I’m convinced that all of this started around an open fire.
Somewhere in the prehistoric past there were a couple of prehistoric dudes sitting around in the twilight after a supper of roasted mastodon, telling the prehistoric chicks about the “one that got away.” The chicks, of course, didn’t believe a word of it, but they laughed and enjoyed the tale. One of them said, “Tell it again”... and the world changed forever.
All of this that we do – interactive computer-based training, movies, podcasts, books, plays, TV programs, operas, stand-up comedy - it’s all the same thing. It’s all story-telling.
No matter how old we get, we never outgrow the craving for someone to “tell me a story.” The best storytellers in our culture (think Stephen King or Stephen Spielberg) are rich. That means that these lowly “entertainers” are actually providing a valuable service. I believe that we who create more mundane presentations like commercials or technical training need to keep in mind that what we are doing, in essence, is telling a story. If we stray from the fire, we’re asking our audience to do something that’s unnatural.
Humans created a new problem when we started writing. It was now possible to string together words in ways that would not be used in “real” (oral) storytelling. We could concoct awkward rhythms, tongue-twisting combinations of consonants, and sentences much longer than a single breath could sustain a reader. We turned away from the fire.
Not too long ago I was talking to a client about a script, and I think I spontaneously coined a new word when I blurted out, “It’s just very writey, isn’t it?” So many of our messages in the business world today are acceptable to the eye, but hard on the ear. They’re written in “brochure-speak”.
Why is that?
I remember as a student sitting down to compose the dreaded Term Paper. I desperately wanted to impress the teacher with not only my command of the subject, but my general level of intelligence. I used bigger words than I did in conversation; and the sentences, instead of simply expressing a thought and stopping, dragged on and on like nomads lost in a desert of white paper.
What saved me was that every other kid was probably doing the same thing.
When I got into radio, I had to learn a new way of writing. A 60-second commercial “spot” is not much time to communicate an idea. My written sentences became short and succinct because, for one thing, I had to read them aloud. Me. I couldn’t pass them off to someone else – this garbage was going to have to sound like real human speech when it came out of my mouth.
Here are some tips – and you can take them as from one storyteller to another – for how to make your tales easier to hear.
1. Read Your Script Aloud (!)
Most writeyness could be avoided if we always thought of the words as “the story,” and the visuals as mere illustrations of the story. Writers who are writing for the ear must read their work aloud. If this seems too time-consuming or tedious - not to put too fine a point on it - your audience may agree.
2. Say it Simply
Several years ago I was hired to write copy for the website of a high-tech medical device manufacturer. I came up with some copy that seemed to hit the company’s main points with a feeling of “welcoming” rather than “overwhelming” the visitor.
I was told that the right information was there, and was communicated clearly, but that the client wanted the language to be “more sophisticated.” I hadn’t used big enough words.
Now there is a place for polysyllabification, no doubt; sometimes only the precise technical term will do. But even when dealing with peers in a very complex field, we want to do a gut-check to make sure we’re using language to communicate, and not to impress.
A big word is great – but only if it’s used with precision, when no smaller word would do. As Winston Churchill said, “The short words are the best, and the old words best of all.”
3. A Sentence Conveys One Thought
Remember that explanation from First Grade? What is the purpose of this structural unit we call a sentence if not to contain a single idea? Some writers seem to think a sentence is a sausage casing, and the more we can stuff in there, the better. The “period” key is your friend. Use it often!
Can we be candid? Doesn't a lot of our writeynesss happen because we're afraid that if we write in clear, short, declarative sentences, our clients will think that writing is easy – that “anyone can do it?” We know that the opposite is true. It's easy to pile syllable upon superfluous syllable, and word upon elongated word to erect an enormous, insurmountable edifice of inscrutable jabberwocky that few mountaineers, alpinists or cragsmen-of-letters are zealous to endeavor to surmount.
If we want our viewers to understand us, let’s not make their job more difficult just because some people don’t know the difference between quality and quantity of words.
Once, after reading a narration track for a new client, he asked me, “What can we do to make our scripts better?” I said, “Cut every other sentence in half.” He laughed. I wasn’t joking.
4. Use Rhythm
I’ve railed against long sentences, but an entire presentation in 3-word blips would be just as bad, maybe worse. Borrow this insight from the poet: language has rhythm. Great orators use rhythm to persuade, to captivate, to virtually hypnotize audiences. We can use it to wake people up – “Stop – Warning!” – or to bore them. Every young mother knows that a consistent, monotonous rhythm is a very reliable method of putting the baby to sleep.
“Writey” Words
There are lots of words that we see in print all the time, but seldom say. These are red flags for writeyness. Your list will vary from mine, but, just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about:
“Prior to”. Don’t you usually say “before”? The same goes for “adjacent to” – sometimes technically there is a difference between that and “next to,” but when there isn’t, it might be better to use the ordinary, conversational term. The same goes for “utilize” versus “use,” and many others. They’re not wrong, of course, but when I see a script filled with words like “facilitate” and “leverage” and “interoperability,” my eyes glaze over. It’s going to be more difficult to tell the story without sounding like we’re bloviating. If “effective” is always paired with “efficient,” you can probably lose one of them.
