Guide erases the fear of writing

Writing business documents is a lot like ballroom dancing, says the author of The Corporate Storyteller: A Writing Manual and Style Guide for the Brave New Business Leader.

"There's the partner who leads and the partner who . . . not follows, but responds," says Elaine Stirling. "Transpose this to the writer/reader relationship. Every time you write, you initiate. You start a new dance with your partner, the reader. You lead, but the dance needs both of you."

Most business writing is more likely to evoke images of a dull slog than polished shoes tripping merrily over a dance floor, but it doesn't have to be that way says Stirling, a Toronto-area author and consultant specializing in corporate communications who despairs at the empty, vague language that permeates business letters and reports.

She says she used to ask participants in her workshops to name one frustration they encountered in business communication. Answers included unclear messages, aggressive tone, lack of direction, bad spelling, lousy grammar.

Then one day to save time she split participants up into groups and asked them for a collective answer. The one that came back from every table was: fear.

"For years I'd been knocking my head against walls, trying to understand why intelligent, articulate people who know their jobs inside out write like Philistines," Stirling writes. "Fear, of course. Fear shuts down our higher centres and forces us to hide behind bullets, twitter-babble and fonts too small to see."

The fears are myriad: the fear of being noticed, of being heard or read too closely.

Unfortunately, she adds, while words can do a lot of things, they can't hide you and persuade others at the same time.

The Corporate Storyteller is an engaging, easy-to-read look at how to communicate effectively in business. It guides readers through the steps Stirling covers in her workshops. By the end of the book, if readers take her words to heart, they will never again start a business email without thinking about an appropriate subject line, salutation, and I-You-We structure to the message: 1) Why I'm writing this; 2) What you need to know to take action or make a decision; 3) What I need from you and when.

They will be aware of their intentions in writing, know that they are not so much writing letters and reports as establishing relationships between themselves and their readers.

With any luck, they will avoid passive language and cliches from the mid-1800s (e. g., please find attached; further to our discussion) and above all, remember that they're telling stories.

People hunger for stories, it's why commuters will often be seen reading novel, she says.

"I am here to tell you that it absolutely possible to create flow and subtext in your business documents," writes Stirling. "You won't be writing fiction, if that's what you fear, but your writing will magnetize readers as if it were a story."

Source: Vancouver Province
http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/news/working/story.html?id=7b6a1e38-e...