TEACH ME HOW TO WRITE

A couple of days back, a colleague of ours who works closely with our MD, came to our workplace and said, ‘you guys are the Corporate Communications team, teach me how to write’. After the initial bantering about him trying to take away our jobs, we said sure, why not.

Then I asked him, ‘what do you want to write about?’ He said, ‘whatever you guys do often… you know, communicating within the office and to outsiders as well’. I surmised that his interest was in writing brief letters, mails and perhaps minutes for meetings.

So I told him, ‘great, we can start right away. For today, I’ll give you 2 points.  These are the most fundamental things which you need to internalize. So keep them with you and look at that note now & then, till it’s gotten inside you. It’ll form the basis of all that you may write in the future’.

He pulled out his mobile to make a note and I told him this:

1.       Everything has a story.

2.       Every communication must sell.

Sounds simple isn’t it? Indeed it is, because everything we write has to comply with these 2 things to start with, and the finer aspects can come later.

However my friend was not too sure so I had to explain this a little bit more in detail.

First of all the ‘story’ part. By that I meant, the communication must have a definite structure. You have a beginning & an end, and a pithy part in the middle, which is rightly called the body. To anyone who comes to me with a request, I usually ask this: give me the beginning – meaning, the background for this particular situation or let’s say the history, and the context, or, the part that tells you ‘who is saying to whom & why’ – and also the end – meaning, what is the core communication that you want to pass on, or, what is the action that you want to initiate. The rest I can take care, which is why you have come to me.

So I gave him the example of a movie. It starts at some point in Time when certain things have already occurred and set the stage for this tale to unwrap. Then there is drama, a lot of it. And finally there is the climax, after which you go away with some message. This is what any other communication is also supposed to do.

Then comes the ‘selling’ part. This is perhaps easier to understand and accept because we have already seen in the previous section that you take away a message with you: that message is the product which has been ‘sold’ to you! 

Thus, indeed, every communication must sell what was intended to be conveyed. Now, ‘buying’ does not happen by coercion, it is voluntary. Hence we are to understand that the communication should be so effective & compelling that the reader agrees to ‘buy’ it, or go along with it. We could say, this deals with the presentation aspect, or the manner in which the message is placed before the reader, ultimately prompting him to take the action intended by us.

Our friend bought this story and went away happily.