ProfesssionalCommunication Archives

Should you think about your reader in your writing process?

What’s the best way to think about your reader when you’re in the middle of your writing process? Should you think about your reader? And if you should, how might you go about doing that?

My short answer is: it depends.

It depends a lot on the type of writing you are doing.

To explain more about what I mean, I’ll address how you might think about your reader in two contexts: 1) in professional writing, and 2) in creative writing.

Professional writing

When I say “professional writing,” I don’t mean writing as your profession. I mean writing in professional contexts, which pretty much applies to anyone who has any kind of profession. If you are writing to clients and colleagues, if you are writing to communicate as part of your work, then you are writing in professional contexts.

To boil it down, professional writing is about being direct and clear. Because of this, I usually think of my reader often.

I tend to think very regularly about things like: what the reader’s experience might be in relationship to the topic, how much knowledge they bring, and their potential perspective. I think about how much extra context I might need to include in what I’m writing, among other things. So, the reader is very much at the front of my thinking as I’m going through the professional writing process.

Creative Writing

With creative writing you are trying to create a different kind of relationship with your reader through what you are producing. You may be engaging them intellectually, but also potentially emotionally. You are likely using different devices, such as metaphor, alliteration, narrative or dramatic structure, among others. Your relationship with your future reader may not necessarily be so direct as it is in professional writing. There may be a kind of playfulness, experimentation and uncertainty with you creative writing process as well.

Given these contexts, I tend to try not to think about my reader, especially early in my process when I’m in that playful, exploratory stage. In the early stages I am usually still figuring things out about what I am even writing.

What can you think about, if not your reader?

I recommend three things.

The first is the material. That could be the ideas, the feelings, the context, the particular historical moment, any social issues, cultural values, political slant, political critique, among many other contexts.

Especially early in your creative process, you may not know all of the pieces yet. You might just have an inkling, or you may have a taste. Perhaps you are working with an image that is starting off your exploration. Ultimately, there could be a lot of uncertainty, so you want to focus on a rich exploration and any additional research to better understand how different contexts might or might not link together.

The second thing you want to consider is yourself. Pay attention to yourself and your relationship to the material, to the social issues, to the historical context, to the cultural values, to those feelings, and your own response to ideas and feelings, among other pieces.

The third thing you want to attend to is the form. Is this poetry? Is this a short story? A novel? A play? The form will have certain structures that can help you, and that you can push against and play around with. You want to be aware of those conventions so you can engage with them well and strategically, and so you can ultimately engage your reader or audience through your project.

So those three things: the material, yourself, and the form.

I think there can almost be a danger in thinking about the reader too early because there is the risk you will start to contrive your writing towards your preconceived ideas of what you think your reader might want. This has the potential to take away from your focus on the material and contexts of what you are writing, as well as the form you are working within.

You need to be focusing on what the project needs.

David Bowie famously said that, when he was creating, he would not play to the gallery. He was not creating for other people. He was creating for himself and to understand his own relationship with the world; his own relationship to social issues and cultural values, among other aspects.

When I hear something like that from someone who is really good at their craft, I pay attention.

I take this to mean that he doesn’t necessarily think about his audience at the forefront of his creative process. Rather he’s using his own life experience as a frame to be able to interpret.

That said, I am not opposed to challenging that idea just a little bit. At some point you, as the creator, can start to think about your audience. This happens when you start to think about questions like: what’s the best way to craft this story? What is going to resonate in a strong way?

Indirectly, these are questions about your audience and your reader.

But what’s important about those questions is that they don’t become about giving the reader exactly what you think they might want. You can use those questions to think critically about crafting a really good piece of writing.

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in my YouTube video: What about your reader?

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Sometimes ‘less is more’ when designing a good presentation

I was chatting with a former student recently about giving a guest lecture. As a new grad student, he was in the throes of preparing to give his first and was asking for advice (so exciting!).

My big overarching message to him:

Less is more.

For reals.

I see a whole lotta “more is more” out there in the world, and let me tell you, it really isn’t. More is often way too much. Crafting a good presentation isn’t an all you can eat buffet (which can be awesome!). It’s about helping people learn and engage, which is a different kind of value than being stuffed.

