Making Writers Richer
Posted on Monday, October 29, 2012 at 1:07 PM
How you are more than merely a writer.
By Jan V. White
Forgive
me, but I'm an art director who has the gall to dispense inacquiescent
advice to writers. What do I know about writing? Well, in my 60-plus
years in magazine-making, I've become as much editor as a graphics guy.
Such seniority allows me to say anything I feel like, so I'll risk it: I
hate to tell you that your profession as writer stinks! You don't
get paid enough! Here you are, concentrating all your hard-earned effort
on fine, clever writing -- even absorbing all those marvelous insights
and wisdoms and techniques my honored colleague Peter Jacobi looses onto
the verbal communicators' world. (If memory serves, we first met 34
Christmas cards ago at a Folio: conference in New York.)
Let's
agree that you are doing a super writing job -- can't do any better. How
can you make more money (assuming filthy lucre is a yardstick of
happiness)? Stop cogitating and cerebrating. Shelve the technicalities
of your trade. (Yes, we all agree that it is an "artform," but I'm going
downscale in this article and calling it a "trade.") Cut to the
practical and commonsense perspective.
However marvelous your
writing may be, you are not merely a "writer." You are also a sales
executive. In clearer English, you are a merchant. You are an idea-peddler,
a retailer of thoughts. Those thoughts had better be saleable
both in content as well as form. In your function of successful
retailer, you have to understand more than just "writing." Your stock in
trade is not just fuzzy ideas, but it is also crystallized into a
visible object. Your fabulous piece is also a thing. An object.
It starts as a simple manuscript on-screen that is then metamorphosed
into an "article" -- a more complex "entity," a "thing" -- that can be
sent out into the world in the form of an object. That thingness
is usually ignored as obvious, secondary, and beneath your writer's
professional or artistic dignity. Whoa! It is the key to success --
money!
The immediate and obvious way to achieve that
metamorphosis is to "make it look more exciting!" NO. That's
dumb. The "wow! factor" may attract fleeting attention, but it is
superficial, whether it is verbal or visual. Forget weird words,
enormous headlines, images in shocking contexts, cute puns, unexpected
color, and especially forget eccentric fonts. Don't be confused by any
of all that "wow"-ness, because it is a red herring (a will o' the wisp,
in poet-speak). Leave it alone. Never add more stuff to create
artificial excitement. Instead, cut out everything you can find that
is probably un-essential, no matter how gracefully worded. Throw it out
so you are left with the nuggets.
--That's editing.
Then
you display the hell out of the nuggets.
--That's design.
Then
you slot them into an organized publication.
--That's distribution.
Your
precious writing only becomes a saleable commodity if its content is
metamorphosed/transmuted/transmogrified (I told you I was a word-guy as
well!) into a visible/tangible/palpable form within some sort of
"publication" (be it printed or electronic). Your story is a thing
slotted into a bigger thing, usually a group of segments. Like it or
not, controlling the editing/designing/distribution sequence is an
integral part of the writer's job. (Not "profession," but "job." There
is a big difference.) It is not good enough to just write better or
design better. You have to sell your distillation better.
Sales-thought
1: People don't want drillbits, but they need holes, so they
buy drillbits. People don't want your publication, but they need your
content. Those content-holes must be useful to your targets. How can you
know that unless you find them, listen to them, and get to understand
them, so you can direct your potential value to their interests.
That is the "take-away" that they'll invest in.
Sales-thought
2: A foam-plastic cup is a technical marvel of engineering: light,
cheap, easily stacked, sanitary, pretty with imprinting ... What is
anybody's personal value but cup-makers? It keeps your coffee hot and
your fingers cool. That's "WIIFM," the "What's in it for me?"
factor. Anything for sale must have it, especially your intellectual
product. "What's in it for me?" is their "take-away" that they must have.
Selling
Begins When the Prospect Says, "No thanks"
Here are
ten commonsense selling persuaders:
1. What creates
interest?
