Jul 2016: So, you’re struggling with content: gold mine or land mine?

Content can endear you to a reader, or it can alienate by failing to deliver what a title has glibly promised. It means the difference between a gold mine that enriches and intrigues, and a land mine that bombards with the shrapnel of irrelevant detail.

When discussing content research with our House of Beaufort clients, I always ask two questions:

1. Do you want your article or speech to have value and impact?
2. Do you wish to secure a loyal following?

If the answer to either question is “yes”, we then examine content research through a critical lens of:

 

It doesn’t matter which content research resource you are using (books, journals, Google, Topix, Bottlenose or Spezify) but it does matter that you:

FOCUS

Before writing her famous novel about a scientist who blindly pursues an egocentric experiment, the talented Mary Shelley conducted rigorous research into scientific issues of contemporary interest.

Frankenstein (1818) was an instant bestseller.

The focus of research should be dictated by your chosen topic: not the one you wish you were writing about; or the one that you are suddenly writing, by default.

 

Let me give you an example. Perhaps I am writing about the death of the Empress Joséphine, an event that I find interesting because its unlucky circumstances are filled with the social details that make history sparkle.

So, I do my content research using the key words or phrases that will lead me to nuggets of information.

I book-mark, print off and then make notes.

I like to  keep separate research journals for projects: they are filled with references, articles, and the ideas that are triggered by what I have read. The  benefits are reassuringly immediate because you literally watch your research project grow.

“Oh yes, but this fact is so interesting”, or worse, “if I add this anecdote, the reader won’t care that something I promised in the introduction has been forgotten…”  We have all been guilty.

I am afraid the only person who loves your digressions is the one who has the most to lose by them: You.

So, back to the death of the Empress Joséphine.

My content research is shaping up nicely. In 1815, the perfectly healthy Empress caught pneumonia after strolling through her rose gardens at Malmaison with Tsar Alexander I of Russia. The Tsar, one of the victors of Waterloo, had been her dinner guest and wanted a private tête à tête.

Despite the chilly midnight air, Joséphine refused to wear her shawl because she was proud of her white shoulders (consolation for her dreadfully  blackened teeth?  You will note that in all the portraits, she never revealed her teeth). So, there she was, strolling across the terraces, wearing a skimpy silk gown, not unlike the one in Pierre-Paul Prud’hon’s portrait.

Look closely: Joséphine is sitting on her shawl. She clearly had an issue with wearing it. “PUT IT ON!”, I want to shout.

Did you know that the Tsar had romantic feelings for the legendary empress?  The poor man, married to a matronly German princess, had once mused that had he not been born an Alexander he would have liked to have been a Napoleon. Madame, incidentally, was christened “Marie Joséphe Rose” but Napoleon, who loathed all these names, called her “Joséphine”.

Content research has now migrated dangerously off piste but I am determined  to insert my precious anecdotes, somewhere or anywhere.  Just like those Victorian drawing rooms crammed with nineteenth century bling.

I love all the details so, surely, my reader will too.

Digression has now hijacked my content focus.

So, if you do not want your writing to be taken hostage, book-mark your content digressions for another time and keep focused on the topic in hand.

FILTER

By now, you have gathered a respectable amount of content that is highly relevant to your post, paper or speech.

Now ruthlessly examine it.

Ask yourself which parts of your research will serve your writing task best.

Choose the most powerful examples or citations, not all of them.  Less is more. If you do this, you will leave the dross behind and construct an article that has a powerful and lasting impact.

So, which would you prefer?  The serene elegance of  Downton Abbey or that ostentatious Victorian drawing room?

And with that, I must return to Joséphine.  There is still time to save her from the recycling bin and do her the justice she deserves by writing a gold mine article.