Changing Words

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the way the art of writing is likely to change the more we move towards multiplatform content.

It’s almost the opposite of that early naughties buzz word ‘convergence’ in that, instead of every task being available from a single device, all content is available for multiple devices.

Instead of writing an article specifically for a website, print or D-Sat, you now write … well an article, an article that can comfortably appear on any available platform.

Lets take the case of a newspaper that has made itself available on the web, D-Sat, mobile phones and in podcast form we’ll call it the Daily Spread.

A journalist for the Daily Spread sits down to write a story about a dog being stuck up a tree, he (the journalist) gives the story to his editor, the editor turns round and says “this won’t work for the web, re-write it with shorter paragraphs”.

So the journalist goes back and does a re-write sticking to the ‘one point per para’ rule so that it can be read easily on screen.

He gives it back to his editor who says “this won’t work on mobile phone; you need to change it so that everything is said in the first two paragraphs”.

So the journalist goes back and re-writes the article, still sticking to ‘one point per para’ but also makes sure it ticks the ‘everything at the start’ rule for mobile phones.

He goes to the editor and by this stage our journalist is getting pretty pissed off, the editor says “it isn’t human enough, it won’t work if heard”.

So the journo goes back to his computer, makes sure it sticks to the ‘one point per para’ and ‘everything at the start’ rules while re-writing it to make it listen to able - so that a voice artist can just read it straight out for a podcast.

He takes it to the editor who is now happy.

That final version works well for the web, print, mobile phone and to be read for podcast for a number of reasons, mainly because if you write for the simplest service (mobile) you’re writing plain, easy to read English by default - which can only be good.

By writing in what I think of as ‘down the pub’ style or a style that is easily skimmed, friendly, human and gives you the gist of the story as quickly as possible, you keep people’s attention for much longer.

The reason you keep people’s attention longer is mainly because you’re not asking them to work to hard when reading your content, they then feel more comfortable, less tired and able to read more of your content more often.

So basically make sure your article tells the gist of the story in the first two or three paragraphs, keep your paragraphs short, ideally no more than one point per paragraph (aprox 2 or 3 lines) and keep your article human, write in a friendly, chatty style, make the reader feel like you’re talking directly to them.

To be hones the podcast and mobile edits should be completely un-necessary as your web article should already have told the story in the first few paragraphs (expanding the detail further down) and should definitely be written as humanly as possible.

Reading from a website is much more intimate then reading from a newspaper so your writing style should be much friendlier, direct and well chatty - have a conversation with your reader.

By following those final two points (human and story at start) you should have automatically written something that could comfortably be read for podcast.

Oh and try to keep it under 1000 words if you actually want people to read the whole thing on screen – otherwise make a printable version link available.

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