Pictures. Stop being blind, orthodox word specialists. Stop accepting
images as though they were secondary communication material -- making
pretty or showing objects. Train yourself to accept the nonverbal stuff
as being as valid, and often as valuable, as verbal stuff. Pictures
create curiosity and pull emotion. They are always noticed first.
Exploit that reaction by sequencing your story as 1) picture ... 2)
headline ... 3) text. That is the natural logical sequence of your
viewer's reaction; why not use it as presentation? Starting with a
headline is newspaper tradition, but it is bassackwards. Never start
with headlines if you have an image at hand. Always place the picture
dominant, above the headline.
2. What sort of words are
most captivating?
Cute headlines with puns in them? How boring! NO! The captions
are the most exciting words! (Newspaper people call them cutlines.)
Captions get maximum readership because the curiosity that a picture
generates can only be assuaged by its explanation. Exploit your pictures
to slip into the all-important explanation. Never, ever waste captions
by giving just a boring name or identification. Expand the material in
the captions in order to exploit them as hooks baited with your juiciest
gobbets. Make them worthwhile. Irresistible.
Unfortunately, your
habitual working sequence ruins your chances of taking advantage of your
captions. Normally, you write your story as beautifully as you know how
and carefully add a headline ready to hand in to the editor -- but,
"Oops! Forgot the captions!" Inevitably, your caption becomes a quickie.
Instead, write your captions first, while you are excited about
the story. Those are the bits that should be the fascinating essence of
the story. I know, it'll never happen in real life, because inevitably
your caption will be shoved in as a last-minute footnote. And, of
course, you didn't get the damn art too late. But try. It really works.
3.
How much should you write?
Two hundred words max, said Al Neuharth, who founded USA Today.
(Unless you are doing deliberate literature, of course.) There's too
much to absorb for everybody everywhere. Long-appearing text-mass means
trouble. It encourages being ignored or skipped. People like
short bits because they get in-and-out faster. Your targets prefer to be
free and uninvolved.
The unthinking solution: "Break up" the
text! Let the columns flow, but insert a subhead every six inches or
so (i.e., the archaic "dollar-bill" technique by which editors once
measured distance between subheads in newspaper columns). The wording in
boldface usually repeated a word or two in the following paragraph,
which was so annoying that the interruptions were ignored. They were
skipped. Nobody read 'em. Such artificial "breakup" cheats the reader.
However, if the words are beguiling, the technique is perfectly valid.
What is "beguiling"? "Useful."
4.
Remember those deadening J H-S reports?
The primitive report-plus-headline format we ineluctably start with is
not predestined just because we were taught that it was "correct."
Instead, deconstruct your long pieces, but don't just slice 'em
as lengths of kielbasa sausages. Imagine your thoughts visually,
as though they were objects rather than just words written in those
endless columns in the obvious traditional way. Separate them into
deliberate rectangular segments as info-units. Now reconstruct
them onto the page to tabulate the info-units.
--Example:
Exploit space to organize the info-units. Pop them out separately but
tied together under an umbrella headline. Clue readers by numbering the
sections. Explain with lots of labels. The more headings the better --
the more opportunities to catch 'em. Messy-looking? Probably, but
neatness doesn't count. Effectiveness does.
--Example: In a
pro/con story, don't glue the "pro" onto the start of the "con." Arrange
them alongside each other to show off the contrast. Point up the
difference by typography.
--Example: In a Q/A story, don't
make them like a stack of dark-type Q-layers above light A-layers.
Instead place the Q's on the left and the A's across to the right so
they "talk to each other" side-by-side.
(Notice that they are based on using the space, not just typography?)
5.
Why should they pay attention?
Self-interest. (More
common sense!) Plain reporting like "who-what-why-where-when" is okay.
But plain information is not enough. The focus must be beyond a step
beyond the "who-what-why-where-when," the step up to "so
what." The "so what" is interpretation. Intelligence.
"Who-what-why-where-when" is okay, but the "so what" (i.e. understanding)
they'll pay for because that's what they need.
6.
What is nearly as valuable as pictures?
White space!
