Daniel Ariely interviews Malcolm Gladwell about ways to reorganize thinking

A snippet from a Daniel Ariely interview of Malcolm Gladwell on JournalistsResource.org.

Ariely: In the process of trying to write things that influence peoples’ minds, what have you learned about people? What have you learned about the psychology of people?

Gladwell: I’ve learned that if you tell your story properly, people are very, very open-minded — far more open-minded than I would’ve thought. Or to put it in a more sophisticated way: People are information-rich and theory-poor. If you can give them a way of organizing their experience, then their minds are wide open. Which I would not have not have necessarily thought. And if you can frame questions appropriately you can overcome all kinds of ideological — what you would have thought of — as ideological constraints. So I’ve been continuously surprised. I always thought my book, because I am a political liberal, that my books would have heavily liberal audiences. But in fact they don’t….

Ariely: But they are also not very liberal books. Do you read them as being liberal?

Gladwell: I read them as liberal. But this is another case of: How I read my books is irrelevant to how they are read.

Ariely: But it’s interesting that you think it’s the theory, not the data. That I think is fascinating. That it’s about the organizing principles.

Gladwell: It’s about the principles. The books always give people these kind of broader theories, because that’s what they go to first. Then they’ll fill in the gap with the data. But they want some way of reorganizing their view of things. That’s what potent.

How Malcolm Gladwell finds ideas

People ask writers how they find ideas all the time. I always thought it was a reasonable question, so I was pleased to learn that these pros apparently think so too.



Malcolm Gladwell being interviewed by Daniel Ariely on JournalistsResource.org.

Ariely: So the first thing I want to ask you is: How do you pick your topics?

Gladwell: I don’t really know — I mean, desperation? … I see things and I collect them, and I think they might be interesting. But there’s no theory or system. I go to the library sometimes, and I just sort of roam around; or I go on the databases and I just type in things at random, or I get articles and read through the bibliography…. But there’s no rhyme or reason. Someone will say something to me interesting, and I’ll follow up on it or something. To be a writer I think you’re kind of constitutionally disposed toward optimism.

Storycraft: Nonfiction genres

Storycraft is a superb writing book and I recommend it very highly. Two thumbs up!

Jack Hart, the former writing coach for the Oregonian, is widely regarded as one of the best nonfiction editors ever. In his book Storycraft he describes several nonfiction genres.

They include: story narrative, exploratory narrative, narrative profile, tick-tock, vignette, bookend, personal essay, columns, first person narrative issue, travel and straight informational. For my own reference I've added cookbook, how-to and technical manual. (I need an acronym to remember these formats.)

Each of these genres has specific needs and requirements when it comes to research and preparation. The narrative nonfiction (story narrative) piece needs close observation in the field, lots of details, lots of anecdotes, a sympathetic protagonist, a story, and a narrative arc with a beginning a middle and an end.

Story narrative

Also known as creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, and telling true stories. Protagonist with a story. Dramatic tension. Unfolds in three acts. Has a resolution. Lots of color, emotion, and drama. Lots of specific details. Lots of anecdotes and quotes. Strong narrative arc.

Exploratory Narrative

A description that follows a series of actions. It’s based on careful observation. Close to the ground. Lots of specific detail and movement. Strong digressions. No narrative arc.

Narrative profile

Portrait an individual. See subject in action. A picture of his or her world. Strong digressions. No narrative arc.

Tick Tock

Follow event from beginning to end, often from several different perspectives. No narrative arc.

Vignette

Also known as “Journalistic Haiku” or “tone poems” Hart says, “A vignette is a single scene, standing alone. (The techniques of scenic construction described in Storycraft) offer guidelines that also apply to writing vignettes. Like all scenes, a vignette includes an action line running through a geographical place.” Often around 1000 words in length.

Bookend narrative

Hart opens with the image of two marble elephants holding up a row of books to represent the “structure of a bookend narrative. . . . To write one, you bracket a stretch of expository material with two pieces of more engaging scenic action, opening and closing with narrative that has the power to hold the longer, duller content in the center.” Jack Hart, Storycraft page 207. The opening may be followed by a ‘turn,’ or a step up in abstraction.

Personal essay

The personal essay, with “experiences offered lessons for the rest of humanity. To teach those lessons, of course, you must first re-create your own experience so that others can share in it.” Hart, Jack. Storycraft (p. 208). Usually around 1000 words.

Hart calls this “One of the most useful and adaptive varieties of modern narrative forms.” It includes “a narrative, a turn, and a conclusion. They’re inductive, in other words, moving from the particular (a deformed child), then rising on the ladder of abstraction.” Hart, Jack. Storycraft (P 210).

Useful when something affects you emotionally and you don’t know why.

He recommends this structure for a personal essay of 1000 words:

“Part 1, The Narrative. Quite detailed, 650 words.

Part 2, The Turn 150 words specific to general.

Part 3, 200 words, quite abstract.”

When the reader follows the writer from detailed to abstract, it’s called a “crossover.” Hart, Jack. Storycraft (p. 213).

