1 / 17

Crafting Compelling Documents: From Chaos to Clarity

Learn the essential steps in planning and writing a document. Develop ideas, collect information, focus on the topic, and organize your content. Discover tips for crafting effective elevator pitches and refining your writing to engage your audience. Enhance your document creation process with practical strategies and techniques.

tyme
Download Presentation

Crafting Compelling Documents: From Chaos to Clarity

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Planning your document Starting from a pile of disorganized information

  2. Steps in writing a document • Develop ideas • Collect the information • Focus the topic – what is it about? • Organize the information • Write a draft • Rewrite the draft

  3. 1 Develop story ideas • What interesting things have happened in your project? • What problems do people in your area face? • What topics interest your audience? • What topic is in the news now? • What issue does your organization want to focus on? • What new things do you have to say?

  4. 2 Collect information • Read what has already been written • Ask questions • Observe • Soak up information like a sponge • Make notes • Think of interesting angles while you are gathering information

  5. 3 Focus the topic • What am I trying to say? • Discuss the subject with someone • Tell him/her a story • Explain what happened • Give only the information the listener needs to understand

  6. The elevator pitch • Imagine you are in a lift with Bill Gates • What would you tell him about your project? • What is the most important thing to say? • You have 2 minutes! • Used with investors

  7. Nine Cs of an effective elevator pitch • Concise As few words as possible, but no fewer • Clear Your grandparents can understand it • Compelling Explains the problem • Credible Explains how you solved the problem • Conceptual Not unnecessary detail • Concrete Specific and tangible • Customized Addresses audience’s interests • Consistent Same basic message • Conversational Not complete, but aims to interest audience in more information

  8. 4 Organize the information

  9. 4 Organize the information • What is the story about? • Main idea to which all other ideas relate

  10. What we want to end up with • A carefully constructed story with evidence supporting our main idea Lead Focus Evidence

  11. 4 Organize the information • Make a short list of 7-8 categories your information falls into • Eg, Situation, Problem, Production, Intervention, Results, Solution • Label your notes with these categories • Sort the notes according to category • Sort the categories into a logical order

  12. 5 Write! • Four ways to start • Write a summary sentence • Write some possible leads • Write an ending • Write without notes • Don’t • Start off with a 100-page report and try to edit it down to 3 pages

  13. 5 Write • Focus • What is the story about? • Organization • What information is included? • How is it presented?

  14. 6 Rewrite • When you have finished writing • Have you said it well enough? • Reread what you have written • Is it in the right order? • Is it interesting? Does it grab the reader’s attention? • Does it say anything new or useful?

  15. When you have finished writing • Ask someone else to read it • Ask them to be critical of the structure, organization, logical flow • Ask them if the piece is interesting, easy to read • Ask them what they learned after reading

  16. Now develop your own story idea • What interesting thing has happened in your project? • What problem do people in your area face? • What topic interests your audience? • What topic is in the news now? • What issue does your organization want to focus on? • What new thing do you have to say?

  17. More information • BBC SXSW (click on the video) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7947729.stm • Youtubewww.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq0tan49rmc • O’Leary: Elevator Pitch Essentials

More Related