TOP 10 SECRET TIPS:
6. WRITE ON TOPICS ABOUT WHICH YOU ARE PASSIONATE (continued)
Back in Your Heartland: Where’s your heart? This is not about your content knowledge. We’re back to the heart again. Your whole heart should be engaged in your writing. Half-, third-, or quarter-hearted writing is not enough. It’s either all or nothing. Pour yourself into your writing. It should be a fully immersive experience. Allow your readers to feel your spirit of passion about your contribution, whether it’s a tweet, comment on a discussion, response on Facebook, or a scientific breakthrough for a cure for stupid reality TV programs about spoiled, immature celebrities. You may start with the content, but as you revise and edit each draft, make it sneakily engrossing and captivating for your readers.
(Up Close & Personal: Every e-mail, LinkedIn message, PowerPoint presentation, blog, article, and book I write begins with the substance—the serious content. That’s the most important element to be communicated---the “WHAT.” Then I shift gears into the “HOW.”
Once I’m tentatively satisfied with the content draft, I scan line by line and read the words as a reader would, to search for places to add humor or spin some of the material with rewording to make it fun or more interesting. I assume every paragraph to be boring for my readers. I use this same strategy with every PowerPoint slide in my presentations.
The challenge is to create appropriate humor, visual metaphors, and popular cultural references to grab and maintain the readers’ attention. It’s an unending process of revision, especially in my articles, books, and PowerPoints. The more deadly serious and boring the content, the more turbo-charged I am to humorize that material. That’s how I brand my writing. It’s the art of writing for me and what I love the most. I’m never satisfied that I’ve done enough to make it interesting and funny.)
My next blog will present Tip 5: examine how a mentor or coach in your writing life can provide mighty wise counsel and poke you in the eyeballs (like the 3 Stooges) or kick you in the shins along your writing journey.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
Once you’ve written a bunch of articles on one major topic, think about how you can convert them into book chapters. Where do you begin editing? What will change in your chapter versions? First, let’s examine the differences between articles and book chapters. Here is a trifecta of factors:
1. Target readership, audience, or niche: Their interests and sizes differ. In general, the journal’s readership is often narrower than the audience for your book, especially on research topics. It will also be considerably smaller. Your chapter should aim at a readership size larger than your family and at least equal to or greater than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. You need a large pool of people who will buy your book. Otherwise, your annual royalty will not even fill your gas-guzzling SUV once.
2. Writing style: The scholarly, serious, stuffy, academic style of most journals requires that you stay on the straight and narrow writing path; your chapter style can be the same or considerably different, depending again on your readership. The book is yours; the article is the editor’s. BIG DIFFERENCE. You can increase interest in “serious” content by adding graphics, cartoons, famous quotes, pictures, and maybe even humor. This is YOUR baby. Make it yours by using your imagination, creativity, and God-given writing gifts.
(Personal Note #1: My first 8 books followed the traditional route; the last 5 smashed that mold with humor. Inserting humor into any book can be risky. Almost all books, even those on humor and stand-up comedy, are written seriously. I used humor in my book on faculty evaluation strategies (Thirteen Strategies to Measure College Teaching), which included chapters on the research literature on each strategy, scale construction, statistical item analysis, score interpretation, and other heavy-duty topics. This book also cited 550 references. Early reviews of the book manuscript were very negative, not because of the content, but because of the humor. It was considered inappropriate for a topic so important and serious to administrators and faculty. Since there were other serious books on scale construction and evaluation methods, why should anyone bother to read my book? I needed to address the three topic criteria described in the last 2 blogs. The content had to be structured differently from previous works and the writing style needed to be more user-friendly, especially on technical topics. I took my lumps and early rejections and decided to make the book mine. I wanted a funny section on “factor analysis” that everyone might understand and enjoy reading. End of Bloated Note.)
3. Length: Articles have maximum length requirements; chapters do not, within reason. Chapters provide a lot more flexibility to add material such as the above. (Secret Writing Strategy: I ALWAYS write the serious content for an article or chapter first. Once the meat is complete, which is usually adequate for journal submission, I go back and look for opportunities to add humor or visuals to the chapter version. The humor in my chapters is an add-on to the content. It may be used to exaggerate or amplify specific concepts, theories, or processes or to bring to life really deadly, boring material. That will increase the length of the chapter. End of Secret Kinda Note.)
Consider the preceding trifecta of factors as you review your articles. Who is going to buy your book? What will distinguish it from all other books on the topic? What writing style are you going to use? What additions to the article will make it more interesting or palatable to your readers?
To those of you who are writers, please let me know any suggestions I’ve missed or what you have found useful. As writers in academe or out, we could use all of the help available. Our careers are on the line. Other techniques will follow in future blogs.
The next blog will deal with assembling your "chapter-articles" into a book.
COPYRIGHT © 2009 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