Columns

“Newspaper, magazine, and online columns usually run about eight hundred words. Most are think pieces, commenting on some recent event and including standard report-writing devices such as statistics and direct quotations. But eight hundred words provide plenty of room for a little narrative. And, in fact, some of the most successful columns attract loyal readers with storytelling skills, rather than table-pounding opinion. Mike Royko, a syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist who for years was one of the country’s most popular, often took a storytelling tack, frequently featuring his mythical alter ego, Slats Grobnik.” Hart, Jack (2011-06-15). Storycraft (p. 214).

First Person Narrative Issue Essays

“An essay, it’s been said, is a way of “taking an idea for a walk.” In the case of narrative issue essays, the metaphor’s literally true. The essay writer’s legwork carries her from source to source, exploring issues, poking and probing, looking for information that will help expand the idea. Such quests are a magazine mainstay, and serious publications such as Harper’s and the New Yorker feature first-person essays that explore issues in narrative form. " Hart, Jack (2011-06-15). Storycraft

Straight Informational

Standard telegraphic newspaper article. Starts with the most important information first. And covers the 5 W’s. Who, what, where, when, why.

Travel

Narrative chunks are useful to give character to otherwise bland informational writing.

And two more...

Two more structures, from my own experience.

Cookbook and How To

My book, Digital Video Secrets is in this genre. I used narrative snippets to spice up a series of How-To procedures. No narrative arc.

Technical manual

A reference book, a compendium of useful and accurate information written for a specific audience in a specific situation.

A technical manual is close to a phone book in tone: it has no narrative arc, no personality, no humor, no anecdotes, and no details.

The voice is declarative and flat with no ambiguity. “Turn the power on.” The technical manual is unreadable as literature.

Good technical manuals have hidden qualities that are invisible to outsiders. The technical writer must: define the audience accurately, understand the device or program exhaustively, review customer service calls, do a task analysis, write clearly and simply, write for an international audience, test various drafts and revise them accordingly, and use illustrations and photographs to explain things.

Launching a new idea in a post-paper world

I am working on a new nonfiction book. My options for publishing it are:

1. Distribute it for free as a manifesto.
2. Sell it as an ebook.
3. Sell it to a traditional publisher.

Seth Godin shows how to do option 1 in a brilliant post: Launching a new idea in a post-paper world.

Godin's free manifesto is Stop Stealing Dreams.

Where's Tony?

I am in the middle of finishing a difficult book manuscript.



Not much time or energy for anything else.

12 blogging tools from Erica Reitman

Erica Reitman is the founder and owner of the blog Fucked in Park Slope. She started her blog from scratch, posting irreverent comments about her Brooklyn neighborhood. Fucked In Park Slope now gets 500,000 page views a day and employs 14 writers and a full time managing editor.

This list is taken from notes I made during a talk Reitman gave to a social media marketing boot camp I attended last year.

Reitman says the first thing to understand about blogging is that it is a huge time-sink. One of the keys to coping with the work load is having the right tools. She recommended these:

1) Skitch
A screengrab and lightweight picture editing program. Use it to do quick edits (crop, add callouts, etc) to make photos fun and interesting. Mac only. For the PC she suggested Jing.

2) Evernote
Evernote is a powerful online notebook for everything you find online. You can tag stuff as you capture it. She uses it to keep story ideas, information for the blog, and links to useful tools. With a $5 Premium account you can share notebooks with others. (Highly recommended.)

3) Pinterest
A visual notebook. Pinterest is a cross between photo album and notebook. It is a great space to save ideas. It is also a social network. She uses it to save images for blog posts, and as an image search tool. When she needs a quick idea for a post on her blog, she browses the images for inspiration. Pinterest is a good place to
search for images because the photos are curated. It is also a good way to discover neat blogs and people.

4) Morgue file
A source of royalty and credit free photos you can use on your blog.Moguefile is a public image archive "by creatives, for creatives." Reitman says she is a "super fascist" about having a picture with EVERY SINGLE POST. So... I went to morguefile, searched for "Brooklyn diner" and found this attractive image.



(Morguefile also has a "paid" side to their website where for a small fee you can buy rights to even more images. And if you are going to publish the photo for money, check the rights.)

5) Flickr pool
Once you build a following on your blog, you can ask your readers take photos and post them in a Flikr pool. You can start a group (pool) around any topic you want. Fliker pool can also be a good source of royalty free images.

6) Disqus (prounounced discuss)
A social media commenting system. People can add photos, text, etc. Discus helps you build a community on your blog site. Strangers who are passing by cannot see the comments.

7) An editorial calendar
Reitman said "You must have an editorial calendar!" On the calendar write a schedule of what you plan to post, and when. The calendar gets more important the bigger you get.

8) SMO Books
Nifty little pocket-size log books with a few concise how-to pages in each book. They help keep you on track for making regular and effective blog posts. (SMO books were suggested by one of the class members.)

