For Your Reading Pleasure: Rewrite, Shorten, and Simplify

This week has been a busy week in Bredemarket-land, including work on some of the following client projects:

• Creating the first deliverable as part of a three-part series of deliverables.
• Reworking that first deliverable for more precision.
• Preparing to start work on the second deliverable.
• Drafting a blog post for a client.
• Gathering information for an email newsletter for a client.
• Following up on a couple of consulting opportunities that take advantage of my identity/biometric expertise.
• Creating a promotional reel based upon the grapes in my backyard. (Yet another reel. I plan to reveal it next week.)
• Engaging in other promotional activities on Bredemarket’s key social media channels.

Plus I’ve been working on some non-Bredemarket deliverables and meetings with a significant time commitment.

But there’s one more Bredemarket deliverable that I haven’t mentioned—because I’m about to discuss it now.

The task

Without going into detail, a client required me to repurpose a piece of third-party government-authored (i.e. non-copyrighted) text, originally written for a particular market.

1. Rewrite the content for a different market.
2. Shorten the text so it would be more attractive to the new market.
3. Simplify the presentation of the text to make it even more attractive to the new market.

The request was clear, and I’ve already completed the first draft of the text and am working on the second draft.

But I wanted to dive into the three steps above—not regarding this particular client writing project, but in a more general way.

Step 1: Rewrite

When you’ve worked in a lot of different industries, you learn that each industry has its own language, including things you say—and things you don’t say.

I’ll give you an example that doesn’t reflect the particular project I was working on, but does reflect why rewriting is often necessary.

When I started in biometrics, the first two industries that I wrote about were law enforcement and benefits administration.

• Law enforcement’s primary purpose is to catch bad people, although sometimes it can exonerate good people. So when you’re talking about law enforcement applications, you frequently use a lot of terms that are negative in nature, such as “surveillance,” “suspect,” and “mugshot.”
• Benefits administration’s primary purpose is to help good people, although sometimes it can catch bad people who steal benefits from good people. So when you’re talking about benefits administration applications, you tend toward more positive terms such as “beneficiary.” And if you take a picture of a beneficiary’s face, for heaven’s sake DON’T REFER TO THE FACIAL IMAGE AS A “MUGSHOT.”

These two examples illustrate why something originally written for “market 1” must often be rewritten for “market 2.”

But sometimes a simple rewrite isn’t enough.

Step 2: Shorten

Now I don’t play in the B2C market in which crisp text is extremely necessary. But it’s needed in the various B2G and B2B markets also—some more than others.

If you are writing for more scientific markets, your readers are more accustomed to reading long, academic, “Sage”-like blocks of text.

But if you are writing for other markets, such as hospitality, your readers not only don’t want to read long blocks of text, but actively despise it.

You need to “get to the point.”

In my particular project, “market 1” was one of those markets that valued long-windedness, while “market 2” clearly didn’t. So I had to cut the text down significantly, using the same techniques that I use when rewriting my “draft 0.5” (which a client NEVER sees) to my “draft 1” (which I turn over to the client).

But sometimes a simple shorten isn’t enough.

Step 3: Simplify

If you know me, you know I’m not graphically inclined.

But I still pay attention to the presentation of my words.

Remember those long blocks of text that I mentioned earlier? One way to break them up is to use bullets.

• Bullets break up long blocks of text into manageable chunks.
• Bullets are easier to read.

So your reader will be very happy.

But as I was editing this particular piece of content, sometimes I ran into long lists of bullets, which weren’t really conducive to the reading experience.

Question	Answer	What does this mean?
Why are long lists of bullets bad?	Because with enough repetition, they’re just as bad as long blocks of text.	Your readers will tune you out.
How can you format long lists of bullets into something easier to read?	One way is to convert the bullets into a table with separate entries.	Your readers will enjoy a more attractive presentation.
What do tables do for your reader?	They arrange the content in two dimensions rather than one.	The readers’ eyes move in two directions, rather than just one.
Hey, wait a minute…	Yeah, I just plugged my seven questions again by intentionally using the first three: why, how, and what.	You can go here to download the e-book “Seven Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You.”

So what happened?

After I had moved through the three steps of rewriting, shortening, and simplifying the original content, I had a repurposed piece of content that was much more attractive to the “hungry people” (target audience) who were going to read it.

These people wouldn’t fall asleep while reading the content, and they wouldn’t be offended by some word that didn’t apply to them (such as “mugshot”).

So don’t be afraid to repurpose—even for a completely different market.

I do it all the time.

Look at two of my recent reels. Note the differences. But note the similarities.

So which of Bredemarket’s markets do you think will receive the “grapes” reel?

Stay tuned.