Laboratorio di scrittura

In the weekly webinar of the LEVA project, we also addressed the topic of writing, with the goal of increasing the effectiveness of our communications.

After a first part in which we focused attention on how to streamline and make our emails and social posts more fluid, this week we discussed which methods are most effective in structuring a text.

The webinar was a workshop in which, through an exercise, everyone shared their good practices. Here are some of those shared by participants:

-   Before starting, I take a few minutes to reflect on what I want to communicate

-   Open a reply email to a request with a thank you

-   Conclude the message with a specific request for an appointment or something else

-   Highlight your strengths regarding the topic of communication  

Responding to a request from a prospect or potential partner is a delicate and important communication, as our primary goal is to obtain something important for us. It could be a job or a collaboration. In any case, that communication exchange must be carefully managed so that we achieve our goal.  

Writing is a tool that humans invented and gradually structured over time to facilitate the maintenance of their communications. It is a cultural convention that allows us to have a record of thoughts and words.  

However, the way writing has evolved does not exactly reflect how our minds work. If writing is linear and sequential, our minds move more like a network. We think of one thing that leads us to another thought, and this path resembles a network more than a straight, single road, as words appear in a text.

For this reason, an approach more similar to our mental functioning, when approaching the writing of a text, is first of all to think and jot down topics in a network-like way and not as a list. This means, for example, taking a blank sheet of paper and, given the core of the topic we want to address, starting from this to jot down, without any particular order, everything that comes to mind related to it. It can be useful to write the topics in a network mode, with arrows pointing from one to another on the page. In this way, we do not trap our thoughts in a bullet-point structure that does not correspond to the flow of our minds.

Once this first step is done, the time obviously comes to bring order, and by sorting through the topics and defining their importance and relevance, we will have an outline to address in our communication.