This is a transcript of one of the videos in the plain language training course Writing well at work. There are references to slides and visual material that are only available by viewing the video.
You can access the full web based course at writertraining.online.
Information about face to face courses is at thinkwrite.com.au

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The final thing we need to get straight before we start writing is our key message.

An elevator or lift door pitch

Now the key message has been described in a number of different ways. You might like to think about it as the lift door or the elevator pitch. The idea is you get into a lift on the ground floor, the person you’re writing the document for gets into the lift at the same time. You share this little small box for 23 seconds until you reach the 7th floor. What are you going to say? You don’t have a whole lot of time, so you need to be really brief, but you also want to make an impact, so you need to be straight to the point.

So we need to crystallise our key message into just a few words, maybe a couple of sentences that would be able to say. That we’ll focus our mind if we can get our key message that short.

What do you want them to remember?

Another way of thinking about key message is this. What do you want your reader to remember? Even if they forget everything else? So they’ve read your 20 page report, what do you want them to remember? They’ve read your two page briefing note, what do you want to them to remember?

That’s just another way of thinking about what your key message is. A really succinct statement of the most important thing that you wanted to say, that you want people to remember.

So have a go now at writing down what your key message is. I’m going to stop the video to give you a chance to do that. Also think about how that key message might impact your reader. Make some notes about that too.

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