FAB

Features. Attributes. Benefits. These are the three categories of information given while selling a product. The features are the common things among similar items. The attributes are the specific items that differentiate your product from the others.  The benefit lets the buyer know how the product will help them. In selling a car some features would be power windows and things along those lines. The attributes would be the sync Bluetooth system in Ford vehicles and the benefits would tell them how reliable it will be for transportation.

Brands

Just to see what brands we use or how often we come in contact with different or the same brands we wrote down all the brands we used every half hour for a day.  I personally had a huge variety of brands throughout the day, but also had a consistent run of the same brands during the day.  Using so many products you are bound to see some variety, but there are certain things or brands that I used often.

Do's and Don'ts

There are several things in advertising you should do and don't do. For the do's you should always try to translate you message for the audience, create emotion, be simple, concise and focused. All of these will be create the most vivid picture for the audience.  A few don'ts are to avoid cliche's, soft language, double speak or betray your audience.

Soft Words

We watched a clip of George Carlin talking about soft words. We've been so immersed in these soft words that they have become the standard today. We live in a very PC society and very few people can actually say what they want to say without offending others or bringing up bad emotions. A lot of these soft words come from the government or corporations that don't want people to know what things really mean because they don't want to look bad themselves.  One of his example was of people that are traumatized coming back from war.  It started off as shell shock, but after several name changes it's now known as post traumatic stress disorder. There are countless examples of soft words being used in today's society.

SAFEST

There are several ways to make a story better. SAFEST is the acronym for the six ways to add to a story.

Statistics
Analogies
Facts
Examples
Stories
Testimonials

Concrete v Abstract

There are two types of language that can be used. Concrete language and abstract language.  When writing it's best to avoid abstract language.  It takes more work and longer to get the message to the audience. Abstract language is very vague and uses theory as opposed to concrete words that get the most out of fewer words.  Concrete words are solid and tangible. Concrete words help to utilize dual coding and let the audience fill in the gaps and draw the conclusions the writer wanted them to.

5 Senses and Words

Everyone has five senses. Sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste. When writing you need to tap into as many of those senses as possible.  The saying a picture says a thousand words needs to work in your favor as a writer. When writing you need to use as few words as possible to get you message across as vividly as possible.  You need to try for fewer than eight words per sentence and only two to three sentences per paragraph.  Dual coding is a great tool to tap into multiple senses for the audience at once. Let them do the work and put the story together.

Subway Commercial

I'm not sure if anyone has seen the new Subway commercial about the buy one 6-inch sub get one free for the month of April, but I personally haven't seen it until the past week. For full disclosure I have to admit I don't have cable so I'm not able to watch anything besides local channels.  There is nothing special about the commercial itself, but the timing of the commercial I thought made it interesting.  If they, in fact, did just start showing it in the second half of the month it seems like a pretty good get it now tactic.  They were probably offering it all month, but didn't advertise it so they didn't have to give out the discount as much.  They also put it into people's heads that if they don't come in soon they will miss out on the opportunity.  They might even come back several times in the next week or so.

Dialogue

Dialogue is the most important thing in a story next to the actual idea itself.  Dialogue is what moves the story along. A story without dialogue is a bad story.  A story with bad dialogue is also a bad story.  There are several common mistakes people make when writing dialogue.  The first is just having too much. The audience doesn't need a description of everything happening. Don't fill the story with useless talking. Another mistake is a long monologue. When someone is talking too much the audience will get bored.  Using names too much is a mistake in stories and in real life. Nobody wants to constantly hear peoples names. Grammar shortcuts are a way to make the dialogue sound more normal. One of the biggest mistakes is having everyone sound alike.  There are many reasons people sound different from one another so if your characters all sound the same the story will not work.  To avoid this fact check. Where are the characters from? What race or gender are they? Theses are some of the big mistakes that can be made when writing dialogue and should always be avoided.

Creativity

When  trying to figure out how creatively put a story together there is a system in place to help.  The first thing you need to do is get out there and hunt & gather for new and different ideas. When you find your basic idea you need to play with it. Try to get away from the first level creativity and come up with a new and innovative idea.  When you think you have what you want drop it. Let it stew for a while. Don't write anything for a few hours or even for a few days and you might not like what you have written or just realize subtle things you can change.  After a while you'll have that Eureka! moment. This will help you complete the last step of just doing it. Writing the story you finally know you can now write with great ideas.

Story Types

According to Joel Jenkins there are ten different types of stories.  At one time or another we've all heard the ten.
1. Romance- We usually see this as a love story, but can also include love between friends or even animals (not in a bad way).
2. Success/Failure- Someone wins or someone loses.
3. Cinderella- One of my favorites in which someone comes from nowhere to achieve greatness. This is usually a sports story, which is why I like them so much.
4. Conversion- A person starts out one way and acts or believes differently at the end.
5. Sacrifice- Pretty self explanatory.
6. Family- Doesn't have to be blood relation, but a big group of close people that is usually a mixture of several     types.
7. Triangle- Person starts out with one person, goes to the other person and then ends up with the first person.
8. Return- A person comes back in the end.
9. Crime & Punishment- Person commits the crime and then gets caught in the end.
10. Heroic- Also, pretty self explanatory.
Many of these stories can be combined and often are. When the story types are narrowed down to just ten and there are countless numbers of stories in existence it shows how the types can be manipulated and told in different ways.

