Reflections on Writing in A Networked World

After 15 weeks, you have had a chance to study and apply different lessons on what it  means to be a writer in the 21st century. In an in-depth comment, reflect on what you’ve learned and what you plan to take away from this class as you go forth as a writer in a networked world.

Rip: A remix manifesto

Rip: A remix manifesto is a documentary that focuses on the issue of copyright.   Not only is copyright an issue throughout the music industry but it is an issue in almost every aspect.  Artists are constantly inspired by other artists and previous works of art.  Writers, film producers and directors, musicians, artists, etc. all have issues with copyright.

Although copyright is a serious issue, different areas cannot progress without the influence of past artists and writers in that field.  Some of the greatest songs in history are either remakes or various mash ups of other songs, especially in the rap business.  Numerous rappers including Jay Z, Cam’ron and many other very successful rappers include clips from other people’s songs as an introduction to their song while mixing clips into their raps.  This is not them stealing another song; this is considered a mash-up, similar to what the artist Girl Talk is all about. 

And, in writing many different authors emulate other authors; this is what has created specific genres.   Without the influence of other people and artists, I do not think it is possible for a specific area to further progress.

I Love it When You Talk Nerdy to Me

What does the title have to do with anything?  Not much.  It’s just unexpected, simple and concrete — concepts the Heath brothers have hammered into the minds of future “stickers” (people who want to make ideas stick).  This chapter recaps what we have learned about making ideas sticky:  simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and stories.  Again, the authors excelled — went above and beyond — to make sure readers would not forget these concepts.  Once again, the principles to make ideas sticky are:  simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and stories.  Don’t forget those techniques, or the Heath brothers will remind you.

The authors also focus on implementing ‘strategy’ and the barriers of stickiness.  From a writing perspective:  in order for your writing strategies to be effective and revered by your audience, both parties must be on the ‘same page.’  This simply means, as a writer, you must not fall into the quagmire known as the Curse of Knowledge and present your message in a manner that ANY reader could spout off to another person.  Keep in mind, though, your strategy must be one that stimulates action; otherwise, your writing is subsequently coined Academic.  In the real world, readers don’t want a deluge of facts.  They want methods that are easy for them to absorb and squeeze back out for their own use.  The barriers, as we already know, are the Curse of Knowledge, Decision Paralysis and the Lack of a Common Language.  These can be avoided by simply being simple and concretely being concrete. AND sticking to the core.

One topic of this chapter that has not been extensively highlighted is how to make an idea “unsticky” — such as a rumor.  Basically, you can’t make an idea unstick.  Your idea will always carry with it an adhesive quality, but you can attempt to make it stickier.  Find a more catching phrase that readers will cling on to, as opposed to your original idea.  Or you can just wait it out until another, more sticky, idead comes along.   i.e. Paris Hilton.  She has a rep. but it’s been slightly shadowed by Lindsay Lohan.

Sidenote:  Here is a tribute to the Heath brothers for their final chapter of the book

                                                           

        

Keeping the Core

 

 

As Heath & Heath stated, some ideas are inevitably going to be misconstrued for various reasons, most of which will likely be different interpretations. However, different perspectives and interpretations of ideas are not necessarily a bad thing; they often improve the meaning and/or outcome of an original idea or message, like they revealed with their several examples, including the Sherlock Holmes one. (Hence the photo located above displaying the two extremely yummy men that I got to watch in the movie last night)

Take, for instance, the ideas in Made to Stick. Sure, the ideas are seemingly direct and concrete to each individual, but each individual can interpret and use the ideas differently.  As long as the core message is being spotted by others with the use of “Core Idea Glasses”, the message has the potential to shape into a beneficial outcome for those who spot it.

^(Core Idea Glasses)

 

We even saw how the other 5 guidelines (Pay Attention, Understand and Remember, Agree/Believe, Care, Be able to Act) correlated with the brothers’ guidelines, due to their interpretation of them. In different contexts, these different interpretations will work more so than the others, which is why interpretations are not only inevitable, but also helpful in many cases.

As we have learned in this class, once you hit the send button on your message, you have no control over future interpretation of it, or how it may or may not be used. People will view your message according to their own perspective, and they will react to it based on that perspective. All that we can do, as writers, is make sure that we follow the guidelines in these books to create a firm message that is more likely to be digested and/or used in the way that we wish for it to be.

Story Time

Let’s imagine for a second that you are trying to tell people that they should plan ahead before taking road trips. Consider these two options:

1. When planning for a road trip, you should always take into account weather conditions, length of the drive, possible traffic problems and what kind of equipment you may need. Without considering these variables, you may find yourself in a bad situation. Even if you have made the trip before, you should plan ahead.

