Strategic “whats” to stories for human beings

Stuck in your writing with writer’s block or inhuman reports? Start verbing over nouns for how-filled stories instead of statements.

What? Happened?

Sometimes we already know what we want to say, but we don’t say it in a way that people want or need to hear. Guess what I learned last week from a startup’s strategy-to-proposal session and botching public speaking points for a TEDX event? To start, it’s a phenomenon in what vs. how to move from nouns to verbs.

My coworker and I ran into the same problem: we’d start writing in “strategic whats”—true and well researched statements that were core to what we do—and then get stuck because we realized there was no way we could engage an every day person with plain English to carry our vivid story in pitches and proposals.

Later in the week as I refined and practiced my talking points for TEDX UM-Dearborn with friends, I found myself in the same trap: my outline, full of nouns, had plenty of descriptive content. Yet most of it was not what I could read and quickly translate to a person on the street or a public audience.

Verbing to Escape Writer’s Block

From getting stuck with writing or realizing I’m about to “bomb” the lines of a speech, I realized it was the same kind of sensation I occasionally got from writer’s block in my college career. I vividly recall feeling disheartened in my composition classes. I’d stare at pages of my own writing without knowing what to do next short of starting over to move the reader forward.

At the same time, I knew I had something important to say even if I didn’t know how. As I started working as a writing consultant, I realized everyone has something they can say when prompted with good questions or another set of eyes.

Engaging stories are an obvious and desirable outcome. But it’s rare to recognize when mental blocks get in the way of creating a good story and why the mental block happens until it already appears. So here’s my answer to the question “how can you intervene with writer’s block?” Use verbs right away.

Turn the focus of a sentence from nouns to verbs. If you will, start “verbing”. Take the reader’s attention from seeing “what it is” to moving them with “what we’re doing”.

I’m not the only person who’d recommend verbing your stuff either. Simon Simek thinks along similar lines too. He advocates that we use verbs to craft strategy too.
While I’m not new to making sure powerful verbs have presence when writing strategy, it’s the first time I’ve made the connection to my life’s other writing/speaking endeavors. Punctuation aside, our habits of grammar speak deeply to the way we think. Grammar rules govern the way we organize ideas, and we have our own tendencies. I suspect it’s more likely that grammatical devices are among the last thing we pay attention to as we write. Hopefully, paying attention to verbs is a tactic for the someone searching for another way to examine what they write.

That’s all I wanted to say about verbing. For what specifically brought me to the above conclusions, I’ll point to the startup and my talk on privilege/environmental justice.

Backstories

The startup’s services I’m working with essentially does two things.
1) Create marketable media around supply chains
2) Facilitate sustainability challenges to classrooms to ignite youth initiatives and deliver diverse insights

In writing something akin to the sales pitch though, it felt like I wrote a research paper. I pointed to visionary statistics that prove diversity for decision making and that youth are great for making fantastic changes in the world. For my co-worker, she sought to make an inspiring case-study about previous work with a vibrant school before she thought it turned into a flat statement about what happened.

In both our cases we had plenty of good information about what we use and do to provide value to our prospective client and the world. But without stepping into the how or why, we realized there was little to stir a reader past the facts to engage our services.

The “speech” at TEDX UMDearborn:

I was actually there for a performance, but prepared both a presentation to introduce the performance.

Literally, physically, this involved coordinating inspiration: I paced the audience’s breathing with my own (admittedly sometimes erratic!) breathing, which set the pace for the music.

Intellectually, there were three ideas I wanted to convey, so imagine telling a story based on the the following concepts:

1. Privilege of presence for inspired recreational learning and “entertainment”
2. Air quality as privilege and right exercised in the literal act of inspiration & respiration
3. Responsibilities coupled with inspired privilege

What brings the above points together? Inspiration. Breathing. Where we were, what we were privileged to do, and what I think all attendees should recognize we share: the privilege and opportunity to inspire as individuals and a community. But that’s for another post…

Now, dear reader, tell a compelling story about those three points to the nearest person! Okay, you don’t have to but if you attempted, kudos. Did you feel like you were caught off guard with insufficient context? Didn’t know where to start or why?
That’s how I felt too, though I already internalized a lot more information related to those items. It’s a moment of writer’s block for speech. I’ll share the actual and ideal narratives another time (I did prepare more than three bullet points).

Fortunately I (first) discovered it that moment as I practiced it in front of an informal audience and substantiated two of the three items above in advance. However, under duress, making an explicit connection about air quality and breathing fell by the wayside as yet to translate the statement from bullet point to story by the day of the event.