Here’s a rough, on the fly response to this question I received from a colleague and friend recently:
Where do you want to start? Articles? That seems like it might be easier to
get around on, short, one topic, end it.
If you want to start there you could try the basic 5 part essay approach.
This ‘theme’ works in an expanded way so that you could just keep repeating
the process to infinity, adding related ‘5 parts’ till you had a book 🙂
You’ll find this is just like public speaking, when done correctly.
Basics would be:
decide purpose
audience
topic
Then:
1. intro
2.body
Pa. support idea/examples
Pb. support idea/examples
Pc. support idea/examples
3. Conclusion
A little more detail . . .
1. intro: get the readers attention, show them what you’re going to write
about, give background if necessary start general and work your way to the
specifics.
That is, talk about computers used to take up whole buildings, whole floors
of buildings, then one room, then they were in a corner, then they were
desktops, then they were laptops, now they’re implanted under your skin.
Getting attention:
1. questions, open-ended, or you know what the answer will be, yes or no,
Have you ever been stopped by the police in your car? Have you ever been
shopping downtown? kinds of things, pulls them right in, they gotta say yes,
and then wonder what you’re up to, hehheh.
2. tell a story
3. quote somebody
4. background, history
5. statistics (trick with stats is to ‘relate the figures’ ie 430
yards=almost 4 and a half football fields kind of thing)
Giving examples/support: be specific whenever possible
Conclusion: restate your main idea, summarize your points, leave ’em with a
question, or ask them to take action etc
See, you already know that stuff, right?
Want ideas for writing?
Read.
Ask and answer the questions that come to you.
Simple.
Then, check it.
Is the idea you want to write about stated clearly?
Do you have in place an attention getter?
(End the intro with the main idea you want to cover.)
Do you have enough supporting details? Are they specific?
Conclusion? Restated the main points? Left them something to do or to think
about?
Spellcheck it and let it rip 🙂
Check out this article I wrote recently:
http://www.linksnoop.com/article.php?n=904
It’s not exactly this pattern, but you’ll see it fits fairly closely. I
don’t think about that part any more, just do, like my bad golf swing,
hehheh.
Put your character, your voice into it, make it appropriate for the audience
you’re aiming for though, geez, I know you’ve got this stuff from speaking,
just transfer it here 🙂
You can start with brainstorming, free-writing, journaling, mind
mapping/clustering, too to get your ideas down, choose the ones that look
like you’ve got enough info to go on.
I think at our life stage though, that doing the question/response thing to
get ideas down on ‘paper’ is great and effective and efficient (Gary Halbert line stealing there, sorry).
You might also try the hard way 🙂
Get an idea, get your mic, record the stuff, transcribe it, then edit it.
I’ve also done that, a lot before, more for music ideas/song lyrics
‘in-the-flow’ type of writing, but it works either way.
Need more? I skimmed over something? Didn’t make sense?
