Plain talk

On a college football discussion board, where opinions are a dime a dozen, a poster interrupts the recruiting, coaching, and spring training conversations to seek advice on cohabitation with his girlfriend. He was richly rewarded. Here's a very small sample:

"Be clean. More clean than you think is necessary."

"You will find yourself watching more Food Network and Lifetime than you ever thought possible."

"My friend, simplify your life. Date the girl or marry her."

"Have fun in your lake of fire, sinner."

"In two words: separate bathrooms."

"The problem with living together beforehand and the reason all of the research says it is detrimental is that it builds a 'backdoor mentality' into the relationship."

"Still need to see pics before I give my perspective."

"Whatever you do, don't buy Clapton/Winwood tickets for you and an old college buddy assuming she wouldn't want to go because she listens to a lot of crappy music and doesn't even know who Traffic or Blind Faith is."

"Dating isn't anywhere in the ballpark of marriage. Because when you make those vows, there is no backstop, alternative, or exit strategy."

"When I use the bathroom, hell, that side of the house is off-limits. She will LOVE to corner you in the can, so establish some rules early."

"I lived with a girlfriend for a year. Suffice to say it didn't work out. In fact, when she moved out, she moved to INDIA. As in, NEXT TO PAKISTAN. As in, SHE WENT TO LIVE IN A BUDDHIST MONASTERY."

"You said she wanted at least an engagement ring prior to cohabitating. Well that nails it. She's traditional. It doesn't matter if you understand it. The sooner you learn to pay attention to THEIR value systems instead of trying to reason with them and change them, the better off you'll be."

"If you're planning on getting married anyways, then might as well do it. It's a great way to save money for the ring. I will caution you however. If you are supposed to be saving for a ring, then she will nitpick every little thing that you buy for yourself. Come home with a new pitching wedge? I DON'T THINK SO ASSHOLE!"

"Think of it this way, you're out with a couple of buddies. If a chick wants you to go home with her, are you going to do it, figuring your girlfriend won't find out because you have a great alibi and friends who will confirm your story? If you will, the answer is don't move in with her yet. If you don't think you will, the answer is don't move in with her yet. If you know you will not, it's probably okay to start thinking about moving in with her."

"I only have to visit her apartment, ride in her car, and observe her spending habits to figure out how she manages her household and see if it complements my own habits or not. I need only visit her family, church, and hometown to see if her values are similar to my own."

"By the way, the costs of breaking a cohabitation are going to surpass what you may save in rent."

"Just because you don't have any, doesn't mean her values are less correct or less important. Your enlightenment is worthless."

Right about here, the original poster comes back and says, "Alright dudes. Well, I will be moving in with my girlfriend and I am looking forward to it. I think my girlfriend is the greatest woman ever born and I don't think there is anything we can't handle. We filled out an application last night and are both really excited. Keep it real." A few posts later, he's back again. "UPDATE: We just got approved for the apartment. My realtor buddy is hooking us up with a $1,200 realtor rebate. 50 inch plasma?"

It was, beyond a doubt, a testosterone-powered thread, but once it was clear that the cohabitation was going to happen, it was a woman's voice offering best wishes and pragmatism, with this: "I wish you guys the best of luck. My advice: keep your finances separate, put both names on the lease, and don't get a puppy."

Going long

Peggy Noonan started it, for me, last month, when she wrote this 89-word sentence:

Both our political parties continue, even though they know they shouldn't, even though they're each composed of individuals many of whom actually know what time it is, even though they know we are in an extraordinary if extended moment, an ongoing calamity connected to our economic future, our nation's standing in the world, our strength and safety--even though they know all this, they continue to go through the daily motions, fund raising, vote counting, making ads with demon sheep, blasting out the latest gaffe of the other team.

