There are few things as comforting as structure. Whether it’s a training programme for a triathlon or a project plan to build a palace in Dubai it gives you a path and a sense that something challenging is actually possible.
If you are writing a book or a proposal a good structure worked out in advance is a design on which you can you hang your ideas in a way that will influence the reader.
Years back I was working on a consulting project which had me living in a hotel for weeks at a time. In order to resist the temptation of evening trips to the bar I enrolled in an online journalism course. I didn’t want a career in journalism as the impact of digital media was already apparent but I was interested in learning some of the tools of the trade of the writers whose work I admired. Some of them entertained me, some informed me and some had such an impact that their stories changed the nature of my society.
A lot of my approach to writing comes from what I learned during those months. The most useful tool was probably the inverted pyramid approach to structuring communication.
It gives the reader information in a descending order of importance.
The Lead
The opening sentence or paragraph captures the essence of the story. This is known as the Lead. Should the reader decide to stop reading and move on to another piece they’ll have an understanding of the core issue.
The Body
The next section – the Body provides information that elaborates on the message contained in the lead. This can be a more detailed description of what has actually occurred, why it’s important along with supporting evidence.
The Tail
Finally the Tail contains less consequential information, such as the background, that is interesting and nice to have but not essential to understanding the story.
This approach works for individual pieces such as writing an executive summary or outlining an aspect of your solution in response to a question. It also works perfectly as a way of structuring a free-form proposal.
This graphic gives more information on what you can include in each segment of the approach.
What next?
I run a business writing training programme called Words That Win that teaches you and your team how to write clearly and with impact. It’s for anybody who is involved in developing content for both internal and external communication as well as business development teams who need to bid for large contracts. Drop me a message if you’d like to chat.
