From Stage to Page: Turning Messages into Manuscripts

James Watkins  © 2007

 

 

 

Charles Spurgeon did it.  John Wesley did it.  Peter Marshall did it.

     And I suspect that, today,

          Joyce Meyer, Charles Stanley, Beth Moore and even

              Max Lucado

                   are doing it.

 

And, since you’re in this class, you probably want to do it, too.

 

Those speakers and pastors are taking their sermons or teachings

     and turning them into books.

 

And, there’s probably not a pastor or public speaker alive

     who hasn’t thought,

          I’ll record my talk, transcribe it and send it to a publisher

 

But the spoken word and the written word are

     two very different animals

          They’re both forms of communication

              but that’s like saying

                    in the cat family you have

                        Siamese kittens and Saber Tooth tigers

                             they’re both cats

                                  but very different

 

So, today, we’re going to look at the differences between

     speaking and writing

          look at the similarities

              and provide some practical ways to go from

                   the stage to the page . . .

 

Let’s take a look at the differences

     Draw a line down the middle of your paper

          On the left write STAGE

              and on the right PAGE

 

Stage                                                         Page

 

On the stage, you have a variety of items

     in your tool box

 

     You have your voice (which makes up 30 percent of our communication)

          A versatile tool that includes

              tone of voice

              volume

              melodic quality

 

          Not talking about words, but the actual voice

              Tim Allen’s “Home Improvement” made grunting a sophisticated

              form of communication

                   Surprise

                   Fear

                   Pride

 

     You have your body language (which make up over 50 percent “)

          Gestures

          Facial expressions

              Did your Mom or Dad have “the look”?

                   You’re cutting up and church and they just have to give you the                              

                   “look”

                        And you know you’ll be spending Sunday afternoon

                        in your room

          Body movements

              [Arms crossed]

              [Arms open]

         

     You have props

          Local in the local parish, I used lots of props in my messages

              I rode the down aisle on a bicycle with a white shirt and black

              pants

                   and gave a message as if I was a Mormon “missionary”

                        and so pointing out the unbiblical religion

              I spoke from Philippians 3 about everything being trash

                   compared to knowing Christ

                        so would put something in a trash can to make point

                             T-itles (ordination certificate)

                             R-ches (my new guitar)

                             A-ccomplishments (Campus Life award plaque)

                             S-holarship  (transcript from grad school)

                             H-oliness (legalism; a book I edited on holiness)

          And one Sunday, made waffles on the platform

              as I talked about political and spiritual “waffling”

 

     Oh, and you also have a words (which makes up only 10 percent of our

          daily conversation)

 

But when you open your writer’s tool box,

     there’s no voice

          [surprise, fear grunts]

          no body language

          no props

              Nothing but words!

                   You’ve gone from the stage’s 100 percent effect

                   down to 10 percent

                        Black ink on white paper

                        Pixels on a computer screen

 

That’s why simply transcribing a sermon or teaching rarely works

     You just lost 90 percent of the effect!

 

On the stage, you’re in front of the audience; in writing, you’re in front of a computer screen

 

     You’re probably known as a speaker

          If you’re speaking in your church, Sunday school class

              to an organization that you’re a member

                   There’s a relationship there

                   You know them, they know you

                   You both know the appropriate behaviors for that setting

 

     In writing, you may not have a relationship with your readers

          They’re reading a magazine and come upon your article

          They’re surfing the Web and happen to click on your site

              How are you going to connect with your readers?

 

          Here are some ways to do that on the page:

 

              Get sample copies of the magazine

              Read the writer’s guide

                   At the teen magazine I edited for six year,

                   we had surveyed youth camps in our denomination

                        We new exactly who our read was:

 

Jennifer is fifteen years old, a Christian, and attends church and youth meetings faithfully. She doesn’t have a regular time alone with God and rarely reads her Bible. Jennifer has a pretty good understanding of salvation, but is unsure about the denomination’s emphases on “entire sanctification.” A good friend has tried sex and drugs, but she hasn’t. She has a crush on a guy at church, but he acts like she doesn’t exist. She has no convictions against dating a non-Christian, but is not sure where she stands about marrying a non-Christian.

 

          So, as I dug through the pile of unsolicited manuscripts on my desk,

                   I was only interested in articles that would

                   effectively communicate with Jennifer.

 

          All magazines have “writers guidelines” that provide detailed   information on their readers.

