Engineer your message to take people on an enjoyable journey when you communicate.
Starting my weekly newsletter in Jan 2023, I struggled to choose a topic.
Back then I just wanted to at least publish on Saturdays. I put my head down and spent about 8 hours writing each week. I pulled my head up and 52 weeks had passed. By the second year, my process had become second nature.
But I wanted feedback.
I wanted to shrink the time-to-write.
I went out and asked readers.
Now in the third year, I’ve adjusted my process once more. Pushing for more clarity in my message by adopting different personas – planner, writer, editor, and publisher – each day of the week I sit to write.
I realize that communicating what you build is just a process in itself.
But there are certain tricks of the game you learn along the way.
Just write, ain’t it?
“Just write”
That’s what I told people that asked me about how to write. Then, I’d stand back confused as to why they weren’t writing.
It’s easy, right?
Just put pen to paper, fingertips to keyboards, thumb to phone screens. What I missed was that writing does something that a lot of us are not ready for.
It reflects who we are and what we’re capable of.
Most of us don’t want to see who we really are. Perhaps we’d be disappointed in where we are in life, how we think, or even the unconscious bias we have towards others.
So a lot of us live a life unexamined.
Walking through the day, going to work, headbutting bosses and colleagues, watching YouTube shorts until dozing off, waking up tired, just to do it all over again.
The same way we don’t question our reality, we don’t examine the ideas in our minds.
Writing is a tool for mental examination. We don’t do it because it’s immediate that the idea dancing in your head might not be so great.
You write a few sentences and realize, that’s not how you thought about it.
Not logical.
Not coherent.
Definitely, not something to share.
That’s because you think writing is a one-time thing.
Something you show up and do.
I can get you to write. That’s easy. But getting you to write something meaningful. Now, that requires work.
Writing is a process to clarify your thoughts. The quicker you learn how to do it the better our life will be because a lot of your hard work goes unseen when you don’t communicate it properly.
Your red hot greatness is cloaked behind lukewarm communication skills.
Besides keeping your message simple, there are tactics to engineer your words, thoughts, and ideas for impact.
You just need the right principles to make your ideas meaningful.
Engineering Your Message: 3 Steps to Take Readers on a Journey
Two years ago, there was buzz that ChatGPT would replace writers.
Look at where we are now.
A machine can’t think FOR you.
It can think WITH you though.
When you learn the principles of the communication trade, you can clarify your ideas into meaningful nuggets regardless of the tools.
Here are three steps to engineer your message to take your reader on a journey.
1. Wake them up (be active)
Your readers have to be awake to start a journey.
Use an active voice.
Start your sentences with the subject (the person or thing doing something), follow it up with a verb (what’s being done), and finish it up with the object (what’s acted on).
“Toffy sat in his office.”
“I witnessed the vehicle speed through the city.”
“She waited for the bus”
Subjects: Toffy, I, She
Verbs: sat, witnessed, waited.
I know this sounds basic but you’ll be surprised how many people communicate with a passive voice.
An example of passive voice is:
“The speeding vehicle was witnessed by me.”
“The cake was eaten by the children.”
When I wrote the first draft of my first book, PRESS PLAY, and shared it with my beta reading community, one of the main feedback I got was: “use a more active voice.”
In your next email, check what voice you are using.
Your passive voice puts people to sleep.
Your active voice makes your communication direct, clear, and sharp
Wake people up.
2. Zoom them through (use strong verbs):
Your verbs are executors and operators.
They are doers that make things happen.
They are the engine that pulls everything along in your sentences.
When you write, examine your verbs.
Do they capture what you mean?
Can they be more interesting?
Are they being lazy?
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: Ditch the adverbs.
Adverbs are words that qualify verbs. They usually end in “-ly” You can find them hanging around lazily helping out the verb.
For instance: “The boy walked quickly through the woods”
A more interesting way to capture this is: “The boy dashed through the woods”
“She waited eagerly for the change in management”
“She anticipated the change in management”
You can easily go into ChatGPT and type in your verb and adverb “walked quickly” and ask it to suggest a stronger one-word verb “dashed” to get your point across.
That’s how you work with the machine. You feel me, fam!
Let your verbs do the heavy lifting.
Use them to zoom people through your message.
3. Give “time-traveling” shortcuts (use metaphors)
“Time is money, when you talk, better be quick.”
I remember hearing the musician, Mase, say that line on his 1997 Harlem World album back when I was in Ikeja and I was like “oh snap.” I love metaphors in music. However, metaphors are not just a literary device used to sell records, it’s an important tool used by humans to understand the world.
A metaphor is like eggs on a Sunday morning.
It seems like it was meant to be.
It just gets you there.
Metaphors provide mental shortcuts to transfer knowledge. They provide an economy of words.
Converting the unfamiliar to familiar.
Making the uncommon, common.
Giving life to the lifeless.
Our brains seek shortcuts to understand new things, so give your readers shortcuts on their journey. With metaphors, you need a source and target domain. The target domain is unfamiliar and new. The source domain is the concrete thing that is known. These two are joined through motion, location, or spatial-based.
For instance, in regards to life, we use metaphors like:
- I’m on the fast track (Motion)
- I’m at a fork in the road (Location)
- Things are looking up for me (Spatial)
In your day-to-day life, find comparisons. Look at your domain and borrow from others to see how what you do applies.
Do this by using the “A is B” formula.
Time is money
AI is the new electricity
NFT is digital paper
Build your metaphor muscle.
Use metaphors to put people in a state of mind.
Make the journey enjoyable:
Communication doesn’t have to be hard when you learn how to engineer your message.
Break the process and the sentences down to its elements.
Use an active voice to keep people awake, leverage strong verbs to take them on a journey, and provide metaphors that transfer meaning and put them in a state of mind.
Your writing is a journey, make it fun for the traveler.
Best regards,
Nifemi
P.S. If you found this letter useful, can you take 10 seconds and forward this to one friend that you think will find this useful?
