III. The Longer Forms

Getting into Focus

Well, we're finally here: two Sections down, only one to go. And the exciting part is that afterfinishing the first two, we'll ease into the longer forms very comfortably.

A short note before we begin. This chapter will focus on writing the report. But the techniques discussed here will help you to write anything longer than a paragraph. These methods will help if you're writing a long, formal letter, a lengthy memo, an essay, a booklet, a manual, a business plan or guide, and yes, even a book.

Once you understand how to organize and structure a piece of writing, what do you care how long it is? As we said in the last chapter, longer doesn't mean harder. It just means gathering and organizing more information.

So keep that in mind when you sit down to brainstorm your ideas. Many people get so intimidated by writing reports or business papers that they just throw up their hands. Sometimes they don't even begin. And if the writing task is even longer, they just utter a few well-chosen words of disgust and walk away.

Okay, so how do we begin? The best way to begin is by warming up. Consider this: If you were a jogger or a musician, would you get out of bed and start running immediately? If you were in a jazz trio, would you arrive at the club a few minutes before you went on, park the car, enter the club and start playing at once -- before an audience?

Never!

Whether it's running, playing, singing, working out, or whatever, you need to warm up, to easeinto that activity. If you don't, you're asking for trouble -- like hurting yourself and possibly not being able to run for months or even longer. Or hitting so many wrong notes that your friends start looking for another pianist or lead singer.

It's the same with writing. Don't even attempt to sit down and write that report cold. Yet that's what most of us do. We just sit and try to "knock it out" --- the quicker the better. Why? Because for many of us the whole experience of writing is so distasteful we want to get it over with as soon as possible!

So, what's the warm-up for writing? Simple: sit down and start writing. Don't worry about the subject. Just do some free writing, some brainstorming, as you did with your spiral notebook practice sentences back in Part I. Write about your spouse, your sister, your car, your lover(s),last week-end's picnic. It doesn't matter. Just ease into the writing, slowly warm-up the thought muscles. Do it for, say, four or five minutes. You just want to establish some rapport between hand and paper (or key-board).

This is free writing -- one of the most effective ways to tune-in your thoughts and slowly work up to your subject or topic. Sadly, most people don't even think of doing this; as we said, they just want to get the writing done as soon as possible.

Well, whether you enjoy writing or not, this is still a great way to warm-up. Believe me, the writing will be easier and better!

Then shift into the next phase. Stop writing about the picnic or your sister, and start putting down some thoughts about the subject you need to write about: the report, assignment, speech, or business topic. Donâ??t worry about grammar, spelling, or anythingelse. Just write down your thoughts. Cluster them in circles around your central topic.

What we're doing here is slowly focusing, zeroing in, on the topic. For instance, let's say you wanted to write a brief report on your real estate office.

Now that you have a general topic, stop for a minute. A topic can be a blessing or a burden. As we saw in the Paragraph Section, if a topic is focused enough it can be a great help. It'll keep you on target -- help you to know what to include in the paragraph and what to keep out.

On the other hand, if the topic is too wide, too broad, you'll drown in a mass of related and unrelated ideas, and lose your focus entirely. Because the topic is so broad, everything gets in.

And you can't include everything in any piece of writing.

A general rule to keep in mind is:

Always write more about less.

What does that mean, exactly? We'll use an example from a college history class. The assignment is to write a term paper, and you've chosen the Civil War as a topic.

Now, think for a moment. Could you possibly do justice to that topic in seven to ten pages? Could you take an entire war --thousands of lives, dozens of battles, skirmishes, surrenders, imprisonments, conflicts of all kinds, and so much more -- could you really say anything worthwhile about that enormous topic in eight or so pages?

Probably not. Your writing would be so general that it just wouldn't register in the reader's mind.

Think about the depth of that topic. How could anyone discuss five years of human suffering in so few pages? It's impossible.

Why? Because in that limited space you couldn't go into detail, give examples, or compare or contrast battles or generals. You couldn't discuss causes, effects or anything else. If you tried, your term paper would be several hundred pages long. In fact, it would be a book, and that wasn't quite the assignment.

In this example, instead of writing more about less, you'd be writing less about more. And if you do that, your writing is doomed to be a pointless rag bag of generalities -- the kind of writing that generates yawns, rejections, and D minuses....

So how do we narrow the topic? We begin by biting off less, so we can at least start to chew on these ideas instead of choking on them.

Let's start narrowing down the Civil War topic. How about land battles in the War? Not bad. At least it's a little narrower. But even that topic is too broad. All the land battles during a five-year period? Still too big. How about land battles fought on Southern soil? Better....

We're beginning to focus a bit. But still, five years of land battles in the South? Entire books have been written about some of those conflicts. And movies, too. (Isn't that right, Scarlett?)

How about land battles fought on Southern soil in the closing months of the war? Okay, now we're really targeting. Let's even take it a step or two further. How about land battles fought in the closing months of the war in the state of Georgia? In fact, how about really focusing and writing

about one single battle?

