Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

How Your Nonprofit Can Listen like Austen, Write like Hemingway

by Leave a Comment

Jane Austen

Listen like Austen

Jane Austen was one of the most beloved authors of the 19th century.  She wrote all her novels by sitting in company and paying attention to what people said.

Her dialogue sparkles: it sounds like real people talking, and with every word, they reveal what they care about and who they are.

Be like Jane Austen. Before you start to write, listen. On social media, in person, every way you can: find out about your audience and what  moves them.

That way, people will want to read your nonprofit’s messages!

Write like Hemingway

Write like Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was one of the most read authors of the 20th century. When he sat down to write, he chopped away adverbs, adjectives, and description. He told the whole story through dialogue and action.

Be like Ernest Hemingway. Whether you’re writing a newsletter, blogging, using social media, or asking for money, be brief. Leave out everything your audience doesn’t care to read. (There’s an app for that!)

Listen like Austen, to catch every detail. Write like Hemingway, to be read.

Good Writing Rules!

by Leave a Comment

Help a thief, or Help, a thief?If you’ve been reading Communicate! for a while, you know I’m not a grammar snob. In fact, my writing online would make my high school English teacher cringe.

Using sentence fragments. And starting sentence with conjunctions.

Repeating words for emphasis, without changing or alternating or varying them or combing through the thesaurus for other options.

Writing one-sentence paragraphs when I really want to make a point.

Why It’s Sometimes OK to Break the Rules

Part of the reason I write this way is that I do most of my writing online. Reading something on a screen is harder than perusing it in print. So, be kind to your reader. When you write for online publication, use shorter sentences and paragraphs, and leave more white space, if you want to be read.

The main reason it’s sometimes OK to break the rules has nothing to do with the medium, however. It’s all about the message. You should write in a way that helps to make your point.

Great writers have always known this. Jane Austen used the passive voice and split infinitives. Ernest Hemingway wrote sentence fragments. Charles Dickens’ sentences went on and on, even though he lampooned German writers for doing the same thing.

And Winston Churchill ended sentences with prepositions (although he probably didn’t say, “This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put”).

But the Rules Are Our Friends

Most of the time, the rules are there to help you. They’re like the street signs and traffic lights when you’re out driving: they make your direction clear to your reader and keep you from smashing into obstacles on the way to your conclusion.

You need to know the rules before you decide that in this case it makes sense to flout them. (And please, know the difference between “flout” and “flaunt”!)

Otherwise, you could end up saying the exact opposite of what you meant to say. Or at best, you could distract readers  from what you meant to say, and have them grinding their teeth about how you said it, instead.

Apostrophes

Thanks to Robert Bruce of 101 Books for inspiring this post.

5 lessons for nonprofits from children’s books

by Leave a Comment

tweener reading

Does your agency tell stories like kids’ and YA books ?

People say there’s a part of me that’s got to be permanently twelve years old. I love children’s books!

In my house, there’s a shelf of them: some picture books, some chapter books, some classics, some translated into Spanish.

And I should probably take them off my taxes as a professional expense.  They have taught me how to write.

What can children’s books and their big cousins, YA fiction, teach us about telling our agencies’ stories?

Five lessons for nonprofits from children’s books

  1. Start with an improbable hero.  Zoom in on one person.  An ordinary person, because our readers need to identify with him or her.  That could be Harry Potter or Halla from Travel Light–or it could be your nonprofit’s client.
  2. Give them a challenge. It’s not a story if nothing’s going wrong. Here’s your chance to show the problem that your client faces (whether it’s poverty, illness, bad schools, or bad air) and make it real to your reader.
  3. Show their character.  When she struggles, your client shows who she really is.  She has no superpowers or magic: only the qualities that make her human.
  4. Give them helpers.  Of course, this includes your organization.  But this is  your golden opportunity to…
  5. Bring the reader into the story.  J.M. Barrie did that overtly in Peter Pan: “If you believe,” he shouted to them, “clap your hands; don’t let Tink die.”  Most bring the reader in more subtly. But if you have ever refused to come in for dinner until you finished a chapter, you know what it feels like to take the hero’s place.

Great writers make us feel that the ending of the story depends on us.

Above all, you want your readers to feel that they are irreplaceable. If they can see their donations as the key thing needed to ensure a happy ending, they will not only give. They will want to give. So much depends upon their heroic action!

When you write newsletters, appeal letters, blog posts–even Facebook posts and tweets–how do you make your supporters into the hero of the story?

Yes, I’d like weekly email from Communicate!

Get more advice

Yes! Please send me tips from Communicate! Consulting.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.