Episode Details

Articles can be mundane or enthralling. But what makes an article stand out? The short answer is enthusiasm. Yet, it's not easy to know how to create enthusiasm in an article, is it? In this podcast, we learn how to step through the three phases that makes your article pack a rollicking amount of enthusiasm.

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Read the article online: #152: How To Write Enthusiastically and Avoid The Dull Article ==========

In this episode Sean talks about

Part 1: Why you need to outline and how to keep it fresh Part 2: Why you need to feel very strongly about the issue RIGHT NOW. Part 3: Why you need to be able to deviate from your script a bit and make it messy.

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What is the definition of sales?

There's are probably a lot of definitions, but back in the year 2003 or so, Canadian-born American motivational public speaker and author, Brian Tracy came to New Zealand. I loved Brian's work and got to know him personally. One of the things I really liked was his definition of sales. "Sales is a transfer of enthusiasm from one person to another".

A transfer of enthusiasm.

Wow! I always thought of sales as something grimy

Something you were forced to do to get your product or service in front of a client. With this definition, Brian changed the way I looked at sales. What he couldn't have known is that he didn't just change my perception of sales, but of communication itself. If selling could be enhanced through enthusiasm, then so could writing. Instead of just putting words on paper, an article could come alive with enthusiasm.

There's just one problem, isn't there?

How do you write enthusiastically? Are there stages or steps to follow? Not surprisingly, the stages aren't something you're unfamiliar with. The steps to enthusiastic writing are seemingly so obvious that it's easy to miss them.

Writing can get really grimy without the power of enthusiasm. It's time to find out what makes your words sing, isn't it? Let's take a look at the three steps you're going to need to put that zing in your words.

1: You need an outline. And the outline needs to be fresh. 2: You need to feel very strongly about the issue RIGHT NOW. 3: You need to be able to deviate from your script a bit and make it messy.

1: How to write enthusiastically: The "fresh" outline

The week my mother in law came to stay with us, I had to throw out all my spices.

Most people think that cooking is the act of getting ingredients together in a pot or vessel. But we also know that ingredients matter. The fresher the ingredients, the tastier the food. What we seem to forget are the spices. Like many others, I bought bottles of spices and they sat in the pantry for weeks, even months on end. My mother in law was appalled at the lack of freshness. She got me to bin the entire lot and start with a fresh lot.

An outline is a lot like stale spices

Whether you're outlining a big project, like a book, or a relatively smaller project, like an article, you're still dealing with the factor of freshness. If the outline is a week old, it's already getting relatively stale. If it's older, you're likely to be struggling to find out what you outlined in the first instance.

The reason I outline is because it saves me time

I'm not exactly the kind of person that loves to outline. The reason why I do so is because I know it gives me structure and it saves me an enormous amount of time. Even so, there's the curse called "excessive outlining".

In my desire to create a truckload of content, I'll head to the cafe and outline five or ten articles. If I get down to writing those articles within a week or two, maybe even three, I'd be fine. But as you can tell, it's practically impossible to write so many articles in such a short time span.

Which means