"Informationals" and the lively art of long writing

In this era of short attention spans and paltry English prose, there's money to be had in writing long stories. Right?

The intuitive answer is "Wrong." Pinoys need all the help they can get just pronouncing English correctly, let alone writing it.

The counter-intuitive answer is "Right." Pinoys (or the 20% that bother to read English) will read long prose. The trick is finding ways to get their eyes to start moving from left to right.

The answer, however, is "Right-est" when it comes to writing for business. Business, after all, is the Largest User of English in this country. Think call centers and you'll get the point.

But if business can talk the talk (in English with an American twang), can it write right in English? Especially when faced with ad agencies that claim the best ads are those that don't need any words at all--and who with fanatical zeal strive to create the Perfect Mute Ad.

What might be true of English in advertising certainly won't be true of English in other external business communication tools. What I call "informationals" (special reports, newsletters, print media supplements and non-advertising media suited to inform in more detail) demand "long writing".

Informationals thrive on long writing because it's got to explain more, especially if a product or service is rooted in a science such as computers and communications.

Truth is, you can't escape long writing in business-to-consumer (B2C) communications. It's as endemic as the User's Manual.

Just because it's lengthy doesn't mean long writing has to be turgid. Not at all. The art lies in making information delightful to read.

I "long write" for companies and business organizations and constantly re-discover the fundamentals of good business writing apply to writing informationals.

First, you've got to have something to say, i.e. information. You've also got to do a lot of research. That means mining the Internet--the long writer's best friend--to uncover data relevant to your theme.

Then come the interviews with experts. I believe it's this aspect that's often missing in many informationals.

Anyone that's read a country or industry report by a bank or multinational lending agency such as the World Bank will be hard pressed to find experts being quoted.

It's probably this reliance on in-house experts (and a corresponding reluctance to cite individual experts, especially outside experts) that give business writing its bland reputation.

This seeming reluctance to interview is also apparent in writing B2C informationals. The art of interviewing is a painfully earned skill, as journalists will affirm, and I suppose it's too much to expect these same skills from your average in-house writer.

But then, you can't interview the competition. They'd call that espionage.

The end point of information harvesting is the writing. An "outsourced" or freelance writer with experience in journalism or advocacy will fall back on the five "Ws" when composing his piece.

In contrast, an in-house company writer will tend towards "invisibility." That is, he won't rock the boat by writing in a way that's markedly different from past reports. His bosses might notice the change and not all will be happy with it.

I've found that writing informationals occupies ground between these opposite poles. The middle ground involves starting with a bang (a tasteful yet catchy lead) and using the writer's art to sow words, phrases and insights that make the informational an entertaining and very informative read.

It's not easy and this suggestion won't work in many cases (because it's against conventional wisdom), but it's far better than deciphering a User's Manual or wincing through two pages of fluff extolling a product to high heavens.

Delightfully written informationals will make anyone's eyes begin moving left to right because it does two things at once: inform in abundance and entertain in style.

Informationals do this and business might just find it profitable to use informationals more often. "In-Writers" (informationals writers) might profit, too.

My website at www.geocities.com/peftok/informationals.html explains informationals more.