 

On the stage, you’re known and trusted, on the page you may not be

 

          Obviously they know you and trust you as a speaker

              or they’d never let you near a lectern or pulpit

                   People are going to believe what you say because you

                   have a history with the audience

 

     Hopefully, in writing

          the magazine is an old friend

              They’re been subscribing to it for years

 

          Or, the reader trusts the book publisher

              When you write for denominational houses

                   they really run the author through the theological gauntlet

                        One publisher actually has an

                             editorial committee

                             marketing committee

                             and doctrinal committee

 

Two of the most important ways to connect with your reading audience

     Honesty, transparency

          Ernest Hemmingway wrote that--and I’m paraphrasing--

          a good writer has a good “poop” detector

              He or is not false in anyway

 

     I think readers have an even more powerful poop detector

 

     So honesty and transparency earn you credibility

          That’ probably the reason Ann Lamott is popular in both

          Christian and general markets

              She is incredibly honest and transparent

 

Second is Humor

     There’s even been scholarly, university studies on the effectiveness of humor

     Yes, your tax dollars have actually paid for nearly one hundred

     government-funded studies of humor.

 

     There is solid proof that humor increases

          attention,

          comprehension,

          and retention

 

     If we can laugh together, there’s a sense of connection

          That’s happened to me, too!

          I’ve felt that way, too!

 

On the stage, you have feedback; on the page you have little

 

          I love talking to black audiences because they talk back

              “That’s right”

              “Uh huh”

              “You preach it”

                   You get into the rhythm like you’re playing tennis

                        You serve an idea

                             and they return the ball

 

          With any group, you’re receiving feedback from “yahs” to yawns,

                   so, you can quickly adapt your presentation by

                             picking up or slowing down the tempo,

                             explaining a point that’s eliciting looks of confusion, or

                             skipping minor points to quickly conclude

                                      (if you haven’t struck oil in twenty minutes, stop boring!).

 

     So, as a speaker, you’re constantly adjusting your speech

     to the audience’s reaction

 

          At a recent conference, a woman actually fell off her seat

          laughing

              She could not stop

              Then she got me laughing

                   It was hard to get back on track

 

      Speaking creates an energy not present in the written word.

          Reading a book or an article is a solitary experience.

              But when you are surrounded by hundreds of other people,

                        reacting to the message,

                   there is an energy and excitement.

 

          And, one theory of persuasion argues that

              we don’t know what we think

                   until we sense the reactions of those around us

                        That doesn’t happen with reading

 

Except for an occasional fan letter or what we called

     “Dear Heathen Scum” letters little feedback

 

     So you have to solicit feedback before you write

          Writing critique groups

              Make sure it’s a critique group and no

              “Say something nice about me and I’ll say something nice

              about you.”

 

          Focus groups

              at WPH we would bring in actual Sunday school teachers and

              teenagers

                   to critique the curriculum before we ever went to press

 

          Hire your daughter and her friends

              The $50 bucks I paid them well worth it

                   “You really don’t want to use that word?”

                   “Why?”

                   “Well, it, ah, it doesn’t mean what you think it means to teens.”

 

          And of course an editor

              When I was editorial director at WPH

                   I would tell the editor who worked for me

                   “Treat my article like you would any other manuscript.
                        She was a former English teacher with a red pen

 

              My manuscript would look like the “St. Valentine Day Massacre”

              when she got done.

                   So to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln

                        “The person who is his own editor,

                        has a fool for a client.”

 

          Editors are our friends

          Let’s say it together, “Editor are our friends.”

              I knew you could.

 

So, in writing, your audience is unseen, but it’s not un-knowable

 

On the stage, it’s live, it’s improvised

On the page, it’s all “canned

 

     That’s why I’d rather be writing or speaking

          With speaking, it’s like the Olympics

              No matter how much practice you’ve put into the talk

              inevitably there will be glitches

                   You lose your place

                   Your train of thought derails

                   A child falls out of the balcony

                        It turned out to be a doll, but really lost my timing

 

          You’re going to mispronounce something

              “Fiery darts” got transposed

              While speaking to a large school assembly in Australia

                   I mentioned that I “root” for the Chicago Bulls

                        A stunned silence came over the audience

                        I had no idea “root” in their F-word

 

     In print, everything is in your control

          and if you don’t catch a faux pas, hopefully the editor will

 

     In fact, I’ve gone to doing only email interviews

          I can carefully think through the question

              choose my words

              and let it set a day or two to make sure that’s what I really

                   want to say

 

     I get in trouble when I ad lib!

