one, from an Eastman Chemical Company annual report, form the core of every corporate story.

Here are four ways to find the aha! moment that’s the gateway to compelling stories.

1. Find the ‘desk-pounding moment.’

When you’re looking for stories, ask the interview subject for the “desk-pounding moment.”

That, according to David Murray, executive director of the Professional Speechwriters Association, “is the moment when somebody pounded on his or her desk and said, ‘Damn it, we’ve got to do something about this.’”

That’s the secret to corporate storytelling.

“That moment is the origin of every corporate program,” Murray says. “The closer you as a reporter get to the very moment the idea was hatched by a human being, the better your story is going to be.”

The moment of invention often makes for a great story. Nike, for instance, began, according to Nikebiz.com …

Looking for a brand story that sells your product or service better than facts and figures? Include in your list of questions when the company began, the sole was invented, the theory discovered. The moment of inception illustrates your organization’s creativity, innovation and vision.

And it can make a terrific — and telling — desk-pounding moment.

2. Ask When questions.

Good stories cover one moment in time. So if you’re looking for a story that connects, ask when questions.

When questions take content experts back to a specific time, a specific place — and, often, a specific story. So try asking “when” questions.

Include interview questions that focus on:

• Moments of pain
• Moments of change
• Moments of crisis
• Moments of decision

These key moments are times that caused your subject matter expert to change course. That’s where the stories are.

A writer once asked Kansas City architect Cary Goodman when he knew he would join his profession. He told her about the time he built a fabulous tree house at the age of 9. His construction was so great that the local paper sent a photographer to shoot it. The photo made the front page.

No doubt about it: When questions are good questions. Whether you’re interviewing on the phone or face-to-face, a successful interview starts with prepared questions that get to stories.

3. Pass the 30-second test.

How do you know whether yours is a moment of truth or just something that happened?

Pass the 30-second test: When you research a moment of truth, make sure the original event didn’t take more than 30 seconds.

In an Esquire profile of Robert Redford, the writer tells about being frustrated by the actor’s incredible need for privacy. In the interviews, he was guarded and wouldn’t share any personal information.

To sum up this attribute, the writer ends with an anecdote about two fans who see the movie star at a New York City intersection:

Light changes; woman sprints over to Redford; asks if it’s really him; he replies.

Thirty seconds. That’s a good anecdote.

So while you’ll ask open-ended questions to elicit quotes and ideas, a good interview also includes questions to get to stories.

4. Make sure it’s a moment.

Self magazine asks for moments of truth in a series of stories about readers who shed pounds and shaped up. Here’s one of them:

Open email, see second chin, sign up for Noom. Thirty seconds. Good anecdote.

But what about this one?

That’s not a moment of truth, it’s a state of mind. The key phrase here is “I used to think.” This is something that happened over time, not once.

However, sometimes you can transform a state of mind into a moment of truth. If it happened several times, I always say, it also happened once. So choose on of those times and focus on that:

Kids ask Mom to push them in the swing; she thinks, “I can’t!”; realizes she’s got to make a lifestyle change.

Make it a story.

Storytelling has the power to engage, influence and inspire, according to the Harvard Business Review. If you want to move readers to act in the business world, create content and marketing campaigns that share your organization’s aha! moments.

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You’ve heard about MBWA, or management by walking around? Try WBHA, or writing by hanging around — going to the scene to observe.

Observational research is the most overlooked reporting tool there is. Which is a shame. Because firsthand observation gives your copy color and insight that you can’t get any other way.

“You can observe a lot just by watching.”

— Yogi Berra

Observational research means that you, the writer, experience the event or product or procedure so you can recreate the experience for your readers.

• Covering a new roller coaster? Get on that sucker and ride it.
• Doing a piece on a new medical procedure? See if you can get into the operating room.
• Writing about a new line of chocolates? You haven’t really done your job until you’ve sampled a box or two.

Why observational research?

