As many writing tips as I can fit in one blog, and btw, I am borrowing heavily from the Heath brothers’ book, Made to Stick (course content)

INTRODUCTION

In the opening to their book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, the Heath brothers ask, “Is it possible to make a true, worthwhile idea circulate as effectively as [a] false idea?”

Think about this for a moment.

Doesn’t it seem especially important to learn how to make what is TRUE circulate effectively, given the power of so many “alternative facts” currently in circulation around the world? Which do we want shaping opinions and understandings? Which do we want shaping policy and political elections?

And now think: How can I best make MY ideas (my findings and conclusions) from this semester “circulate” (i.e. stick)? I will be asking you to use this question to inform your drafting this week. But just before that…

BORROWING FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE

In fitting with our own early course considerations of organ trafficking [see how we’ve come full circle?!], here’s how the Heath brothers began their book:

A friend of a friend of ours is a frequent business traveler. Let’s call him Dave. Dave was recently in Atlantic City for an important meeting with clients. Afterward, he had some time to kill before his flight, so he went to a local bar for a drink.

He’d just finished one drink when an attractive woman approached and asked if she could buy him another. He was surprised but flattered. Sure, he said. The woman walked to the bar and brought back two more drinks — one for her and one for him. He thanked her and took a sip. And that was the last thing he remembered.

Rather, that was the last thing he remembered until he woke up, disoriented, lying in a hotel bathtub, his body submerged in ice.

He looked around frantically, trying to figure out where he was and how he got there. Then he spotted the note:

DON’T MOVE. CALL 911.

A cell phone rested on a small table beside the bathtub. He picked it up and called 911, his fingers numb and clumsy from the ice. The operator seemed oddly familiar with his situation. She said, “Sir, I want you to reach behind you, slowly and carefully. Is there a tube protruding from your lower back?”

Anxious, he felt around behind him. Sure enough, there was a tube.

The operator said, “Sir, don’t panic, but one of your kidneys has been harvested. There’s a ring of organ thieves operating in this city, and they got to you. Paramedics are on their way. Don’t move until they arrive.”

You’ve just read one of the most successful urban legends of the past fifteen years. The first clue is the classic urban-legend opening: “A friend of a friend . . .” Have you ever noticed that our friends’ friends have much more interesting lives than our friends themselves?

You’ve probably heard the Kidney Heist tale before. There are hundreds of versions in circulation, and all of them share a core of three elements: (1) the drugged drink, (2) the ice-filled bathtub, and (3) the kidney-theft punch line. One version features a married man who receives the drugged drink from a prostitute he has invited to his room in Las Vegas. It’s a morality play with kidneys.

Imagine that you closed the book right now, took an hour long break, then called a friend and told the story, without rereading it. Chances are you could tell it almost perfectly. You might forget that the traveler was in Atlantic City for “an important meeting with clients” — who cares about that? But you’d remember all the important stuff.

The Kidney Heist is a story that sticks. We understand it, we remember it, and we can retell it later. And if we believe it’s true, it might change our behavior permanently — at least in terms of accepting drinks from attractive strangers.

Contrast the Kidney Heist story with this passage, drawn from a paper distributed by a nonprofit organization.

“Comprehensive community building naturally lends itself to a return-on-investment rationale that can be modeled, drawing on existing practice,” it begins, going on to argue that “[a] factor constraining the flow of resources to CCIs is that funders must often resort to targeting or categorical requirements in grant making to ensure accountability.”

Imagine that you closed the book right now and took an hour long break. In fact, don’t even take a break; just call up a friend and retell that passage without rereading it. Good luck.

Is this a fair comparison — an urban legend to a cherry-picked bad passage? Of course not. But here’s where things get interesting: Think of our two examples as two poles on a spectrum of memorability. Which sounds closer to the communications you encounter at work? If you’re like most people, your workplace gravitates toward the nonprofit pole as though it were the North Star.

Maybe this is perfectly natural; some ideas are inherently interesting and some are inherently uninteresting. A gang of organ thieves — inherently interesting! Nonprofit financial strategy — inherently uninteresting! It’s the nature versus nurture debate applied to ideas: Are ideas born interesting or made interesting?