Building a Story

Every story starts with a hook. Something to really draw in your readers. After you have their attention you introduce the characters if you didn't already in the hook.  Now that you're into the story you have your first act break where the story takes a turn to the dark side.  That is followed by the second act break where the story, again, takes a turn for the worse. This is where you introduce the internal conflict for the characters.  The final act break is next where the external conflict is revealed. Now the story is there and you just have to finish strong.  There has to be a good resolution that is quick. This is your last chance to keep your readers into your story. Throughout the story you have to keep asking what your character's motivation is. Why are they doing what they are doing? Does it make sense?  Keeping a beat sheet is a good way to keep good structure in your story.  It is basically an outline for your story that is separated out by the formula described earlier.

Character Control

While writing a story it's easy to just get in a rhythm and your story can begin to take over.  As a writer you have to keep control of your character by understanding why they are what they are.  Characters are always either active or passive.  Generally, the audience always wants the character to be active.  An active character is one that the audience sees and hopes that that's how they would react in the given situation.  Active characters are the heroes that make things happen.  In order to correctly create a character you need to understand Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  This is a five tier list that applies to everyone.  1. Exist- The most basic of needs is the need to exist and is the broadest of building blocks.  2. Security- After you know you are here right now, knowing that you will be here tomorrow and beyond is the second need.  3. Love- With security now in place you are ready for the love of another.  4. Esteem- Now that you have the love of another you would like to have the respect of a larger group of people.  5. Self- With the previous four blocks in place you are able to have a great enough self worth to think about more than just yourself.  When someone is only on the first tier they are much more focused on themselves with little room for other's problems and when they get to the Self step people begin to look outward.

Creating Stories

The number one thing in creating a new and interesting story is to avoid cliches.  Cliches are what they are because they have been overdone.  They don't surprise your audience and lead to a mundane story.  One way to avoid cliches is by coming up with creative characters. There are two types.  The protagonist and the antagonist.  The protagonist drives the story and usually the story is told from their point of view.  The antagonist is there to stop the protagonist.  The two of them aren't working toward the same thing, but on their way to their individual goals they cross each others paths.  This causes friction between the two and creates the story line. Another way to keep characters interesting is to not let them be too much like the audience.  If the audience can identify too much with the character they will get caught up in predicting their behavior and possible tune out the actual story.

Character Profiles

Sports agent- Generally agents are very hard working and relentless.  They have to be extremely persistent and willing to do anything for their clients.  Those qualities are probably what got them into their profession.  They have probably always been driven and outgoing people.

Police officer-  There are two types of people that I believe go into this profession.  The first are by-the-book hard asses that hide behind corners to try to bust people for driving 3 mph over the speed limit.  Those guys probably got made fun of in high school and have been looking for revenge.  The other are nice guys that really do want to protect and serve.  They will let little things go, but make sure to take care of the important things.

Grade school teacher-  These people are usually very caring and gentle people.  They have to like children to be in their profession which also means they have great patients.

Story Telling

On Friday we went around the room and everyone told a story.  There was no criteria for what the story should be about, but there seemed to be a common theme. Everyone wanted to make the class laugh and usually at their own expense.  Stories are meant to be entertaining and as long as someone can speak reasonably well the message will be received by the audience.  While we were going around the room there was laughter that came from nearly every story and it was just an added bonus if the person was a good storyteller.  One way for a story to be better and more engaging is repetition.  Personally, I've told my story probably a hundred times.  I love the story and have tested it on countless audiences and knew that I would get a laugh in class.  A story is probably a good one when it gets told over and over again because is was successful when it was first told.  It's hard to beat a good story and especially when the audience enjoys it.

Stories

Every time someone is writing for the media they are telling a story.  We were informed Wednesday that there are ten and only ten different types of stories.  Professor Jenkins seems rather confident that those ten are near impossible to find and will reveal them later in the semester.  There are simple necessities for every story which include characters (at least two), conflict and resolution.  There is also always a beginning, middle and end.  After the basics there are a couple ways to keep your audience engaged. The first is by selling your story to them.  As a story teller you need to let your audience know why they need to hear your story. Let them know what's in it for them. The other is to only have one idea per story.  By doing this you will be able to keep your story concise and focused.  There is a reason so many stories have been around for so long.  They give valuable information or lessons.  Most stories that we all heard as children were meant to teach us something that wouldn't have been understood just by telling us.  People remember stories. They are engaging, easy to understand, easy to believe and easy to share.  Those characteristics make stories the perfect vessel to convey a message.

Day 2

The main things we learned on our second day of class is that people are lazy and most don't read very well.  The average reading level in the U.S. is a fifth grade level.  That seems crazy to me, but I guess my sample size is a little smaller than the entire U.S.  Since the average person doesn't have a large vocabulary and is inherently lazy, our goal in the media is to use sharp, simple and precise language to reach a broad audience.  Technology has created a need for the immediacy making it difficult to hold anyone's attention for an extended period of time.

The first day of class in Fundamental Writing for the Media was similar to most first days.  Everyone filed into the classroom and listened to the introduction of the class.  Professor Joel Jenkins told everyone what to expect  in the class and how it would be run. After the basics Jenkins had everyone go around the room and introduce themselves and tell their favorite snacks.  This is the first of many blog posts to follow.