From Fiction to Fact: Borrowing from the Arts for Business Writing

Researching an article, a speech, a script or any piece of business writing is a lot like researching a character in a play or a novel. You start with a few basic questions: where or with whom does the piece originate and why does it need to be written or spoken? Then, you take a good look at your audience and determine how best to craft messages that will speak to them.

My writing career began in theatre, where I collaborated on original productions and studied the masterworks of Shakespeare, Chekov and Williams. When I began to write fiction, I found myself using acting techniques to get inside my characters’ heads and hearts. I call this “method writing”, after the Stanislavski System or Method, adopted and made famous by Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler at the Actor’s Studio in New York. This is very useful for writing natural-sounding dialogue, but it works equally well for writing speeches, or coming up with convincing quotes for media releases.

Fiction, drama and screenwriters build stories around a basic dramatic structure, the dramatic arc. Sometimes, to add tension or expose details, a “false climax” is introduced between the intro and the climax. You can recognize this highly effective method of storytelling in the tragedies of Aeschylus, the comedies of Neil Simon and the novels of Ian McEwan. Try applying this structure to, for example, a short donation letter and see if it works for you.

Effective business writing contains other elements found in fiction, drama and poetry. Establish a consistent theme, and don’t be afraid to use metaphors, irony and humour to enliven the driest subject.

Finally, a marketing presentation or voice-over script must be “performed”. After you have drafted a speech, test it for impact and adherence to the dramatic arc. Choose three colours of highlight markers, representing three emotional states: blue for “cool”; yellow for “warm”; and pink for “hot”. Go through your script and mark up key sentences or phrases according to the corresponding colours they evoke. When you lay the pages out horizontally, you should see a progression from “cool”, to “warm”, to “hot” and back to “cool” near the end. Especially in a long piece, it’s a good idea to “spike” the dramatic arc with “hot” phrases that help to hold your audience and presenter’s interest.

Share the above technique with your clients. If they are delivering your material, the highlights can help them vary the pace of the presentation, emphasize the right points and bring your writing to life.