Clichés deserve their own Hall of Shame. When reading silently, our eyes can just skip over them to find more interesting material. When listening, our only option is to “tune out,” either mentally or literally.
“Writey” Sentence Structures
Unplug the Sentence Elongator. Take it to the curb – I think they actually recycle those now. Don’t dilute your point by adding water. If the sentence starts out talking about your client’s founding (“It was the year 1939…”) and ends with the number of square feet of warehouse space currently under roof, you’ve got too many ideas before the period.
Parentheticals weaken. The problem nowadays with parentheticals (explanatory statements like this one within a sentence) is that there may be no curved lines to mark them. A parenthetical phrase could be bounded by commas, dashes, ellipses, or by no punctuation at all. If you can identify “side-trail” thoughts and break them out into their own sentences, you’ll give more punch to each individual idea.
Multiple parentheticals in the same sentence, and parentheticals within parentheticals, are to be avoided at almost all cost. There's just no way that I’ve found to make them “readable” as a line of the story.
Lists. Lists are not storytelling, no matter how efficient they may be for organizing your material. Sometimes we have to use them, but we should feel a chill as we do so, because we are leaving the fire. Multiple lists, lists-within-lists and parentheticals within lists should be things “up with which we simply will not put.”
Starting from the middle. There is a perfectly good sentence structure that works its way from the middle out. My friend Tom Stephan (who was a real English teacher) tells me that the name for this is the “introductory participial phrase.” Here’s an example: “Feeling somewhat odd that morning, Bob decided to call in sick.” The problem arises when several consecutive sentences have that same structure. Let’s imagine that the story continued like this: “Hearing from coworkers that Bob had been out late the night before, his boss was skeptical of Bob’s claims of illness. But having no proof of the rumors, Mr. Smith let it slide.” If you read those three sentences aloud, you may agree that this is over-use of a good device. It’s easy enough to restructure any such sentence to the more straightforward way: “Bob felt somewhat odd that morning, so he decided to call in sick. His boss was skeptical…”.
Again, the introductory participial phrase is not an “incorrect” sentence structure; but when it’s overused, it can be a tipoff that the writer had better things to do than read his own story.
Get Active, Stay Active
A writer of industrial scripts once told me that he had been taught in school to use passive voice. I didn’t ask him whether his tuition was refunded.
Most of us speak in active voice most of the time. Another way to put that is that it’s the normal way we give and receive instructions. Compare these two examples:
Active voice
“Don’t go into the kitchen; I just mopped.”
Passive voice
“The kitchen should not be entered at this time; the floor has undergone recent mopping by me.”
Active voice is, “Hey you; do this.” You are the actor, moving through the sequence in linear fashion. Passive voice is, “This operation is done by....” It’s more formal, more wordy, less natural, and often less clear.
Active voice humanizes everything: “When you’re ready to make the cookies, begin by assembling your ingredients.” Passive voice makes everything cold, stilted and impersonal: “The cookie-making process is initiated, when desired, by assembly of the necessary ingredients.”
Rewrite – But...
“Great writing is in the rewriting,” as the saying goes. But be careful not to fall into the trap of merely “comma splicing;” adding more thoughts to your existing sentences. Try to use the rewriting process to condense and crystallize your message. Weed out interesting-but-off-topic material.
In Conclusion
Here’s a sneaky trick I’ve used a few times: We’re in a recording session, I’m reading through a long technical narration, and we come to a tangle in the script. The half-dozen people on the other side of the glass start to discuss a rewrite. There are several conflicting ideas and priorities, not to mention the unspoken need to “sound professional” (whatever that means). I take a break, leave the room and let them tug on the knot. After a few minutes I come back in. They’re still pulling that knot tighter. I sit down next to one of them and ask her personally, “What is it you’re trying to say?” She’ll look at me and reply, “We’re trying to say that if you insert tab A into slot B, it will seem to work, but it won’t. It will break later.”
I ask, “Why don’t you just say that?”
Everyone in the room wakes up. “Yeah, what was that you said?” “Remember to add that the coming-apart tendency of index C only applies if proper operating conditions are not adhered-to, as related in subsection 22 of the….” As more ideas are attached like leeches to the main idea, and as people look at pieces of paper instead of each other, writeyness grows. The room gets chilly. The fire has gone out.
So forget that paper and printers exist.
Don’t write. Talk to me.
Tell me a story.
What is it you’re trying to say?
Why don’t you just say that?
And they all lived happily, ever after.
The End.
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As always, if you have any insight or remonstrances, please let me know. Thanks for reading.
Dan
copyright © 2010 Colors Audio