It isn't the wasted paper that writers believe it to be. It pulls the
eye to what you want to display. It is a vital organizing tool. It
organizes your tabulated units: wide space separate like moats, narrower
spaces tie together like glue. Don't cram! Stop your suicidal habit of
filling every square inch with words! Okay, you managed to squeeze more
copy in there, but who wants to read it?
7. Have you heard
of curb appeal?
Selling real estate depends on
first-glance attraction. Just so, people decide to read in 2.5 seconds.
Therefore, flaunt your nuggets and display them on top, noticeably,
irresistibly. Emphasize your big ideas, dominant, vivid -- so readers
notice them and realize they need them. "Wow, I gotta read this
now!" Deliberately prepare, organize, write, edit, lay out, to show
off your value.
Example: Every time he checked heads,
my editor always asked "So what?" out loud. He was thinking
beyond the inevitable self-fascination of our own story and forcing
himself to imagine what the reader might get out of it. That's
what matters.
Example: He would probably add a few words
to make absolutely sure that the headline's point was clear. Shortness
in heads usually doesn't work well enough to achieve the persuading.
Potential readers will only pay attention if they sense a reward. You
need the requisite words.
8. What is the mood?
The
magic word "you" and its implications are irresistible in display and
text. And always spin the story so it is positive, because good news is
more desirable.
Example: Al Neuharth fired the writer who
submitted the headline that said, "Death rate drops." Obviously, "death"
as the first word is death. But even more important: "Death rate drops"
should have been rewritten to show the optimistic result, "We're living
longer." Same idea, but happy.
9. Why think product?
Remove
your wordsmith blinkers and multiply single-story thinking. Each article
is just a component of the whole product. Control the whole, because
that is what the recipient gets. Look and judge it as a totality so you
can tweak it to bring out contrasts, patterns, and repeats in more
interesting sequences. To make the most of a publication's sequential
capabilities, the art director -- together with the editor as a team --
must imagine it as a flowing product like a movie.
10. What
about "design"?
Very few people buy a
magazine because it is pretty. They buy it because it is useful. Visual
clarity (not beauty) reveals that usefulness. Usefulness
makes money. Forget catchphrases like "I like it" or "good taste," or
"making it pleasing." Serious and functional design is precisely
analogous to writing/editing. It manipulates content-ideas exactly the
way the words do. Writers must be as comfortable with arranging thoughts visually
as the designers have to be comfortable with understanding the
words! "I don't know anything art but I know what I like" is
contemptible nonsense. As professional communicator, you are just as
responsible for the visual success of your product as its intellectual
content. They are a composite amalgam. So open your eyes and cooperate.
Admittedly not easy, but do try with a cherry on top. (The cherry is the
visual blandishment. See how easy it really is?)
Writing as
communicator is only a component of a far more complex process.
Don't specialize in an academic career as Great Writer, but widen,
broaden, and enjoy the context within which your writing is placed so
you can control it. Successful periodicals establish their own style and
then repeat it, so both their content and their "look" become a
familiar, recognizable friend with their own personality and character.
That implies restriction and discipline. You don't add to dilute, but
subtract to concentrate. "Less is more." Unfortunately, designers
loathe "less is more" because they believe that they must stick in
"creativity" in order to fulfill their function. Writers/editors also
loathe "less is more" because they believe "variety keeps readers
interested." Variety of content, of course! Variety of form, absolutely
not. It disintegrates the product. Instead, simplify-simplify-simplify
and repeat-repeat-repeat.
Example: The most primitive
technique is to use just one font to blend your typographic matter
together. It will brand your product by virtue of being recognizable. It
will contrast with the ads. Furthermore, when it is seen all-of-a piece,
it shows off how much you've given them. If the content is interesting,
then this familiar, friendly product persuades itself as valuable. So
they'll want to buy it! So the publisher makes more money ... and the
writer gets an extra cut. It'll never as big as it ought to be, but
think of the fun you are having. QED.
Jan White lectures
worldwide on the relationship of editing to design. He tries to persuade
word people to think visually and visual people to think verbally. He is
the author of Editing by Design, 3rd Ed, and a dozen books on
publishing techniques. Contact him at janvw2@aol.com.
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