Then, a few days later, I quoted a 100-word sentence from Don DeLillo in this space, and mimicked it with a 94-word sentence of my own. I've read all three of these sentences many times, and I love them more with each reading. So I was locked and loaded when my friend Bart called and said he needed an introduction to a swatch book for a paper called Finch Opaque. Bart and I have collaborated on a couple of years worth of promotional materials for Finch Paper LLC, and I know their story well. And so I sat down to write a sentence that, in and of itself, would be a differentiator; it would tell a complete story unlike anything else in the industry. And out of that came this:

When you want a real opaque, and no surprises, in delivery or on-press, and the feeling that everything's going to be okay, and the faith, the conviction, that what you will have at the end of your run will be everything you had in mind before you started, not to mention the comfort of picturing the mill beside the river in the town beside the forest, that one mill where all your paper will come from, made by the people who live in the town and do the work their people have done back through the generations, and the real person who takes your order knows all the people who will make your paper, and knows their children too, and all of them will stand behind not just their paper, but your paper, the paper they made for you, and they'll stand behind how it all works for you from the first call you make to the way you feel when you're holding the finished product in your hands -- when that's what you want, it's got to be Finch Opaque.

A whopping 181 words. The full measure of DeLillo's 100, and around the bend for 81 more. I read it over several times, to make sure I was serving Bart and the client well, and not just indulging my long-sentence obsession. I felt good about it, and so I sent it. When I hadn't heard anything by end of day, I called and asked how they liked it. Bart was unavailable, but his designer Gosia said he had received it, had sent it to the client, and it "would do for now." That doesn't sound so good. I've probably read it 20 times, and I'm still partial to it. I hope somebody reads it here and says, "Hey Bill, can you write one of those for us?" If there's a place for the long sentence on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, and in the American novel, why not in the way a business talks about itself?

For the ear

The request was that I read a video script and make sure it was written properly for the ear. Here's one sentence (with client identity masked) that I felt the need to doctor:

For more than XX years, we've worked with clients in da-da-dee and da-da-dum, and have developed superior industry expertise.

I edited it to read:

For more than XX years, we've worked with clients in da-da-dee and da-da-dum, developing a superior brand of industry expertise along the way.

The first problem was that second "and." It puts working with clients and developing expertise on equal footings, like "we mowed the grass and trimmed the hedges," two ideas side-by-side -- when actually the industry expertise was an outgrowth of the XX years of working with clients.

So we delete the "and" and insert the comma and we change "have developed" to "developing." All of which serves as a setup for the thing we really want people to remember, which is superior industry expertise. However, the way this sentence was written, those three key words race past the ear and then the sentence abruptly ends: Zoom! Screech!

We need to slow that whole sequence down and create a little space for the ear to do its work. So we change it from "developed superior industry expertise" to "developing a superior brand of expertise along the way," where "brand of" is a timing device and "along the way" is a rhythm apparatus; the ear gets two beats to grab "superior" before it has to snag "industry expertise," and then it has "along the way" as a cool-down period before cranking back up for the beginning of the next sentence.

The eyes that review this script can take all the time they want, reading and re-reading, and viewing each phrase in the context of the total piece. But the value of the script is determined by what happens when the words in spoken form go sailing past ears that get only one fleeting shot at them. Those ears need all the help they can get.

How to interview an SME

There are four of us who all came from the same place. We've known each other since the Dow was at 900 and for the past two decades have pitched in on each other's writing projects. Last week, Doug was preparing to train a team of technical writers and felt that he was lacking good ideas in one of the areas he was supposed to cover, which was "how to handle interviews." So he sent an email to the other three of us asking "how to draw out essential material from SMEs under the normal constraints of time and availability." Within 90 minutes, John had responded with this:

1. Get a recorder...and a phone patch cord--and make sure you know how to "get bars" to indicate that the recorder is actually working. I would never trust my note-taking to capture the nuances of interviews (especially on technical subjects).

2. Get as much background as you can about the subject ahead of time, and sketch out some questions based on the background.

3. Take notes...even if you're running a recorder. It's often helpful to have a "visual" clue at your fingertips, reminding you of what's been discussed...so that you can ask follow-up questions, or return to key topics later in the conversation.

4. Don't try to fill up the silence: If somebody's thinking, let them think. Let them pause...in order to elaborate. A well-placed "um" or "uh-huh" is often enough to let them know that you're still there, engaged and listening.

5. Engage in enough small-talk to put the interviewee at ease...but don't waste a lot of time on it. If you're in two different cities...and you know that the other place just got a lot of snow, or their team won the Super Bowl, use that sort of detail to create a civil, engaging tone to the conversation.

6. If you need additional detail or background, ask for it. It's OK to ask what an acronym means, for example. Usually, you'll get more useful information if you play a little dumb, rather than trying to prove to the SME how smart you are.