Through observational research, you show your readers what they don’t ordinarily see, make them feel what they don’t normally feel. Observational research:

• Makes writing vivid
• Helps you recreate a scene you’ve witnessed
• Turns stick figures into portraits and adjectives into sensations
• Overcomes distance, putting readers in the scene, making them feel as if they were there

How to conduct observational research

No need to interview group members or analyze data. For the structured observation research technique, you make like Yogi Berra and “observe a lot just by watching.” Here are four ways to conduct observational research:

1. Be there.

Hang up the phone, back away from the keyboard and go to the scene to observe. You can’t observe if you never leave your desk. So try these types of observational research methods:

• Spend a day (or an hour) with your subject matter expert as she goes about her regular business.
• Ask for a demonstration. Get the subject matter expert to show you how she found the computer glitch or otherwise demonstrate parts of the story for you. When writer Cynthia Gorney interviewed Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) for the Washington Post, she asked him to draw one of his characters. As he sketched Yertle the Turtle, Geisel started talking about how he’d developed the character. That got the conversation rolling.
• Take a tour with the subject matter expert. Let the plant manager show you “how things work around here.”
• Find an action setting. Put yourself and your subject matter expert in a situation that reveals something about the topic. When I profiled a customer-service guru, for example, I took him to a white-tablecloth restaurant where I could observe him observing the service.
• Watch the subject in action, then talk. Be on hand while the surgeon performs surgery, for instance, then ask questions afterward.

Wherever you go, get out of your office.

“Place can provoke new information, funny stories, and great dialogue,” suggests Jeff Klinkenberg, author of Pilgrim in the Land of Alligators and other narrative nonfiction books about Florida.

“The way people talk, and what they talk about, is influenced by their surroundings. They may whisper in church, shout on the basketball court, talk nonsense after a couple of tall boys. Or they may chat about something remarkable they’ve just seen, something important.

“When you interview somebody at home, ask for a tour. Every picture, every book, every piece of furniture, can tell a story.”

2. Tune into your five senses.

Once you’ve left your desk for someplace more interesting, report with all your senses.

Remember: You have five.

Different senses affect readers differently. If you want to foster memory and emotion, for instance, focus on the sense of smell. The smell of Lipton’s tea still transports me back to my grandmother’s kitchen, circa 1972.

You can use sound, on the other hand, to build tension. From the tick-tick of the heart-beat monitor to the “Jaws” theme song, sound can create stress in your readers — stress you can “break” by showing how your organization, product or service can solve the problem.

How can you tune in to all five senses? Try this exercise recommended by Perry Garfinkel in Travel Writing: For Profit and Pleasure. Ask yourself:

“Here and now I hear what, see what, smell what, feel what, taste what?”

That way, you’ll capture, according to Kevin McGrath, assistant metro editor at The Wichita Eagle, “not just sights but sounds, smells, actions, reactions, interactions, bits of conversation, facial expressions, posture, clothing and the state it’s in (crisply pressed, badly wrinkled, sweaty, dirty, raggedy, shirttails hanging out etc.), how things look in relation to their surroundings, etc.”

You’ll see how your subject matter expert stands, sits and gestures and what she keeps on the bulletin board.

You’ll notice the sounds the machines make in different parts of the company’s plant, and how your subject’s voice tone changes when he’s feeling stressed out, passionate or joyful.

And you’ll use your senses of taste, touch and smell to recreate the scene for your readers.

“Does a clock on the wall of a high-powered executive tick-tock relentlessly, like a metronome for his pressure-packed career?” prompts David A. Fryxell, former editor of Writer’s Digest. “Do the floors of the manufacturing magnate’s office tremble with the distant pulse of the factory floor? Does the home smell of freshly baked bread, the production plant of ozone, the farm of recently spread manure?”

3. Take more notes than you use.

This ain’t data collection. This is qualitative research, not quantitative.

Still, take lots of notes about your naturalistic observations. You can always toss out whatever doesn’t make it into your piece. Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative nonfiction journalist John McPhee, for instance, might take 10,000 pages of notes for a single book.

And don’t just write down what your subject says, Fryxell suggests. Note his looks and mannerisms too.

“Do his eyebrows twitch like frenzied caterpillars when he talks?” he prompts. “What’s he wearing? Anything sticking out of his shirt pocket?”

4. Look for the telling detail.

Forget representative samples, research questions, observing participants and the Hawthorne Effect.

Instead, seek out “the Yankees cap, the neon sign in the club window, the striped towel on the deserted beach,” suggests Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anna Quindlen. “Those things that, taken incrementally, make a convincing picture of real life.”

