Deriving Clarity From The First Draft

Deriving Clarity From The First Draft

As part of my book publishing journey, I’m working with an editor. It’s a humbling experience to say the least. I’ve worked through my fears of publishing small articles and blog posts, but my first attempt at holding a narrative together for 35,000-40,000 words is daunting.

I’ll spare you the details of my first edit, but there is a lesson learned that I’m going to pass on to you. Strive for Clarity.

I used to work with a wonderful gentleman and he was always encouraging me to “Strive for clarity, Gregory. Strive for clarity.” It’s a process that I use when we are working toward an innovation that will lead to a burst of activity. The writing of copy usually starts with a giant list of features, we narrow that to 3 or 4 and then we write the copy.

What this editor  reminded me of in my book edit is the same thing that I work with my copywriters on.

Strive for clarity.

We’re doing our readers a favor by communicating clearly, but there’s so much to say, right? That’s why we need to introduce a single idea at a time. Let’s jump into an example.

I’ve been in a joint venture experiment where we packaged a series of “lunch and learns” we did for an inside sales group into a stand alone product. Looking at the sales page, we have a long list of features including:

• Go at your own pace
• short, bite-sized lessons
• single topic lessons
• 52+ lessons
• tablet optimized
• real world examples
• proven strategies
• downloadable resources
• special pricing

If I were talking to my old mentor, he would say something like, “That’s a lot. . .but to be clear, what’s the most important idea you want to convey?” I’d push back saying something about not knowing for sure what each person’s motivation is or not wanting to shoot a bullet until I saw the target, etc. etc.  Eventually doing nothing.

Today, I’d try to narrow it down. Do a little testing to see which idea had the most pop from people in the target market because what I am finding is that a single, clearly communicated concept is much more powerful than even a small list of 3 concepts that the user grasps 2/3  of.

It takes guts to derive clarity and only cover one concept at a time, but if we’re viewing communication as a process and not an event, ensuring that our users understand a key concept before moving on makes our communication all the more powerful.

Good stuff.