Get the idea? We keep focusing more and more until we have a topic we can handle in seven to ten pages. In effect, we're writing more about less. More details, more examples, more data about a more tightly focused topic. Notice also:

We tightened the time frame of the topic (closing months).

We tightened the space covered (Georgia).

We focused on one event (a single battle).

Now we have a workable topic.

As a result, the entire paper will be easier to write. We'll know exactly what to include, what to omit, and how to organize the events/data -- as well as our own ideas -- for maximum effect. Not only will the paper be easier to write, it will also be easier to read. It'll be so much more effective as

a piece of writing....

And why? Because we narrowed down the topic, focused on it, and

We wrote more about less.

Getting Even More Specific

Can we focus even more? Of course, and we'll see how in this section. There'll also be a few other related points we'll discuss in the next few pages, including the specific purpose of your report and your thesis.

Now before you let that last word scare you, let's discuss it. The thesis we'll talk about in this section is not the long, long, documented research project your sister had to write as a requirement for her Master's or PhD degree.

No, it's much simpler than that. In writing, a thesis (or thesis statement as it's generally called) is a one-sentence statement of the main point you'll be discussing or arguing in your report. Itâ??s your central idea. That's all. It's usually stated very early in the report and gives the reader a one-sentence summary of what's coming up in the paragraphs (or pages) that follow.

What makes a good thesis statement? Maybe we can begin to answer that by stating what a good thesis is not. A good thesis statement is not merely a topic. A topic is just a piece of a thought on a general subject. Here are some typical topics:

Civil War battles in Georgia

Making Money in Real Estate

Learning About Loans

Telemarketing for Leads

Networking with Professionals

Now, what do all these topics have in common? First of all, they're all fragments (Use the agree/disagree test with each of them). And that's what topics usually are: pieces, fragments of a subject. It's almost impossible to begin writing when you have only a topic to work with. Where would you begin? Where do you end? What ideas are discussed between the beginning and the end? What are you really trying to say?

What else is wrong with these topics? Read them over again and you'll find that they really don't say anything. â??Making Money in Real Estateâ?� or â??Learning about Loansâ?� is fine, but just how, specifically, do we do these things? (We don't expect a single sentence to give us the answer, but

we would like the thesis sentence to give us at least some idea of what has to be done. How it is to be done can follow later.) Like most topics, these topics are just floating around in mid-air, not tied to anything specific, anything we can actually focus on.

A thesis statement is sharper, more pointed. Even the Civil War sentence we wrote in the last section was not a true thesis statement:

Land Battles fought in Georgia in the last months of the Civil War.

What about those battles? Were they brief? Were they bloody? Over before they really began? Did they achieve or decide anything?

Get the point? True, in the last section we learned how to narrow down the topic so we wouldn't get bogged down writing about anything and everything. But now we must take that focused topic a step further. We must give it a point, an opinion, an "argumentative edge," you might say.

First of all, we have to change it from a fragment to a sentence. Then we have to shape that sentence, sharpen it until it has some point, some opinion. In short, we must include what we'll be discussing, or explaining, or arguing in the paragraphs that follow.

Consider this:

The land battles fought in Georgia in the closing months of the Civil War destroyed the South's ability to continue fighting.

Now we've said something. That is a thesis statement. The second half of the statement: â??destroyed the South's ability to continue fightingâ?� gave the sentence its point, its edge. In the paragraphs that follow, we'll show that those battles took the last bit of heart, spirit, and resistance from the Southern forces. We could discuss morale, exhaustion, broken armies, lost leaders, and anything else that would support the thesis.

Let's get back to real estate and take another look at:

Making Money in Real Estate

And this time weâ??ll take it even a step or two further than the Civil War sentence.

Remember: The more you focus the thesis statement, the clearer and â??tighterâ?� the writing will be.

And your reader will have an easier time, too.

Making more money in real estate requires tight time management, constant exposure to buyers and sellers, and regular networking with other related professionals.

Please read this thesis sentence over again. And again. Notice how the structure of the entire paper is contained in that one sentence. Look at it more closely. Do you see the 3-part middle section that it is already announcing to the reader?

For the sake of our example, let's say that you're applying for the position of Sales Manager in a real estate office. You've been there for a few years, have done rather well, and would now like to move into management.

As part of the interview/application process, you've been asked to submit a two-three page report on how agents could increase their listings and sales -- in short, their bottom line (true, it's a rather big topic, but that's how management is sometimesâ?¦.).

You've been giving the topic some thought and have several good ideas you want to discuss. They concern better time management, meeting with more buyers and sellers, and also networking with other agents, title officers, and CPAs, etc. You have other thoughts, but these are the three areas you want to focus on.

Actually, with a little pre-thinking/ brainstorming, this paper will almost write itself, after you sharpen your thesis sentence.

The general subject of the sentence given above is Making More Money; however, the part that makes the sentence a thesis statement is the specific steps you need to take in order to

Make More Money.

(The article above is taken from the opening chapters of Section 3 of the ebook, "Easy Writing: A Practical Guide for Business Professionals.")

For additional information, visit www.easywritingnow.com