12 Steps to Hatchet Mastery: Less Detail, More Dialog

Less of just the right detail is more engaging to readers. That works for magazine copy, Web copy, and even proposals.

But in my geeky love for technical prowess and quotable professionals, I once was guilty of being too, um, prolific.

I wrote my first cover story for a trade magazine with an amber-on-black Tandy Radio Shack word processor, aptly dubbed the TRaSh-80. My ambitious draft was 24 screens of helpful detail and quotable quotes. My editor (Bless you, Blake!) said, “Cut it down to eight.”

It was painful, but I did it. I continued to hatchet down my own and others’ articles for years. I made “proof pages” bloody with red ink.

In celebration of Halloween, here are my 12 tips for hatchet mastery:

1. Inverted Pyramid. Don’t bury the lead. Get to the point. Start with the crucial conclusion you want readers to take away, and sequence supporting details in order of their importance or relevance to the target audience. Fairly quickly, you’ll be able to cut the chaff.
2. Raise questions. Leave some things unanswered. You don’t have to answer them all right now. That’s for you to do later in dialog/commentary, or for your sponsors and advertisers to do as they build the relationship, or in a follow-up story.
3. One-Time Only. In some circles, they teach you to tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, then tell ‘em, then tell ‘em what you told ‘em. That works in speech and academic print publishing, but it won’t work in magazines or Web content. Just pick the best way to say it once with your key words. Save the lesser gems to polish for a future article.
4. Select the Best Example. If you’re teaching or training, it’s a good idea to provide multiple examples. It gives your audience mental hooks to connect with you and learn new knowledge. Save such elaboration for the classroom or Webinar. Pick one example that shows off expert credibility, newsworthy timeliness, a picturesque analogy, or the audience’s deep-seated pain.
5. Trade up for a Picture Worth a Thousand Words. Sometimes when you want to describe a thing, a whole and its parts, a process with inputs/outputs, the flow of a procedure, or an abstract concept, it’s better to illustrate it, which provides visual interest editors and visitors love. If you or your artist design the figure, chart, or photo well enough, you don’t have to reiterate much in the copy. I like short highlights followed by, “as shown at right” or “as shown in the figure below” — or even no reference at all. If it’s shown nearby, they’ll get it.
6. Replace Lengthy Transitions with Brief Bold Subheads. Breaking up long grey columns of text with subheads shows off your organization, and helps the reader scan for what they want to know.
7. Change Passive to Active Voice. When you clearly identify the actor and use active verbs, you can avoid the foggy rigmarole of “The prize was awarded to him by the so-called committee” in favor of  “He won the Nobel prize” — eliminating several words in the process!
8. Shorten Sentences. Split up convoluted or compound sentences, simplifying statements to subject and verb when you can. Sometimes you can cut out “that” and “which” in subordinate clauses, as well as wordy correlative or subordinating conjunctions.
9. Effusively Cut Adverbs and Fluffy Adjectives and strings of Prepositional Phrases. Do you really need to specify exactly where, when, how, why, which, and to what extent in every sentence? In some cases, that detail is superfluous or redundant.
10. Bullet Lists. Sometimes you can get the point across with lists of things or short phrases instead of complete sentences.
11. Fewer Syllables. “Utilize” is rarely better than good ol’ simple “use.” Try Thesaurus.com.
12. Cut Articles Before Nouns. Unless you must specify which one, see how many instances of “a”, “an”,  “the”, “some”, and so on you can eliminate. Switching to plural may help. You may be surprised how many nouns can stand alone.

These 12 Steps of Wordyholism ensure your copy fills your readership’s expectation for substance, yet whispers a promise of more detail available from you, your dear sponsors, or your lifeblood advertisers.

Rather than lull them to sleep and inaction with lengthy essays, keep it short and succinct (KISS). You will simply spur your reader to imagine possibilities and wonderful questions…Lead them to quickly action, and increase the dialog between you, your readers, and your sponsors.

get published in business, trade, or industry magazines

Can you can write? Do you have some interests and passions that you can work up into articles of various lengths? If you have something to say worth reading about trends in your industry, you can probably get published.

What trade or industry magazines do you read now? Nestled among their list of editors’ names and advertising sales contacts, each magazine usually has an editorial calendar and an authors’ or writers’ guidelines for submitting article ideas. Some of this information may actually be in the Advertising section of the magazine’s Web site, but as you research your target publication, it will be useful to determine if you can write to fill their needs.

As a former trade rag editor, I know that all editors love useful content that meets their guidelines. Call up the editor of a magazine you’re reading, tell ‘em you’re a big fan, and offer to write up something to fill the gaps in their editorial calendar, or contribute a sidebar or viewpoint opposing what they already have slated.

If you can come up with highly readable tips, guidelines, research statistics, book reviews, and analysis of current trends or events (for example, in business, mergers & acquisitions, international investments, and so on), you’re more likely to be paid.

Of course, some business magazines already have interns and editorial advisory board members who provide or review much of the content. But if you can write better than they can, and pass the gatekeepers, you’ll do fine!