9) Kapost
Kapost is a way to manage content when you have more than one writer on your blog. When you have several people working on columns and stories, managing everything quickly becomes a second job.

10) isocket
An easy way to sell ads on your site. Allows you to manage your own ad sales. With isocket you can set up a self-service area on your blog for people to set up their own ads and check stats, etc. The system is super easy from a publisher standpoint. Good way to get exposed to people who want to buy ad space on your site.

11) Outbrain
Outbrain is a tool that ensures none of your site's content is dead. All posts link back to other related posts on blog. Site visitors have access to content even after it has cycled off page. (Outbrain has tools to increase revenue, but I have not used them. -tl)

12) Zinio
Keeping up with your reading is important, and Zinio can help. Zinio is a mobile reading app so you can read all your magazines online. Transfer all your existing subscriptions to Zinio and you have your magazines with you at all times. Works with iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac & PC.

Seth Godin's lessons from the Domino project

Today, Seth Godin wrote about what he learned from The Domino Project in a blog post titled The last hardcover. In the post, Godin also announced that he is closing down the Domino Project after publishing a string of 11 best selling books.

I've copied his entire post here. It is a brilliant analysis of book publishing and writing in the digital age.

Tony

*******************************************************

"Today the Domino Project is publishing Sarah Kay's new book. It's a short poem, a great gift and a book I'm proud to publish by an author on her way to big things. I hope you'll take a look.

"Almost exactly a year after we started, Sarah's book is the last print book we'll be launching. Twelve books, twelve bestsellers, published in many languages around the world.

"I've posted a history of what we built, along with some of what we learned along the way.

"By most of the measures I set out at the beginning, the project has been a success. So why stop? Mostly because it was a project, not a lifelong commitment to being a publisher of books. Projects are fun to start, but part of the deal is that they don't last forever.

"The goal was to explore what could be done in a fast-changing environment. Rather than whining about the loss of the status quo, I thought it would be interesting to help invent a new status quo and learn some things along the way. Here are a few of my takeaways:

"Permission is still the most important and valuable asset of the web (and of publishing). The core group of 50,000 subscribers to the Domino blog made all the difference in getting the word out and turning each of our books into a bestseller. It still amazes me how few online merchants and traditional publishers (and even authors) have done the hard work necessary to create this asset. If you're an author in search of success and you don't pursue this with singleminded passion, you're making a serious error. (See #2 on my advice for authors post from five years ago, or the last part of my other advice for authors post from six years ago.)

"The ebook is a change agent like none the book business has ever seen. It cuts the publishing time cycle by 90%, lowers costs, lowers revenue and creates both a long tail and an impulse-buying opportunity. This is the most disruptive thing to happen to books in four hundred years. It's hard for me to see significant ways traditional book publishers can add the value they're used to adding when it comes to marketing ebooks, unless they get busy with #1.

"Booksellers have a starfish problem. Without permission (see #1) it's almost impossible for a publisher to be heard above the noise, largely because long tail merchants haven't built the promotional tools traditional retailers have long used to highlight one title over another. You used to be able to buy useful and efficient shelf space at a retailer. Hard to do that now.

"There is still (and probably will be for a while) a market for collectible editions, signed books and other special souvenirs that bring the emotional component of a book to the fore. While most books merely deliver an idea or a pasttime, for some books and some readers, there's more than just words on paper. Just as vinyl records persist, so will books. Not because a reader can't get the information faster or cheaper, but because there's something special about molecules and scarcity.

"When you combine #1, #3 and #4, you get to Kickstarter, which it seems to me, is going to be ever more important, particularly to new authors, authors that don't write genre ebooks and anyone with a tribe who wants to produce something like a book.

"Sponsored ebooks are economically irresistible to readers, to sponsors and to authors. I'm proud to have pioneered this, and I think it's a trend worth pursuing. The value transfer to the reader is fabulous (hey, a great book, for free), and the sponsor gets to share in some of that appreciation. The author gets a guaranteed payday as well as the privilege of reaching ten or a hundred times as many readers.

"The ebook marketing platform is in its technical infancy. There are so many components that need to be built, that will. Ebooks are way too hard to give as gifts and to share. Too hard to integrate into social media. And the ebook reader is a lousy platform for discovery and promotion of new titles (what a missed chance). All that will happen, the road map is there, but it's going to take commitment from Apple, B&N and Amazon.

"If you're an author, pick yourself. Don't wait for a publisher to pick you. And if you work for a big publishing house, think really hard about the economics of starting your own permission-based ebook publisher. Now's the time.

"Most of all, the character of people in the world of books hasn't changed since I started in this business 27 years ago. Every author I dealt with was a delight. Smart, passionate, honest, humble (and yes, good looking). Readers sense this, I think, and treat books and the people who make them very differently than someone hawking a vitamin or a penny stock. Publishing is about passion and writing is a lifestyle, not a shortcut to a mansion and a Porsche. Bestselling authors are like golfers who hit holes in one. It's a nice thing, but there are plenty of people who will keep playing even without one."