The Plain Words Process

Yesterday afternoon I had the chance to write a summary of a class I've been preparing. The workshop covers a sizable amount of material and one of several challenges is determining what to put in and what to leave out.

So I used a "plain words" strategy.

Each key area was reduced to a description of the items which would have to be covered and the ideas were put in plain words. No jargon. No vague descriptions. It had to be an easily understood summary that I'd use if casually talking to a stranger about the topic. That helped to clarify the patterns beneath the surface so I could spot how one event drew from or fed another. Once that was done, it was easy to make a list of possible slides and then reduce that list to around six essentials.

There has to be some clarity in your own mind before writing the plain word summaries but the process of preparing the summaries also produces clarity. I knew a lot about the topic before writing and much more about what was important once I finished. I'm following the Elmore Leonard technique of eliminating the stuff I'd skip if I were the reader.

It's going to be a great workshop. The subject is still hush-hush. I know of no one else who is doing this. The class is definitely a niche that will be of strong interest to a specific audience. 

I'll pull back the curtain once it's ready to roll. 

In the meantime, the mantra is "plain words."