That’s all you’ll need for observational research studies.

Tips for these research tools

These observational research methods can be time consuming. Observing the CEO in her natural setting is not for every story.

Deadlines and budgets force most communicators to do much of their research via phone. So ask: what story on the agenda this quarter would most benefit from observational study?

Start campaigning today for the resources to go to the scene to cover that event, issue or person.

___

Sources: Ted Anthony, “Communicating Place,” Hallmark Cards Creative Conference, 1997

David A. Fryxell, “The Observation Occupation,” Writer’s Digest, October 1997

Perry Garfinkel, Travel Writing: For Profit and Pleasure, The Penguin Group, New York, 1988

Jeff Klinkenberg, “Writing About Place: The Boundaries of a Story,” St. Petersburg Times, January 1995

Donald M. Murray, Writing to Deadline: The Journalist at Work, Heinemann, 2000

Anna Quindlen, “Writers on Writing: The Eye of the Reporter, The Heart of the Novelist,” The New York Times, Sept. 23, 2002

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There comes a point in any writing project when you need to follow Ernest Hemingway’s rule for writers: Apply the seat of your pants to the seat of a chair.

That is, you have to write. That’s the second step of the writing process: freewriting.

Only forget that kind of writing where you:

• Hunt for the right word.
• Peck it out.
• Shuffle through notes looking for a quote.
• Head to the vending machines for the third time in 15 minutes, hoping that when you come back you might — just might — think of something to say.

Nothing gets words on paper faster or gives your writing more personality than freewriting.

Freewriting is based on the idea that our brains are divided into two parts:

• The logical left side. It thinks analytically, making sure you don’t end your sentences in prepositions or use a colon when only a semicolon will do.
• The creative right side. It’s impulsive and unconventional and gives your copy interest and energy.

Problem is, we weren’t taught how to use the right side of our brains to write. Instead, we focus on AP style, punctuation and spelling — editing.

Freewriting momentarily gets rid of the brain’s logical left side so you can tap its creative right side.

How a writer writes

So after you prewrite and take a break:

1. Divide and conquer.

Freewriting is intense, high-energy work. You’ll only be able to tackle a small portion at a time.

So break your project up. Instead of challenging yourself to write a whole piece, think sections, paragraphs or sentences:

• Don’t write a press release; write the headline, deck and lead.
• Don’t write a speech; write the introduction.
• Don’t write a blog post; write the first three tips.

For this article, for instance, I divided the project into five sections:

1. Freewrite your copy.
2. Divide and conquer (this section).
3. Write quickly, without stopping.
4. Banish the grammar police.
5. Take a break.

Once I finish each section, I get to take a break.

Which is … now. Please excuse me while I go check my email.

2. Write quickly, without stopping.

When you’re writing, write. Don’t edit.

That’s the purpose of freewriting: to get words on paper (or pixels).

The problem is, if you write down a few words and then stare at them, you’ll edit. You won’t be able to help it. But if you force yourself to write continuously and quickly, you’ll push through that conditioned impulse to fix your copy and actually get some writing done.

When you freewrite, you want to achieve what the folks who study creativity call “flow.” In flow, you feel as if the words are flowing from your fingers — as if you can hardly keep your hands moving fast enough to keep up with your ideas.

Because of all the work you did in the prewriting step of the process — and because you’ve selected a discrete section of your piece to write — you should never have to stop to ponder where your piece is going next or how you’re going to get there.

You want to think through writing rather than thinking before you write. It’s stream of consciousness.

So get your nose out of your notebook. The story isn’t there; it’s in your head. (You’re not writing a research paper, after all. You’re not writing a report.)

Let the momentum of writing carry you along.

That’s flow.

3. Banish the grammar police.

“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time,” said American author Robert Cormier, “unlike, say, a brain surgeon.”

Agreed.

When I started writing this piece, I wasn’t sure how to spell Cormier’s name. But if I’d stopped writing long enough to confirm that Cormier isn’t spelled with a “U,” I would have made the transition from writer to editor.

When you’re freewriting, the minute you stop to correct something, the left side of the brain wins out, and you have to start all over again the process of getting into writing mode.

Instead, lock the editor out and let the writer create. Keep the good ideas and fresh prose flowing.