2. Last weekend, I had to drive from Greenville to Wilmington, a trip I had made plenty of times before, in order to take an exam. My windshield wipers were broken, and a thunderstorm was on its way. So, I decided to wait until 5:00 Monday morning to make the trip. The thunderstorm actually started at 4:30 a.m. By five I was standing in the rain and lightning holding a metal flashlight while my annoyed father put on the new windshield wipers I hadn’t thought I would need. By 5:20 I was on the road, late. The highways were flooded and cars were skidding on the puddles. Traffic slowed to a crawl. By the time I made it to my exam, I was twenty minutes late. Obviously, I should have planned that trip better in advance.

Although the second option is longer, it more effectively illustrates why someone should plan ahead. That is because it is a story.

People naturally tell stories. But why? Why is it so effective? Storytelling works because it can  incorporate everything we have talked about so far: concrete details, an emotional connection, credibility (if it’s a true story), and unexpectedness. If you find that your writing is flat, add a story or testimonial.

Knowing Your Audience

In chapter 4 the Heath brothers write about credibility, the second C in their SUCCESs formula. We’ve been learning to rely on credibility in our writing as long as we’ve been learning to write argumentatively. The chapter goes to considerable lengths to analyze a multitude of strategies for building subjective credibility, and each strategy has strengths and weaknesses in different situations. When we’re trying to promote our ideas it’s important to know our audience and know how to appeal to its particular sense of credibility. This is what the Heath brothers were trying to get at, and it reinforces the importance of the relationship between writer and audience.

The examples do a good job of illustrating another important point of consideration. When giving support for our claim, we need to frame the information in a way our audience is more likely to understand and accept. In the “beyond war” example, BBs crashing into a metal bucket is easier for a suburban middle-aged couple to understand than the abstract concept of nuclear proliferation. In the Snapple example, once the claim that Snapple supports the KKK has been made it’s easier to digest the notion that a ship is a slave ship.

If anything, this chapter confirms the importance of knowing your audience, because when you know your audience you can learn how best to emphasize your credibility.

Sticky Concrete Ahead

Ewww

Chapter 3 of Made to Stick discusses the concept of concreteness.  Heath and Heath argue that a message needs to be real, tangible and sometimes even literally touchable to be perceived and remembered by an audience.  They draw on several examples to formulate this concept: a teacher’s lesson plan that made kids feel the effects of prejudice, rather than learn an abstract definition of it; a manufacturing firm whose engineers and manufacturers couldn’t communicate properly; and an ill-prepared entrepreneur who bs-ed his way to a $4.5 million backing for interactive tablets with nothing more than a leather folder turned concrete model.

Knowledge, according to the bothers, can be a curse.  It can turn good ideas into abstract lumps of non-sticky substance.  Finding the core meaning to an idea then making it real for an audience is what helps adhesiveness.  I think this is where multimedia comes into play with our online writing.  Since Web 2.0, we have the unique rhetorical advantage of being able to include pictures, videos, sound bites and, who knows, maybe one day smells (scratch here) to our online writing.   Multimedia can help make our writing much more concrete to an audience by calling on devices that show rather than tell.  And people love to be shown.

Adding a clip of the video that bothered you so much that you had to rant about it on your blog is going to help people understand why you think Tom Cruise is a psycho.  Linking to a news article about Bill O’Reilly’s racist remarks is going to give your audience an example of what you mean when you say he’s a horses ass.  Engage the audience with all sorts of concreteness through multimedia to drive your point home.  Like a leather folder standing in for the concept of a smart tablet can get some company execs talking, I propose that multimedia elements standing in for the concept of our written work can get our messages to stick that much more.

Unexpected

In chapter 2 of Heath & Heath’s book Made to Stick, the two authors focus on the importance of the unexpected.  They explain that one of the main challenges in attempting to grab the attention of an audience is making the message stick and remain memorable.   The chapter focuses on two essential questions: How do I get people’s attention? And, How do I keep it?

The “unexpected” approach is applicable when looking at the prime example of flight attendants who have to make flight safety announcements.  “Flight-safety announcements might be labeled as a touch message environment.  No one cares about what’s being communicated.  The flight attendant doesn’t care.  The passengers don’t care” (Heath & Heath 63).  How is a flight attendant supposed to tell passengers what to do in case of an emergency when the passengers already think they know what to do?  Although we have all heard this speech every time we have prepared for takeoff, would you really know what to do in case of an actual emergency?  Flight attendant, Karen Wood, accomplished this very problem.  She used humor and unexpected phrases in her speech directing passengers what to do in case of an emergency.  She explained, “And as the song goes, there might be fifty ways to leave your lover, but there are only six ways to leave this aircraft: two forward exit doors, two-over wing removable window exits, and two aft exit doors” (Heath & Heath 64).  By the end of her announcement the passengers/her audience were applauding her method of delivery.   The passengers were surprised and entertained because Wood’s announcement was unexpected.  This made her message stick with the flight’s passengers.

