Have you ever had to write a report or a well-organized RFP letter and your mind is more blank than the screen in front of you?
Do you sometimes feel that you just don’t think the way that you need to think to create a solid, organized paragraph, that your mind is more analytical, more geared toward numbers?
Well, there is a way for non-writers to produce good solid writing with the same skills that help you to produce detailed analysis and perfect spreadsheets.
First, think of what you want to say. For this example, let’s use, “Lending to Not-For-Profits.”
OK, now you know what you need to write about, type that into your computer.
Then, go a little deeper and use a structure that you already know, like SWOT. Write “Strengths,” “Weaknesses,” “Opportunities,” and “Threats” beneath it and hit enter a few times to put some room in between each topic.
Now, under your first word, “Strengths,” type some of the strengths in words, short phrases, or sentences. “A new market to grow the bank,” “To help the local community while doing good business for the bank,” “Access to referral sources;” whatever it is. Get a whole list. Don’t worry if some of them are ridiculous; you can delete those later. What is important is to get your ideas down.
Next, take these words and phrases and turn them into full sentences. Don’t worry about the order they are in. What’s important is that they are full complete ideas. You can cut-and-paste later. You can do it for each section or do it for the first section first and move on when finished.
Now you need to arrange these into some kind of order. In our example, we used “Strengths,” so I would begin by putting these sentences in order from strongest to weakest. At this point, I would also delete all of these ideas that don’t really fit. Perhaps some of these will fit under the other areas.
See what I’ve done there? Now you have a basic paragraph.
All you need to do next is to add an introductory and a transitional sentence. For the first line, simply type something like, “Let’s look at some of the Strengths of this proposal.” Your strongest ideas then follow.
At the end of the paragraph, you need to craft a transitional sentence. This will carry your ideas through to the next paragraph. Simply type something like, “Now that we have examined the strengths of the proposal, let’s look at some of the weaknesses.” See? Easy.
Now you have a pretty solid, organized piece of writing.
Once you do this for each topic, you need to put your recommendation at the end as a separate paragraph. You can craft this the same way; think of your recommendation, come up with a few ideas that support it based on the material that you have presented, flesh it out, and voila!
Like anything else, the more that you do it, the better you will get.
Don’t be intimidated by a blank screen or an empty page. Simply approach it methodically and your business writing will shine!
