Throughout my more than 25 year career as an independent marketing writer, I’ve had to learn to adjust my tone, voice and style instantaneously whenever I’m changing assignments – which may be several times a day. That may mean that one minute I’m writing a launch web page for a new car and the next I’m working on a white paper about the issue of outsourcing in the telecommunications industry. Or writing about the benefits of stem cell therapies and then switching to lyrics for a rap song about orange juice. To make these abrupt transitions I found they key was to envision a tangible series of dials that I would adjust as would a pilot to make sure everything is geared to finding the most effective route to a specific destination. I actually imagined aircraft gauges and controls. They would measure everything from emotional pitch to rhythm, while defining the the right voice for the relationship I want to develop between the reader and writer. Sometimes that means turning up the heat, writing in a more aggressive tone, while other times the relationship is peer-to-peer, requiring a balanced dialogue between the writer and reader. The result is the Power Writing Dashboard. Now, instead of just winging it when it comes to shifting tone and voice, you can benchmark these factors so you can write with a deliberate character and manner in mind. That’s how you achieve a consistent voice that’s perfectly in sync with your content.
The Power Writing Dashboard represents a tangible way of “setting the dials” during a your writing process. It’s one of the ways that Writeup helps you think about writing in different ways during our workshops.