The One About Structure & Nerd Sex.

Today I want to share with you my process of writing, in the hopes it will be of value to you and may lead you to your own insights. The point isn’t that I am telling you what to do, I am sharing what works for me, and you need to figure out what, if anything, I do could work for you. As I always say: There is no “one way” to do anything, there are only better or worse ways.

I firmly believe that the structure of a piece of writing, a book, a talk, a movie or a business plan requires a structure to give it form and make sense.

The Project

As I write this, I have just seen Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning at the movies. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am a bit of a fan of MI movies. And it is comforting to see that even Tom Cruise ages…

One movie criticism from one of my movie-making friends, Adam Harvey, is that the film Dune was all just Act I. Sure, it is part one, but he argues that this is no reason that each film shouldn’t have three acts so that the audience feels some satisfaction at the end of the movie. Whereas he said that Mission Impossible got it right, as did The Fellowship of the Ring.

He has a point.

It is the structure that allows a film, or any other written piece, to deliver satisfaction. The structure holds the context and the overall progression of the audience experience. It is the skeleton that gives form to everything else.

As such, I place a huge amount of emphasise, for people I am coaching, on having a structure. Often the problem with a talk or a script is not anything specific to the story, it is that the structure has been lost. And without that, the story is losing its way. The result is that the story doesn’t quite deliver the expected satisfaction, and you can’t quite put your finger on why.

To give you a peek into how I deal with structure and writing, I thought I might share how I am writing my set for a Stand-Up Comedy gig I will be performing in the next couple of months. The piece I am writing is likely to be very different from what you want to write. This is irrelevant. Look past the details of my project because I use the same basic process for talks, presentations, business proposals and anything I put together.

Now in full transparency, it is my first such gig, and I am not telling you that I will be successful in making people laugh. -I will need to update you on that later in the year. But I will share how I approach the writing so you can seek your own insights from it.

Outcomes

The first thing is to clarify what I am trying to achieve. In the case of this gig, it is to challenge myself to write and perform in a Stand-up Comedy show and have people laugh and enjoy themselves.

I will call it a win if I can get the whole room laughing a couple of times, and I will be very pleased if people tell me afterwards that they enjoyed it. Normally I would want a more concrete outcome or win, but since this is not at all business focused and is purely personal satisfaction (or masochism?), I am not fussed with a relaxed outcome and win criteria.

My best measure of success is whether I get asked to come back and perform again. If I get invited back, it is a huge win. Ultimately I am doing this for the experience of having done it, and I have no intention of performing in the future.

In order to make it interesting I will be doing this without notes. I don’t want to bring anything on stage with me, and I won’t be writing on my hand. My challenge to myself is to thoroughly prepare, so I can do my set from memory.

Structure

I will have between 6-10 minutes on stage. It sounds like a short amount of time until you are standing on stage looking into bright lights and wondering what you will say next. -Then it is an eternity!

So I am writing to a basic structure. Bear in mind that you are witnessing this in real-time. What I write below is what I wrote this morning as I started the project, and I fully expect this to change and evolve over the coming weeks. -That is sort of the point!

This is what I have written as a basic structure to follow:

1. Introduction - Who am I - Set expectations - stamp personality - Tease something

2. Foundation - An origin story, what makes me what I am

3. Observation - Now they know who I am, let them see how I operate and how I think by making observations in that character.

4. Extend to the future - Move forward to a Hypothetical or anticipated situation and explore that.

5. Closing Story? - Maybe tell an almost unrelated story to close things out, which will be memorable and maybe repeatable. -depending on time.

This is a fairly basic and intrinsically satisfying structure. It contains past, present and future. In that sense, it is moving somewhere. It is not just a collection of random jokes going nowhere or going in circles.

This is satisfying for the audience, but it also makes it a lot easier for me to remember my set.

Topic

I am still working on this, and so far, I have two themes or topics to choose from:

Being a Nerd or Sex.

But then that choice creates a third, possibly better choice: Nerd Sex.

This sounds fairly straightforward, but there is some subtlety here that is easy to get wrong. If I come up with a great joke, there is a real temptation to stick it in there somewhere, but if it doesn’t meet my topic and my structure, then I am far better off putting it aside to use another time in another set.

For example, I came up with a great joke (I think) on Analog v. Digital, which works well in a Nerd theme. But it would not work in the Sex theme.
It could be adjusted to work in the Nerd Sex theme. -The key is I would need to tweak it to fit the more refined theme.

Of course, this is unlikely to be the issue you are personally dealing with right now. -I hope not! I don’t need the competition. But the same logic applies to your pitch or your talk. Refine the parameters of your talk, make it somewhat narrow and go deep, and your audience will get far more value from it.

It is like a science fiction writer who is creating a world. In their imagination. Potentially, the world's rules are unlimited, but they need to create rules and abide by them, or the story loses its coherence.

Similarly, when you are looking at the topic of your piece, you want to narrowly define a topic and explore just that one topic.

