Recommended Podcast: "How to Become a Better Writer in 60 Minutes"
This podcast episode lives up to its title. They packed a lot of good writing tips into less than 60 minutes.
They covered the basics with some new twists and gave me some new material to think about.
Here are four highlights for me:
Writing allows you to scale your persuasion. It allows you to get your ideas to a lot of people. They were talking about external, but it can also work internally— if you write it down, people can read about your idea without having to be in the room to explain it.
Warm-up with copy work. They claim that copying, word-for-word, text you like is a great way to warm up and inspire yourself. It is even a great way to get over writer’s block. This is like a musician or athlete warming up with simple routines before a performance. I’ve never tried this, but will.
They had new twists to storytelling. Usually, these sessions talk about storytelling with Pixar tips or Kurt Vonneget’s famous arc. I wrote about why that doesn’t help business writers. Instead, this podcast gave me new ideas to think about. For example, they discussed writing with the end emotion in mind (happiness, wow, outrage, etc). They also talked about bringing emotional stakes to a low-stakes situation. Most business and educational writing is low stakes. We need to work to highlight why the story is important to individuals. They also covered creating a curiosity gap and the concept of ‘intention meet obstacles’. I’m unsure how to use these, but I’ll think about them more.
They got the basics right: Writing helps you think, don’t bury the lead, write like you talk, write about things you would tell others face-to-face, and keep it simple.
Finally, it warmed my heart to hear that the only word they laughed at for misuse was “utilize.” In 1995, my friend Richard Whisner convinced me that “use” was almost always better than “utilize.” It was good to see others helping this low-stakes cause!