Posts
Write a better whitepaper in half the time
Good technical articles are difficult to write. They are time consuming, demanding to research, and difficult to organize. But they are valuable weapons in the marketing and public relations arsenal, and you need them.
If you can outsource the item, great. But if you can't, or don't want to, read and apply the following tips to save time and energy on research and writing, and get a much better product.
Get prepared
1. Check your resources: hard copies like books and articles, Internet access, interview contact information.
2. Arrange for interviews if you need them, it always takes time to locate interviewees. Note: If you are writing an article for a company, you may not have an interview after the initial meeting.
3. Make sure you know the following: a) the reader's challenge, b) the key message related to your challenge, and c) the type of reader you are writing to.
4. Understand the main message that the client wants to communicate. Many technologies are similar, but your customer will have a definite bent on their implementation. (If they don't, they should - this is your chance to offer them your strategic messaging services.)
5. Even "vendor neutral" articles are written with a point of view, either from the author or from the company you work for. This is only a problem if the article's bias makes it a misleading article or tells a big lie.
Scheme
6. Never skip this step, for your sake or that of your readers.
7. Organize your research into three topics. Some thematic organizations are obvious; For example, I wrote an article on three steps to optimizing your storage. There probably isn't a right option, so if two or three seem fine to you, pick one and go with it.
8. Do you remember summary lessons from your high school / high school / college? Are applied. If you don't remember your lessons, here is a reminder: I. Introduction (Summarize problem, present solution, state topic) II. Body A. 1st important point B. 2nd important point C. 3rd important point III. Conclusion (brief case study / example, rephrase the solution, final paragraph)
9. Put your sketch on paper and let it guide you as you go. It is not rigid: if a new organization is introduced as you write, you can change it, but do not do it too much or you will defeat the purpose of the outline.
Drafting the draft
10. Here's the key to writing your draft: just do it. Write without thinking. Paste random snippets of text from your research. Write some more. Write in any strange and random order. All you want to do at this point is put large amounts of information on paper.
11. Continue until you have 2-3 times the words you really need, then you can stop.
12. Once you have your mass of information on paper, you can organize it into your outline. It's not a big deal, just cut and paste the paragraphs below the best fitting points.
13. Now that you've slapped all of your preliminary text and researched into your outline, guess what? The draft is done. Congratulate yourself and take a break.
Later drafts
14. Now is the time to shape this rough dough. Start by saving your draft under a different name. You are going to do a lot of deletions at this stage and you don't want to accidentally delete something you intended to use.
15. Working with the new copy, start editing. Paraphrase the notes you have from other sources: memos, product briefs, other articles, brochures. (Journalists do it all the time. It's called "investigation").
16. I often download research online, but mark it in a different color, so as not to make the embarrassing, not to mention illegal, mistake of repeating someone else's writing. When I have learned what I need from the research, I capture the facts in my own words and remove the original notes.
17. Do not repeat the text, that is bad policy and bad writing, but they will not accuse you of plagiarism. Maybe laziness, but not plagiarism.
18. Music can be useful for writing assignments. Personally, I like Vivaldi for the writing and the film scores to review. The whole combo.
19. You may find that dictating works best for you at the draft stage. Probably not the old-fashioned kind, where the inveterate boss called his trusty secretary.za for "Take a memo!" You are more likely to use an app like Naturally Speaking. This type of application needs a lot of training beforehand (the application, not you), but it can be very useful for writers trying to criticize themselves from the start.
Drafting the final draft
20. You have done the draft, the 1st draft and they are in the 2nd draft. You have put everything in your own words and are looking at the structure of your outline. The article starts to sound less like something you will be blamed for and more like something you could actually claim.
21. Edit to improve readability, grammar, and style.
22. Use an active voice in all your writing. The "active voice" is a construction of a sentence in which the subject performs the action of the verb. Don't fall asleep with me, this is important. Example: "The dog bit the child." Fast, active, simple. Here is an example of a passive voice: "The dog bit the child." Oh!
23. Tech writing is full of hideous passive voice constructs. Here's another example from a technology marketing document: "This successful vendor interoperability was demonstrated at the Chicago Summit." Ack! Instead, write: "Vendor teams successfully demonstrated interoperability at the Chicago Summit." See how easy was that? PLEASE use the active voice. Everyone will be much happier.
24. If you don't learn anything else about business writing in all your days of birth, learn to write with an active voice. Attach all your sentences to this simple little exercise and you will improve your writing 100%.
25. Please don't be boring, but don't be too cute. From time to time I will include something funny, mainly because I have a lot of fun, but don't be too friendly.
Final draft
26. You are almost there, you see light at the end of the tunnel and it is not a train. Now is the time to polish your sentence structure and word choice, and mark your paragraphs.
27. Polish your opening paragraphs. Add an agile lead, define what you're talking about and why it's important, and list the three or so points you're going to make.
28. Read your article and make sure you have made those points. If you made an outline, the main points should already be captions. (Do you see why an outline is so good?)
29. Polish your conclusion. The conclusion doesn't have to be timeless prose, but it does reaffirm your points and conclusions.
30. Read one more time for better readability.
31. Run your spelling and grammar check.
32. Save and send, but be careful to send the correct file! I accidentally turned in my draft once instead of the full final one. Fortunately, this was with one of my older clients, so they contacted me and asked for the actual item. A new client would have simply assumed complete incompetence on my part.
33. And for the last tip: everything gets easier with practice. It's also good.