Deliver one valuable takeaway for your readers in every piece you write.
Easy to say. But is it easy to do? Let’s look at how to deliver takeaways you readers can use, by examining that first sentence. Backwards.
“In every piece you write”
Nothing you take the time to write should be pointless. AI already generates plenty of word fluff and space filler. You need to rise above that wasted space. Writing is your opportunity to give something meaningful to others. Make it count. If you find yourself sitting down to write a regularly scheduled piece “just because you have to,” pause and arm yourself against turning out vapid content.
Your writing—from today’s social post to a magnum opus hardcover book—should always bestow value.
But value for whom?
“For your readers”
Know your audience well enough to write a personalized piece they will find value in. Write to an individual you can picture from your ideal audience.
Identify their needs, interests, desires, concerns. Then make sure your written piece addresses one of those needs or concerns. Design it to appeal to their interests and desires.
And one more thing: Make sure it appears in their favorite reading format(s). Place it where they’ll find it. If they don’t read magazines, don’t hide your valuable content in an article.
“One valuable takeaway”
Your writing should leave readers with a meaningful, memorable takeaway. The kind they’ll post on their bathroom mirrors or stick to their laptop. Maybe it’s a principle or affirmation they will carry into their personal battles. Or perhaps it’s a challenge you hope they’ll take up.
Like the opening sentence in this blog post, make sure you can state the takeaway clearly to yourself before you ever try communicating it to your reader.
Is a takeaway the same as a call to action (CTA)? Not exactly. Readers respond to a CTA because they’ve first internalized your takeaway, and then they see your CTA is the right next step to take. So they take it.
As an example:
- A magazine article on elder care describes the consequences of older people failing to eat a balanced diet. Readers’ takeaway could be stated as “Providing reliable nutrition for aging loved ones is vital for their long and healthy lives.”
- Readers may then decide to respond to the call to action: “Sign your family member up to receive nutritious, ready-to-eat meals with our delivery service.”
Whether or not a reader of the above article chooses to act on the call to action, they received the takeaway reminding them to care for their aging family member’s health.
“One valuable takeaway”
Focus on only one takeaway per written piece. This is especially true for short-form pieces like blog posts, essays, or social media posts. And while an entire book may include several secondary messages, they must all serve the one overarching premise.
Packing multiple takeaways into one piece of written work dilutes their individual power. Readers today don’t have the bandwidth to ingest a firehose of value. Don’t repel them with the vastness of your expertise. Attract them with a targeted, tightly focused message. Focused writing shows you know them and you have what they’re looking for.
If you have multiple messages to communicate, write multiple pieces. Break that overloaded blog post into a series of posts. Is your book manuscript on “how to set better goals and reach them” getting bogged down under an avalanche of stepwise details? Write one book on goal-setting, another on time management, and another on habit formation.
As William Zinsser said in his timeless book, On Writing Well,
"Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn’t have before. Not two thoughts, or five—just one.”
Your single takeaway is king. Beyond setting the scope of your content, it dictates your tone and your word choice.
Two examples:
- For an article with a takeaway warning of impending economic trouble: The writer’s tone will be urgent and authoritative, choosing convincing, persuasive words.
- For an organization’s history that aims to leave readers thinking, “Sometimes nice guys finish first”: The tone will be friendly and conversational, sprinkled with easy-to-read, heartwarming anecdotes (light on stats and data) to draw readers through the story.
King Takeaway also decides your title. Your title is your reader’s first clue to what value they can expect from your writing. It tells them what question you will answer, which need you will meet, which mindset you will challenge.
Writer’s block tip:
Stuck for a takeaway?
Experiment with writing the title first.
Craft a title you like, then write to deliver the takeaway it promises.
“Deliver”
A takeaway that gets lost in a jungle of words never arrives on your reader’s mental doorstep. You have to deliver it—clearly, concisely, deliberately.
What will be your delivery system? How you deliver that one valuable takeaway will be shaped in part by your chosen writing format. What length, complexity, and reading level is best for the readers of a piece like yours? You’ll write a full-length book differently from an article being submitted under a certain magazine’s guidelines.
Your delivery system also takes shape from the nature of your takeaway.
Think of your takeaway as a thesis statement. Your written piece constitutes the argument for that thesis. How will you give readers a convincing case for your takeaway?
Some of the tools you can choose from include these:
- Comparisons or contrasts
- Illustrations: examples, case studies, graphs or charts
- Logical series of steps or sequential cause/effect statements
- Scenes from personal experience
- Testimonials, authoritative quotes, customer reviews, user-generated content
For example, let’s say a memoir delivers the takeaway, “Forgiveness releases us from bitterness and anger.” The author could select scenes that convey the gravity of an offense followed by others that contrast the effects of forgiveness versus unforgiveness.
In narrative writing, you have to allow readers to deduce the takeaway. Stating it outright breaks the fourth wall, like a playwright shouting at the audience from the leading edge of the stage, “Did you get it? Here’s what I’m saying…” Instead, provide them with scenes in which they can experience what it looks and feels like when real people live out your takeaway—or fail to. Be like a fiction writer: tell a story that reveals truth, don’t teach a lesson thinly disguised as story.
Memoir-writing tip:
If a “takeaway” from memoir is hard to pin down, consider these words from Vivian Gornick in The Situation and the Story:
“What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.”
The forms in which you write, and your goals in writing, can vary widely. Yet one piece of wisdom holds true for them all.
Every piece of writing needs to deliver one—and only one—takeaway of value to the reader.
It’s worth the work of careful writing and re-writing to guarantee that delivery goes directly to your reader’s doorstep.
Start working with Karen today
Today could be the day your load gets lighter.
Ask Karen Ingle to make that happen.