Your audience really needs “just enough” information to understand the big ideas or main skills that you are trying to engage them with. In a lecture or presentation especially, there is only so much information a person can take in. So while you might be super excited to share All The Things (“look at all those exciting WEEDS!”), your audience is often just trying to wrap their brains around what you’re even talking about. This is especially true if you are speaking across disciplines or industries, or to audiences that are newer to your topic.

How do you make sure you are giving “just enough” as part of designing a good presentation? Here are some ideas:

Focus on the change you hope will happen for your audience through your presentation. What do you hope they’ll take away? Where do you hope they’ll end up? Think high level, and keep it high – use descriptions, examples and details ONLY to highlight those higher level aims.
Build in pauses. If you are using PowerPoint, add a 5-10 second pause after each slide change to give people the chance to look before you start speaking again. Sometimes I literally write into my speaking notes “sip water here” so the audience has a moment to breathe and reflect on what I just said.
Use different types of strategies to engage your audience rather than just giving information, like a traditional lecture. Tell a story, ask them a question or two, discuss something visual (chart, image, whatever is relevant!). This will also slow you down.
Write your presentation to an approximate word count – this is especially useful if you are newer to presenting. How do you figure out the number of words? Set your timer for one minute, and start reading a page or two of text aloud at a nice, conversational pace (read: chill). When the timer goes off, count the number of words and write it down (highlight what you’ve read on your screen and use the “word count” feature to help you!). Repeat this several times with different text, and take the average of the word count totals. Then multiply your average “spoken words per minute” by the number of minutes you have to present to find the approximate word count for your presentation (so, if you speak approximately 150 per minute, and you have a 10 minute presentation, you should write a presentation that is approximately 1500 words).
Build your presentation for less time than you have been allotted. You’ve been told you have 45 minutes? Create a 40 minute lecture.
When you have a good draft, practice and time yourself. Edit accordingly.

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Why writing in one sitting can overwhelm you

(but you have options!)

Imagine trying to cook a full-course meal in one go—without prepping ingredients, measuring anything, or even turning on the stove first. Overwhelming, right?

The same can be said for writing.

Maybe you know that writing is an awesome and powerful thing, but you also kind of dread it. And maybe you think sitting down in one go and writing as much as you can all at once will lessen the pain… (believe me, I’ve done it!)

But this approach can backfire. It usually makes things harder.

Why?

It’s relying on sheer will to get the project done. In reality, writing takes several interrelated stages. Not planning for those stages, or at minimum not being aware of them, can leave you feeling like you have to hunker down, power through, and hope that words will fly out of your fingers on the keyboard. Not an effective strategy!

Understanding the three-stages of writing can help you organize yourself and improve your writing: your process, your time, your energy, and your technique.

These three-stages can be applied to any writing process – from writing a professional email, to writing your newest opus. Each stage will look different depending on the form, but the same overarching stages still apply.

Stage 1 – Information Gathering / Research

What are you writing about? Take time to collect some information to include in your writing.

The type information you collect is going to look different depending on the form of your project. Collecting data that you will publish in a peer-reviewed scientific journal is going to look very different from noticing and documenting personal experiences that will inform your poetry. But ultimately these different approaches are all types of “research.”

Stage 2 – Writing / Analysis

This is the stage most of us associate with writing (aka “sitting down and plunking words into the keyboard”). I like to think of this stage more broadly as “analysis”.

Why?

Writing is analysis. This means you are making sense of the information you’ve gathered and shaping it into your writing project so others will engage with the ideas. Selecting language, or putting words to the information, is one part of the work. But you also need to consider how the ideas will be organized, how the project will be structured so the ideas and material will be received by your reader/audience.

But more than that, this stage takes place beyond sitting at your computer and typing – and this is why I like to think of this stage more broadly as “analysis.” You’ll make connections between ideas in the strangest of places, away from your keyboard. Like in the grocery line, walking your kids to school, making dinner, etc. Suddenly you have an idea, or you see a link! This kind of thinking or processing “counts” as analysis.