          And I’m ADD, so I can get very distracted

          Which is why my notes are also in manuscript form

 

     So writing is a controlled, safe environment

 

On the stage, you can use 4,500 words, on the page 1,500

     A half hour talk will use up about 4,500 words

          speaking at 150 words per minute

 

     In an article or a book chapter

          slash that by one-third

              You’ve got to “write tight”

 

On the stage, you may speak to a thousand people

     on the page, you can easily reach 100 thousand

 

          Speaking may be the most effective mode of persuasion,

          but it’s not the most efficient.

 

          For instance, I recently spoke to one hundred people at a seminar.

                   I spent a day working on the talk and

                   then one day at the nearby district campground delivering it.                               

                             So, my ratio of impact was fifty people per day.

 

          That same week, I spent a day writing an article for Decision

          magazine which reaches 1.8 million readers.

                   To reach that many at one hundred people at a time,

                   I would have to speak 18,000 days in a row or

                   for 4,931 years!

                             My ratio of impact was exponentially greater.

 

And there is the advantage that the talk is somewhat permanent

when put into print.

          Every so often I’ll get an email saying how the person

          was helped by the article

                   They must have read it in a waiting room

                   or were cleaning out their magazine rack

                             because I wrote in ten years ago!

         

          Online writing is even better since it’s available indefinitely,

                   long after the magazine is in the recycle bin,

                   to a worldwide audience.

 

The New Testament implies that Apollos was a much better speaker

          than the apostle Paul.

                   And during the time of the famous preacher Charles Spurgeon,

                   another pastor in London was actually considered a

                   better preacher.

 

So why do we know the names of Paul and Spurgeon over

           Apollos and “another pastor”?

                   They both wrote!

                             Paul penned nearly half the New Testament and

                             Spurgeon published his weekly sermons as well as

                             a monthly magazine.

 

In fact, we wouldn’t have the message of God’s love and redemption or

the teachings of Jesus Christ if not for writing!

          Neither would we have the writings of Augustine, Thomas a Kempis,       

                   John Wesley, C.S. Lewis, Oswald Chambers, A. W. Tozer, or hundreds others through the ages.

                   Parchment, papyrus, and paper have kept the message of Christ alive and in its original, unadulterated                              form.

 

For the audience’s perspective, on stage a person is speaking to hundreds or thousands; on the page the author is speaking directly to you.

 

     Writing is personal.

          I won a Campus Life “Book of the Year” contest in which

          the judges were teens.

              One wrote, “Jim Watkins is not an author.” (Ouch!)

                   “No, it’s more like he’s sitting across from you at                                                    

                   McDonalds sharing Diet Cokes.”

                        (Okay, I can live with that.)

 

Reading is an intimate,

     one-on-one “conversation” between the writer and the reader.

          You’re not sitting at a conference with a thousand others

          listening to a speaker,

              but the author is talking directly to you.

 

Another advantage of reading is that you set the time and place,

     as well as the pace.

          Unlike other forms of mass communication,

               even audio books,

                   you can read as slowly or quickly as you like.

 

     You can easily go back and re-read a section that isn’t clear.

     And, you can highlight, underline, dog ear, and

          make notes in the margins in a magazine or book.

          (Try doing that with your iPpod!)

 

On your notes, now draw a line from the stage side to the page side

     because there are lot of similarities

 

Both require a great introduction

 

A good lead attracts attention

     Think of it as those screaming announcers on car commercials.

          “AT CRAZY CARL’S CAR CORRAL,

          WE’LL PUT YOU IN A BRAND NEW CAR WITH

              NO MONEY DOWN, NO PAYMENTS FOR THREE MONTHS.

          PLUS. . . .”

 

Dr. Dennis Hensley lists his “top ten” attention grabbers:

 

1. Competition

2. Conflict

3. Controversy

4. Consequences

5. Familiar or famous people

6. Human interest

7. Humor

8. A common problem

9. Success

10. The unknown, weird, bizarre.

 

Madison Avenue has its own list of never-miss human interest:

 

Love

Sex

Hate

Fear

Vanity

Selfishness

Ambition

Immorality

Evildoing

Cruelty

Superstition

Curiosity

Vindication

Culture

Heroism

Science

Amusements

 

A good lead establishes the subject

Within a few seconds, your audience should know the exact subject.

 

A good lead sets the tone

Is this a humorous piece? Is it a scholarly work? Is it a touching personal experience story? Is it a thriller?

 

A good lead doesn’t make promises it can’t keep

     Back to our car commercial.