Writing

When I have my topic and my general structure, I start writing long hand. I write out what I imagine I will say from the stage. Much of what I write is dross. Much of it is exposition, where I am explaining things that I shouldn’t be explaining, but that is fine. At this point, I just want to get it out. Editing comes later.

I write pieces for each of my structured areas. As I go, I think of other things, jokes, or I realise that what I am writing might fit better into a different part of the talk, and I will add some notes. (e.g. if tweaked, this might be a better intro). It is too easy to lose good ideas because you don’t record them.

I am sure you have heard the advice before: in the draft stage: You want to turn off your internal editor, don’t judge your output. Just go for quantity and get the ideas out of your brain onto paper. You need to compartmentalise and shut your internal editor up by saying to it that their time will come later and they can go to town then.

Editing

I haven’t gotten to this point yet with my project, but this is where I will cut a bunch of fat. I’ll get rid of all of the explanation that is unnecessary, lose things that are not important and try to streamline everything I have written.

The natural tendency when writing a story, particularly a personal one, is to include all of the information that gives it context or explains why you thought what you thought at the time.

The key is to remove the explanation and yet deliver the essence of it in your performance so that people are clear on what you are thinking without you having to tell them.

For example, rather than saying I was stressed about the fact our competition announced a similar product the week before us. I might say something like: “The week before our launch, our competition launched the same product!” and say it in a shrill, disbelieving and slightly panicked voice. People will get the emotion of it quicker than they will get an explanation of the emotion of it.

Speaking

This is where things really start to come together.

Up until now, everything has just been playing at putting a set together.
-Although all those earlier steps are important!

What you need to do now is record yourself saying what you have written and then listen to it to see if it makes sense, if it is interesting or boring, if it is funny or confusing.

You need to listen to this recording in a particular way. Because it is not going to be good yet. You don’t want to be listening to it and asking yourself: “Is it good?” because that will just disappoint you. You need to listen to it and ask where the unpolished gems are. You need to listen, thinking about what has the potential to shine and maybe how to make it shine.

The most common phrase for me at this point of the process is:
“There is something there. I‘m just not sure what.”

That is okay. You don’t have to fix anything yet. You just need to identify those areas that have potential and those areas that are DOA (dead on arrival).

Refining

Once you have cut those gems, so to speak, you have identified the key elements and have worked them into shape, the next step is to polish them up. Polishing those gems is done by verbally repeating the talk or part of it and recording and listening to it. Playing with different word usage, trying different pauses and delivery. This will evolve over time.

Like any evolution, it depends on the number of cycles or generations, so the more you can actively speak and record, and process then, the better your performance will be.

This is also how you memorise without “memorising”. By focusing on how to deliver it better, in a sequence that gives context, you are training your brain how to say it, not telling your brain what to say.

This sounds like a subtle difference, and I can’t explain why this works better, but I know from experience and the experience of almost 100 people I have personally coached that it is true.

Conclusion

What I hope you take from this is that structure is not something that you ‘plug in’ at the end of the process.

If you get that far and have a structure issue, something I have experienced personally and with clients many times, it usually requires a significant rewrite.

So follow the steps in the Pitching Pyramid, and get clarity on your outcomes. Then choose a structure to fit that outcome and your audience that will most likely achieve those outcomes for you… Then you can start writing.

Don’t forget to sign up for the launch of Alex Hormozi’s new book, $100m Leads.
You can find details here
I highly recommend his first book, $100m Offers, and am excited to see what the next book in the series is like.

I am not getting paid to promote the launch, but I have been bribed with some interesting content, which I will be able to share with you all. So even if you don’t think you will attend, I appreciate you registering for the event.

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section where I dive into a famous (or not so famous) quote and explore how this can apply to the Compelling Communicator.

I like this quote because it is both counter-intuitive and, at the same time, absolutely true for all of us. We have all had the experience of being involved in something that seemed relatively minor at the time and then in hindsight, was part of something important or momentous.

Equally, we have all had the experience of being entirely convinced of the importance, and momentousness of something we are involved with, only for it to whimper into non-existence with barely a memory remaining.

The reason I feel this is worth mentioning is that, far too often, I see people overlooking these truths when they are including stories in their talk or pitch.

They will talk about things that they think are important at the moment but which, with a little reflection, they can see may be overshadowed in the bigger picture. It is just big and relevant for them at the moment. Not that this should not be included in the talk, but if dwelt on, this is an opportunity squandered.

Whereas the more memorable and enticing message is where you take something easily overlooked, apparently minor, and you bring it forward into a potential future where its importance cannot be denied.
-That is what will be remembered!

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

Very busy with Instructional Design work, writing assessments to deadlines. I have some openings in my calendar for coaching founders or speakers. I am considering putting a small workshop on to help you get your idea into shape for a talk.

Recreationally:

Writing comedy. -What can I say? I can easily amuse myself.

What I am watching:

Finally saw The Magnificent Seven (2016). I don’t know how I missed that, it was a great western. It also reminded me of Battle Beyond the Stars which I loved as a kid and was based on the original Magnificent Seven.