Video Transcript: Lesson 5

Welcome back to Writing for Ministry. This is Lesson Five: Raising the Stakes. In this course so far, we have identified our audience. We've invited the partners  from a wider conversation on our topic, and we've picked the form we want to  use that we think is going to be the most effective.  

You might think that you're ready to plow forward with that great opening line  and keep on moving until the very end. Not quite yet. We have to get one more  thing clear in our mind before we start. We have to answer the question that  every reader asks of everything they read: Why should I care?  

We need to raise the stakes. This doesn't mean that we need to sensationalize  or make up a lie about how our topic is the most important in the world. That if  people don't read and agree with us, then they're horrible people, or that the  world is going to end. That's not the kind of writer, or for that matter, the kind of  person we want to be. But if you aren't clear about why your topic is important,  your reader isn't going to care either, and it can't be important in some big  general sense.  

I believe the church is important, but I've read a million things about the church.  Why do I need to read one more? Or this is why so much academic writing you  read, or maybe even you've written yourself feels a bit boring because you don't  feel there's anything at stake. Well, maybe your maybe your grade is at stake,  but you know that the only person who is going to read what you're writing is  your professor, and it's not really going to make a difference in the world.  

So this is going to make a lot more sense if we dive into the example that we're  developing together. I know I go over this every week, but it's how we're going to get this ingrained in you. So here's my audience, which I'm trying to reach, and  I've I've drawn a box around it. I've got my my six smaller pictures. You might  have them as as just names of people. These are my conversation partners, and I've remembered to include a few that I disagree with. So we put a box around  the whole thing, and on the top we wrote what form our writing was going to  take? Mine is an article for my denominational magazine.  

So, at the top, I'm going to write article, and then I may add a couple notes  about the length. So, in this one, I added personal experience because I want  an article that's going to draw from my personal experience. I'm going to say it's  1,500 words, and I just want to add a few little things that help me talk about the  shape of my writing. And even though we've taken a couple weeks to develop  this, once you get good at these, you're going to be able to draft up something  like this pretty quickly. 

Now, on the left side, I want you to add the word In action, and on the right side,  action. In action is what's going to happen if people don't do what you want them to do. Action is going to be what will result if they do what you want them to do.  What you ask, you have to try to get people to do something. For the most part,  I would say yes. There are forms like the novel or a history book that aren't  going to be as open and direct about what they want people to do, what they  want their reader to do. But for the most part, your writing is going to be stronger if you're able to be clear on what action you want people to take, even if it's to  change their belief. This is what we call your point of view, the action I want  people to take. And remember, this is remember the that's why we have this  image here. That the young people is my audience, not my topic. I want them to  see themselves as part of the wider church, even if they don't identify with  traditional church structure. So I've I've added that. I said I've I've kind of written  that out here.  

You can see now how we're starting to get a little more into the complexity of  writing a piece, the importance. of getting clear on this, on the action in action  from the beginning, is that once we're clear on this, everything we include in our  writing will build toward towards this action point, and everything that doesn't  build to this point will have to be left out. It might make its way into another  piece, but for now we're only going to focus on this.  

The in action that will result is a little trickier, because you need to remember  that in action is for the intended audience, not as a result for the non-audence.  In my scenario, it would be easy to believe that an in action would be that  church attendance would continue to drop because young people aren't going,  but that is a result for the church. The in action for the audience is that since  people need an anchor for their lives. They'll find it in jobs, money, exercise, or  some other system of belief. In action then is, and I'm going to write that on the  other side, is disconnection or connected to things that are not stable.  

Okay. So is this the is this going to be the best piece of writing ever? I don't  know, maybe, but I've got I've got a vision for where I want to go. I know that this is my initial structure. I know that there's going to be room as I once I start  writing for things to develop and change as I write and edit. But I'm going to  return to this graph, and that's going to be how I'm going to evaluate my writing  once I have a draft down. I can ask these questions: Am I focusing on the action and the in action for my audience?  

Now, obviously, as we start to get more and more complex in this process, the  rules are not so hard and fast on this. But for now, try to stick to the guidelines  I'm laying out here. And once you've mastered kind of my structure and you've 

done this a couple times, you'll start to see and feel more comfortable where you can you can take liberties with deviating from the structure.  

Your assignment then is to add your action and in action elements to your little  diagram, make sure that you are clear about what you want your readers to do,  and what might happen to them if they don't follow the course of action you are  proposing.  

Next time, we're going to talk about how to start getting those words down on  the page through free writing, mind maps, and letting go of your own editorial  control, this can get a little scary, but it also can get a lot of fun. This is where  you might be surprised by the connections that you start to discover. Let's write.