When this happens, jot the idea in your notebook, or take a voice note. You can come back to it when you’re sitting at your computer, and the analysis will continue, as you continue to put words to the ideas.

Stage 3 – Feedback

The last stage is feedback. Is this resonating with people? Is it making sense to them? Is it engaging them in the ways that you’re hoping it’s going to engage?

You can act as your own “feedback provider” – meaning that you can step away from your writing, and return to it with fresh eyes. This way you can try to read your draft as someone new would read it (and adapt your writing based on what you are seeing/reading). But for some projects, particularly longer ones, you will likely want to get feedback from another person at different stages of your process.

You want to think carefully about who you ask for feedback. You’ll need someone who can provide good, rich feedback and help your work become stronger. But you also want to think about how they provide that feedback. Lots of people, frankly, aren’t that great at the “how” part. They might know about their own response. But they may not be strong at crafting their thoughts in ways that will help you learn and grow, and that will help you apply those ideas to your project.

Some additional thoughts

Of course, these three stages are not quite so linear in practice. You don’t do all of your research at once, put a little bow around it when the stage is done, and move on to your writing stage.

But even though the process isn’t that neat, it’s still helpful to think about these overarching stages as a reference point. So when you’re in the middle of your writing and you do become overwhelmed or tired, you have a framework to help guide you.

For example, maybe you’ve been working on a particular section for a long time and it’s starting to feel frustrating and overwhelming. You can take a step back, look at these stages to help orient yourself, and then ask: “Where am I in these three stages?”

Maybe you’re feeling overwhelmed because you feel too close to what you’ve been writing. It would be helpful to revisit the research that you did, and dive into that material again, to see it in a new way.

Or maybe you realize that you don’t have enough information to proceed, and you’re frustrated because you don’t have enough “fuel.” You decide to go back to that research stage to collect more information, do a little bit more digging and exploring.

Or maybe you’re feeling frustrated and tired because you’ve taken your writing as far as you can, but you also know it’s not done. You decide you need some feedback, so that you can return to writing with some different perspectives.

Hopefully this gives you a sense that, while the process isn’t linear, understanding these different stages can help you improve your writing by planning and orienting yourself in the midst of your writing.

Was this useful? You might like my freebie ‘The Writing Roadmap: A Simple 3-Stage Guide to Clarify Your Process’.

Also, check out my YouTube video: Overwhelmed by Writing? Try This Instead!

Design a session that will knock their socks off

You’ve been invited to give a guest lecture/workshop/presentation (yay!) but the prospect causes you to break into sweats (ack!).

The good news is that people think highly of you and value your expertise – they have invited you to share your awesomeness! And the other good news is that you don’t have to cram all your knowledge into that 30/45/60-ish minute session to keep people engaged and help them learn stuff. You really don’t.

In this post, I’ll share a few things that I use in my own teaching and facilitation to help you think through how to design an awesome session, whether it’s a hands-on workshop, a guest lecture or a keynote presentation.

First, it’s helpful to think about these six things.

Your topic. This might seem obvious – yes, of course you’re going to do your session on a topic – but, someimes it can be deceptively hard to select. You can think about what your expertise is, and what the particular audience might learn from you.

Your audience. Of course, you can’t know for certain the exact people in your audience, but you can imagine them. You can think about age/generation, career status (e.g. early, mid, seasoned), field or profession, culture, geography, and your own alignments or differences with your audience, among other things. For example, I often work with people in healthcare – as an artist I need to think about potential differences in how we work, and some assumptions I might be making about terms or processes. Having a sense of who your audience is will help you make decisions about your session.

The form. Whether you are giving a keynote, workshop, guest lecture, on-line, in person, etc., thinking about the form can help you think about how you want to engage people in different ways (more below on strategies!). It’s helpful to pay attention to what people expect from the form (a keynote is different from a hands-on workshop, for example), but you can also use or disrupt expectations in different ways.

Change or transformation. As you think about the change you hope your audience will go through, consider where you anticipate your audience is starting from related to your topic, and where do you want them to end up? Your session becomes about that in-between part. How will you engage them so that they move through some kind of transformation, ending up in a different place?

