December 14, 2023
Ever notice that the more expensive a hair care product is, the harder it is to find the text that describes exactly what it is? As if putting the word Shampoo in clear text is better left as a mystery? That somehow the copywriter is exercising their innermost mystery dramatist’s desires. Other examples of frustrated storytellers can be found on medication packaging, where the only detail we need to know is what is it and how much do we take? That’s it! Instead, the relief-seeking patient finds medically verbose War & Peace laid out in microscopic text, while nursing the double vision of a migraine. But perhaps the most egregious pontificating has to be online recipes. Seriously! All I wanted was a new mashed potato recipe, and what I found is an overzealous scribe’s outlet for literary attention to the tune of a 4 webpage loquacious origin story for mashed potatoes. It really is quite astonishing that these examples all fail at the basics.
Know your audience – Know what you are selling – Cut to the chase.
So what does this have to do with @entrepreneurialism? I’m selling a masterpiece, not shampoo…Or are you? If you’re losing interest because you think I am just another bloviating pontificator, can I be so arrogant as to suggest reading that first paragraph again, but apply it to what you are doing, selling, trying to accomplish? Bottom line: What is your story? What are you trying to accomplish? Are you clearly communicating it
Perhaps we are afraid to sound pedestrian, and by adding extraneous detail like Tolkien or tangents like King, we will project intellect. However, if you’re a @screenwriter or @entrepreneur, your goal and your ideas need to be focused, short, sweet, and to the point.
The Anecdotal Denouement: A short time ago, something changed in my own writing style, that of crafting the text required to tell the story in the most effective and creative way possible. It began in my screenwriting, addressing tense, with what I dubbed, immediate tense. Screenwriting is not present tense; in a movie, as in a screenplay, everything happens now, not 1 second into the past or the future. It happens NOW. It makes no difference if it’s present time, a flash forward, or a flashback; no one starts to walk, no one begins to laugh, no one almost does something or anything in a movie. It all unravels as fast as we see it. This concept led me to rewrite several scripts, which, when I finished them, read less like a jog and more like a sprint. Add to this tense adjustment came the use of as few words as possible to say the same thing, and that is when editing and writing really became fun. I have since been applying this process and continuing to learn it in all that I write, hopefully I have achieved some bit of success here.
If you are curious to read any of my scripts for example, please feel free to ask.