It’s the writing strategy of experienced writers: Don’t worry about mistakes when you’re writing. Use a dash instead of a semicolon, write “you’re” when you mean “your” — even misspell the CEO’s name. You can always go back and fix your mistakes later, during rewriting.

What you can’t do is go back and breathe life into a stillborn draft — a draft that never really got written in the first place

4. Take breaks.

Freewriting is intense. Your creativity and energy will flag if you stay at it for too long.

So give yourself a time limit. So set your timer or internal clock for no less than five minutes, no more than 15.

When your time’s up, take a break. Make a Diet Coke run. Check your email. File your notes.

Then get back to the job. That minute or two away from the page will leave you refreshed, refueled — and ready to go again.

You might try taking your break in the middle of a thought — even the middle of a sentence. You’ll eliminate re-entry problems and be itching to start again.

“I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next,” Hemingway wrote. “That way I could be sure of going on the next day.”

Don’t let your Red Bull run turn into a couple of hours on Google, a Facebook binge or a major filing system reconstruction. At some point, you need to get back to the keyboard and write.

___

Source: Peter Elbow, “Freewriting,” excerpted from Writing Without Teachers, Oxford University Press, 1973

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Who? What? When? Where? Why?

Those questions are journalistic tools that can help us find great life stories — or condemn us to a lifetime of cranking out just-the-facts-ma’am pieces.

Instead of seeking basic facts, shift focus. Richard Zahler of The Seattle Times suggests that when you’re interviewing for story, you let:

Who stand for character

What stand for plot

When stand for chronology

Where stand for setting

Why stand for motivation

Using this approach, “what,” for example, is transformed into questions like:

• “What happened next?”
• “What were you thinking when …?”
• “What made you say that?”

Those questions can lead to stories — not just the facts.

Beyond the five W’s

You know all about the five W’s. But what questions can you ask to make your piece an interesting story instead of just a report?

Get answers to these questions, three of my favorite interviewing queries:

1. So, as I understand it …

When writing, you need to be able to express technical language in your own words. Instead of waiting until you’re alone at your desk, translate key concepts into lay language during the interview and get your subject matter expert’s feedback.

2. What’s in it for our readers?

Don’t leave the interview without understanding the benefit to your readers. If you don’t know why your readers should care about this story, will they?

3. Would you give me an example of that?

People don’t understand ideas; they understand things. So the writer’s job is to translate ideas into things. This question will help you make your copy more accessible and interesting.

Types of questions to ask in the interview

I once worked with a communicator who went into each interview armed with a list of questions in a notebook. He’d leave three or four blank lines in between each question for writing the answers. I always wondered what he’d do if the subject-matter expert had more to say on the topic — cut her off?

Interviews should feel more like conversations than Q&As. Still, the best interviewers do start with a plan — an outline of points to cover if nothing else.

Before you conduct your interview, plan for these three types of good questions:

• Open-ended questions. “Why” and “how” questions get to motivation and approach. They encourage lengthy answers and can lead to good quotes.
• Closed-ended questions. Open-ended questions give you abstract information but little detail. Follow up with questions to get specific answers. As Roy Peter Clark, vice president and senior scholar at The Poynter Institute, says: “Get the name of the dog.” Closed-ended questions will give you color and detail.
• Questions to draw out anecdotes. Anecdotes — little stories — are among the best ways to get reader attention. It’s a good idea to find the central anecdote, one that can serve as your lead, before leaving the interview.

And avoid these three types of questions in your interview:

• Yes-or-no questions. They elicit yes-or-no answers.
• Long, complex questions. Ask a confusing question, get a confused answer.
• Multipart questions. How will you know which part the subject-matter expert is answering?

Add a sixth W.

Now, readers are looking for the answer to another “W,” says Rich Boehne, E.W. Scripps Co. chief operating officer:

“What’s next?”

“I preach constantly [that] in today’s environment, it’s much less about who, what, when and where,” Boehne says. “It’s about why and what’s next. In an environment where you do have a multitude of voices, the opportunity to bring context and color and perspective is I think our real role.”

Good point. So don’t forget to ask “What’s next?” when interviewing subject matter experts from the CEO to the intern.

That just might keep your reader from responding to your messages with the one “W” communicators are trying to avoid:

“Whatever.”

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