Your session might be about building practical skills, or it might be about ideas and thinking differently, but thinking about a “starting place,” an “ending place,” and the change you hope will take place, still applies regardless.

Strategies: how will you get there? It can be useful to brainstorm a whole bunch of different ways to engage people – a lot more than you will actually use – as part of thinking through what might be strongest. The specific strategies you select depend on all the other different factors – your topic, the audience, the form, etc. As you think about strategies, you can continue to return to: what is the change you anticipate this particular audience might go through?

Time frame. Whatever the amount of time you have, try to plan for less. Give yourself a buffer. If you have 45 minutes, then plan for 40. It’s also useful to leave time at the end of your session for questions, or a wrap-up – and if you have more time than you anticipate, you can have a longer discussion, or even just end early (and everyone will love you!). Whatever you do, stay within your allotted time. For reals. I’ve included some strategies below for how you can design your session to help you stay on time.

And actually – I’ve developed a free, downloadable tip-sheet that covers these ideas and will help you design your session further. You can find it here.

Next, you’ll want to put these ideas into your session.

Now that you’ve started on these different aspects, you need to pull it all together. Below are some ideas about structure.

I think of this as a Sandwich.

Introduction: your first piece of bread, or the bottom of the bun. How are you going to introduce this topic to this particular audience? You can, of course, just state your topic and learning objectives at the start of your session. Depending on the audience, spelling it out can work really well. But you don’t have to do that.

Maybe you are doing a hands-on workshop, and your topic has to do with helping people become more aware of their own bodies and emotions while they are working. If your audience is dancers, you could start with a meditation and a physical warm up, and then, after these activities, articulate the aims of your workshop. But if you are working with physicians, you will probably want to introduce the same topic in a different way, maybe through a story, or by introducing yourself and your expertise. Your introduction should give your specific audience a sense of the topic, but also a sense of the kind of strategies you will be using throughout your session. It’s like a sample of what the rest of your sandwich will taste like.

Your content and strategies: the meat and veggies. These are the various selected strategies you will use to engage people with your topic, thinking about the change you hope your audience will go through.

I plan my sessions into chunks of time, and allot a different strategy for each chunk. For example, for 5 minutes I will share a story, for 7-8 minutes people will break into groups and share their own stories, then we will return to the larger group for 10-12 minutes – etc.

This “chunking” is useful for a couple of reasons.

You can clearly see whether your activities align with your aims. What are the actual strategies you plan to use, how much time have you allotted for each, and will these strategies help this audience move through change you are hoping for? Let’s return to the example of helping people become more aware of their bodies and emotions while working. If you notice that the strategies you’ve chosen only involve people talking, you will want to revise what you are doing to include activities where people are engaging and paying attention to their bodies (such as breathing exercises).

It can help you keep on time when you come to facilitate the session. If something goes awry during the session, and you find that you’re short 10 minutes (“the wrong room was booked, no one can find the key, oh they chaos!”), then you can easily look at the structure of your session and adapt quickly. It’s easier to pull out a section on the fly, and much easier to adapt in the moment, when you have planned your session into smaller chunks of time.

Whatever you do, remember that more is not necessarily better. Be sure to build in pauses, or breaks, so people have time and space to process.

Conclusion: the top of your bun. You can help people digest your metaphorical sandwich, including what the session has been about, or what their transformation has been. Hopefully, your audience will continue to process the material after they leave your session, and apply it out in the world. Through your conclusion, you can help them transition what they’ve learned.

As a few ideas, you could field some questions, or invite people to have discussions amongst themselves and then open it up to the larger group, or if you’re short on time, simply make a statement like: “We don’t have time for a discussion, but these are the things that I’m hoping that you will take away with you…”

Also, you can leave your contact information. This invites people to continue the connection after your session. It’s almost like continuing a conversation.

Be sure not to sell your conclusion short – sometimes that processing time can be just as important, if not more important, than the bulk of your session where you share information.

In case you missed it, here’s my free, downloadable tip sheet!