Writing lessons learned while riding my bike
Never forget the WWWWW
I was cycling down a busy thoroughfare recently when I saw something that filled my heart with joy and consumerist lust - a garage sale sign. Now, I love a garage sale, I love to rifle through your stuff and buy your dirty old mugs for fifty cents each, I am sick for it. But my excitement quickly turned to frustration when I looked closer and realised the pink cardboard poster, taped to a telephone pole, read 'Garage sale' with a vague arrow. The sign had no details, no address, no date, no time. I knew the garage sale probably wasn't on today as it was a Tuesday morning, rainy, and the sign looked old. But as I rode off, muttering under my breath about getting people all riled up for a garage sale, I remembered I did the same thing the last time I had a garage sale. Whoops.
I was too frustrated to get a picture of the sign I saw but it looked sort of like this, you get the idea.
These common omissions are simply explained by human error - you're writing the sign for yourself, you assume the details are self-evident, you don't write signs that often, you're excited and busy and you forget the who, what, when, where, and why and instead focus on adding glitter to your poster.
This is an extreme example of assumed knowledge. It's not often you have to convey a complete set of information to an audience who knows absolutely nothing. When writing, whether it’s a poster or an email, try to include the five Ws so that people have the information they need to either a) go to your garage sale and buy your old humidifier or b) disregard your sign and be on their way down the bike path.
Always include a call to action
One of the biggest mistakes we make when writing is not telling the audience what's next. A call to action (CTA) is the most crucial piece of information in any email, blog, post, carrier pigeon, or billboard.
On the same bike path, on a different day, someone wrote "Save the native forests, protect the environment" on the ground in chalk. It was written in big letters in the north of Melbourne, a demographically-appropriate context populated by people who probably do want to save the native forests. It was succinct and compelling and a little mysterious. But ... where do I go to save the forests and protect the environment? There was no website, no rally to attend. Momentum was built and left to dissipate. Never forget the CTA and always give your audience somewhere to put their momentum.
Don’t neglect the context
When I imagine you reading this, I picture you rosy-cheeked and reclining on a pastel lounge in an English manor, wearing a puffy gown like Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice (the BBC version, NOT the Kiera Knightly version), sipping tea from delicate china cup while you open the wax seal and read my missive with hungry eyes. This is what I imagine.
More likely, you're all on the toilet or waiting in line for the checkout wearing Crocs or on a train looking intently at your phone so you avoid eye contact with the smelly creep sitting across from you. That is to say, context is everything when putting out communications. The context usually encompasses things other than the words themselves - things like the size of the words, the format of the email/sticker/billboard, the design of the words and what the reader will be doing when reading the words.
Try reading this while barely keeping control of your handle bars as you whizz down the pot-holey part of St George’s Road bike path.
I passed these stickers while riding on a bike path. They’re promoting an out-of-town cycling challenge (I think, I don't know because no thank you). It's a pretty creative marketing ploy but there's one problem - cyclists are zooming down the bike pathway too quickly to read the details. I could read “Escape the city” and that was all, without stopping my bike and huffing back to the sticker to read the rest. The text and sticker both need to be bigger and the 'what' and 'when' clearer. Remember to think about where and how your message is being received and tailor your message to the context.
TL;DR? Don’t forget the five Ws of details; always include a CTA; never neglect the context.