Well, this is a nurture book.

So how do we nurture our ideas so they’ll succeed in the world? Many of us struggle with how to communicate ideas effectively, how to get our ideas to make a difference. A biology teacher spends an hour explaining mitosis, and a week later only three kids remember what it is. A manager makes a speech unveiling a new strategy as the staffers nod their heads enthusiastically, and the next day the front line employees are observed cheerfully implementing the old one.

Good ideas often have a hard time succeeding in the world. Yet the ridiculous Kidney Heist tale keeps circulating, with no resources whatsoever to support it.

Why? Is it simply because hijacked kidneys sell better than other topics? Or is it possible to make a true, worthwhile idea circulate as effectively as this false idea? (Source: Heath and Heath 2007)

NOW ME, AGAIN

So: Heath and Heath wrote a whole book, just after this introduction, to argue that YES, it is in fact possible to make a true, worthwhile idea “stick.” And this week I am asking you to focus, above all else, on communicating your research (filled with ideas that belong to you as well as to others) in a way that sticks — in a way that is in-ter-es-ting. Here’s how, step-by-step:

STEP ONE

Remember that supposedly science-y, supposedly academic, passive voice you learned to write in when you were in high school? That voice that sounds like this,

“It was determined that oranges eat grapes”

And also like this:

“Findings included fourteen volcanic rocks and an iguana”

Please, please, please forget, forget, FORGET this particular voice. It is not science-y, it is not smart, and YOU WILL BECOME A MUCH STRONGER WRITER, as soon as you eliminate the passive voice from your writing toolbox.

Subsection A. How do you recognize the passive voice?

Look for the actor in the sentence. Using the example sentences above: Who determined that oranges eat grapes? Who found the rocks? If a sentence does NOT tell us who did the action > THIS is the passive voice.

Subsection B. How do you get rid of the passive voice?

Add in the actors (the doers) to any sentence that lacks them. Using the example sentences above: *I* determined that oranges eat grapes. Also: *Researchers working in southern Mexico in 1980* found fourteen volcanic rocks and an iguana. (I invented these examples; my point > both of these sentences just became ACTIVE rather than passive. All I had to do was insert some people: I found…; sociologist Howard Becker argued/wrote/said…; researchers at the University of Minnesota concluded…; etc. )

STEPS TWO THROUGH SIX

In addition to eliminating the passive voice from your writing, the Heath brothers provided other suggestions for making ideas (whether written or told) stick. Those suggestions include:

• SIMPLE: keep your sentence structures simple (a paragraph long sentence can easily become two or three or four sentences).
• UNEXPECTED: surprise your readers, if possible. In 2019, almost nobody is going to read 2000 words telling them what they already know and believe. Who has time for that? P.S. A fix for desperate situations: If your content is less surprising than you might wish, find a tone and a voice in which to write that surprise (hold the attention) of your readers.
• CONCRETE: Be as detailed as possible without becoming overly wordy. Vague thoughts and under-formulated ideas are a waste of space. You want to let your readers *see* exactly what you are saying at all times. (This morning in copy edits I sent to a colleague, I had to ask about a single sentence: “First step of how many steps? What kinds of policymakers? What kinds of programs?” Because even professional writers gloss/skip key details when they write too hurriedly.)
• CREDIBLE: This is where your multiple lines of evidence (which you each now have!!) will help you to show your readers that your ideas are grounded in reality and plausible, even if sometimes surprising.
• EMOTIONAL: Even in nonfiction, you can make your readers FEEL things. Use images, perhaps. Use metaphors, perhaps. Gross them out. Excite them. Wow them. Get them to like and empathize with you, to wear your shoes, as a thinker and researcher. Etc.
• STORIES: Tell (short, dense) stories. In academia we call these vignettes. And if you want to see an example, I’ve left you with a link to one of my own writes (from way back in 2011 and which is riddled with vignettes) on the next page.

In touch,

DP
July 23, 2019