7. If, during the course of an answer, you learn about an existing PowerPoint presentation or white paper, ask for a copy of it.

8. Respect the SME's time. If you promised to end in 30 minutes, then try hard to do so--setting a followup time if you still need to get more info after your "window" is up.

9. Expect the SME not to respect your time. Count on them being late for the call...and don't schedule another call to follow immediately thereafter.

10. Check your recorder immediately after the call, to make sure it was working. That way, if it DIDN'T work, the topics you talked about will still be fresh in your mind, and you may be able to cobble together enough written notes to save your butt.

11. Most of the above tips also apply to face-to-face interviews, and with one addendum: Make eye contact. It's OK to look away to take notes, etc....but don't stay buried in your notes. Treat the interview like a conversation.

Laurie was on vacation at a beach in Mexico, but three hours after John, she had added her tips:

1. Get a digital recorder. In four years, I have not suffered a malfunction (knock wood), and it's great to have a backup file of the interview on your computer.

2. Get approval ahead of time from the moderator or SME to record the interview. Explain that it dramatically increases the accuracy and time efficiency of the entire project.

3. During the interview, when you hear a key topic, jot down the time stamp from the recorder. Afterward, you can zip right to that point.

4. Download to your computer and transcribe ASAP. A foot pedal helps immensely.

Interview questions (if these apply to technical writing)...

Ask the SME:

-- "What is the most important thing that (the audience, users) should know about this (topic, product)?"

-- "Who are the different types of people likely to use the product?"

-- "What are the benefits to each type of user?"

At the end of the interview, ask: "As a hypothetical exercise...if you had to put a headline on this (story, product description), what would it be?"

I wanted to go last, hoping that all my points would be covered and I could just respond: "what they said." But in the end, I was inspired to add something of my own. Ten minutes before midnight, I sent my list:

1. I like to start an interview with as broad a question as possible and then avoid asking another question as long as possible. Like this: "Wow, cloud computing...what's your story on that?" And then shut up. The point is to see where they will voluntarily go with it. They might talk for 10 or 15 minutes if you don't stop them, and that tells you what's important to them, and the order of importance. As they talk, of course, clarifying questions will occur to you. Write them down. When they finally run out of steam, you can then say: "Back when you were talking about total cost of ownership, you said something I didn't quite understand..." If you ask questions during the flow of their initial answer, you break their stream of consciousness, and you'll never get it back.

2. This sounds so elementary, but it requires discipline: As soon as someone says something like "There are three keys to this initiative...", you have to start counting. You don't want to go back and listen to your digital recording (you are using a digital recorder, right?) and only have two things, or not be able to tell where #2 ended and #3 began.

3. I think of the interview in four parts: #1 is the broad opening question that they can take in whatever direction they want to go. #2 is the clarifying questions you wrote down while they gave you their stream-of-consciousness answer. #3 is the questions you wrote down in advance, some of which will already be answered, and some of which you now need to ask. And #4 is a fishing expedition. I have some favorite things to ask here. One is, "So was there a moment in this whole thing when you knew this was actually going to work?" Often there was, and their answer gives you the turning point that helps you turn information into a story. Another question is: "Through this whole experience, what was your biggest surprise?" They'll usually stop and think about it, because the question intrigues them. You have to keep quiet while they think. Their answer will frequently be something that also contributes to the narrative. Another one I like is, "I can see that you really changed this (process, function, environment, etc.) but how did it change you?"

4. With a group of SMEs, don't work toward consensus too soon. Keep them in the question as long as you can. I'm actually kind of bad about avoiding consensus at all. Sometimes I don't want them to tidy up all the loose ends, because I don't trust them to come up with a better conclusion than I would on my own.

5. Don't settle for abstract answers. Make them tell you what actually happens. You say, "So walk me through this. A guy comes into your bank with an idea for a dog-walking service. What does he say? What does he know? Where has he been before he got to you?"

Years ago I worked with "the worldwide competency leader in knowledge management" at IBM. He defined knowledge like this:

Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers. In organizations, it often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices, and norms.

Yeah, that's what we did, my friends and I, emailing through the afternoon and night, knowers telling what they know in a way that offers a framework for a new generation of technical writers to use as they strive to more quickly and competently do what they're asked to do.