As the authors go further to explain, the core message of the commercial highlighting the “Enclave” minivan.  The minivan first appears as the perfect family vehicle accompanied with all the amenities imaginable.  The minivan’s features capture the audiences’ attention, and as the commercial proceeds, the commercial has nothing to do with the minivan.  It ends with a car crash.  This ad was created by the Ad Council in hopes of bringing reality and light to the seriousness of car accidents.  More than likely, the audience never would have paid attention if the commercial had opened up with a car accident.  They had to grab the audiences’ attention and surprise them with their core message.

Heath and Heath explain that in order to gain an audience’s attention you must follow these guidelines:

• Surprise: Surprise gets our attention.  Surprise makes an idea stick more so than an idea we already know.
• Interest:  Interest is what keeps our attention.  It targets a specific audience, using specific writing or visuals to keep the audience’s attention.

This method of the “unexpected” has been found to be successful with the recent commercial preventing cervical cancer and is being shown on networks all across America.  Although every woman knows the risks and threats of cervical cancer many women chose to overlook the chance of it actually happening to them.  The commercial opens up as if it is a commercial for the latest perfume.  It is whimsical and eye catching.  Any woman watching television would immediately become interested in the commercial.  As the girl who is running up the endless amount of steps finally reaches the bottle of perfume, the bottle says “Cervical Cancer”.  This leaves the girl in the commercial and the audience watching surprised.  The Cancer Administration used this to capture an audience, reel them in, and then presents the audience with a much more serious subject.  Commercials like this leave a greater impact on the audience, because it the outcome and core message was unexpected.  This commercial applies the two rules of surprise and interest, making the core message more memorable.

Heath and Heath explain that in order to make a message stick a writer must evoke emotion, and surprise the audience.   Heath and Heath explain, to make an idea sticker you must, “1) Identify the central message you need to communicate—find the core.  2) Figure out what is counterintuitive about the message—i.e. What are the unexpected implications of your core message? 3) Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audience’s guessing machines along the critical, counterintuitive dimension. Then, once again their guessing machines have failed, help them refine their machines” (Heath & Heath 72).

Ultimately, the best way to get a message across and make it stick is to keep your audience guessing and wanting more information.  A general statement does not get a message across instead it is more effective to use information that will stick with an audience.  Keep an audience curious and wanting more, Heath and Heath explain it is not effective to bombard an audience with information, but instead use the unexpectedness of a core message.

Bags Fly Free

In chapter 1 of Made to Stick, the Heath brothers hone in on the idea of:  Simple.  First, though, when we hear the word ‘simple,’ it might draw us to think that someone (or ourselves) are “dumbing down” an idea so others can understand it.  This is not the case.  Simple, with respect to making an idea sticky, is searching for the core message of whatever idea/product you are trying to pitch.  How do we find the core meaning or message of something though?  This is the tough part, according to the Heaths, because there are tons of important messages we would like to make known to our audience.  But we must dig below the surface and identify aspect of the message we CANNOT do without.  (A good way to weed out the less important messages is to actually draw a diagram on paper.) Southwest Airlines mirrored this technique very well.  After all, they are THE low-fare airline.  CEO, Herb Kelleher understands the importance of brevity and clarity.  Being a low-fare airline requires customers to understand this point out of all the other messages Southwest Airlines could mention. 

And this is exactly what news reporters (the best ones) do when presenting information.  They start with the lead– the story that will get the audience to move from the kitchen into the living room in order to sit and listen.  This is the “inverted pyramid” structure– putting the most important message at the top and slimming down your stories. 

The Heaths also mention being Simple in a sense that is “compact.”  They say, “The more we reduce the amount of information in an idea, the stickier it will be.”  Take these examples that could apply to Writing in a Networked World:

A.  Everyone should buy some columns for their home or building because columns are an essential part in the infrastructure for supporting multiple levels on a building or home, and they even provide a sense of elegance and uniqueness within a home that sometimes would be missed without columns.

OR

B.  Columns are the perfect way to enhance the beauty of your home while also giving your home the structural support it needs.

AND

A.  Here at Southwest Airlines, we want to inform you that with every flight you and your family plan on taking will be well affordable because we have implemented a method for our customers to travel anywhere in the country without having to pay any extra cash for their bags.

OR

B.  Bags fly free.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjsXEBuunzg&feature=related

Sticky Sounds

Click on the image below to check out a piece on the most addictive sounds. Is this an auditory version of stickiness? How so?