Read the following questions to consider how words shape your voice.
Do you use jargon or everyday language?
Whether you want to use jargon or not mainly depends on the experience of your learners. Do they understand your technical terms?
In recent articles we gave two examples. Dragon Door uses some technical language like “pecs”, “hanging straight leg raises”, “stand-to-stand bridges”, and “progressive calisthenics”. For instance: Why mastery of progressive calisthenics is the ultimate secret for building maximum raw strength?
Balance Yoga and Wellness also assumes you know some basic yoga terms: Open the doors to yoga philosophy, including Tantra, Sam Khya, Hatha Yoga and key texts.
When considering your word choice, consider your audience. Which words would they use? Do they understand technical language and jargon? Also consider whether your audience would appreciate slang or not
Do you appeal to negative or positive emotions?
Positive or negative word choice has a big impact on how learners perceive your voice and your personality.
Dragon Door, for instance, addresses readers’ fears of doing things wrong or acting like a “baby-eight pumper” or “wannabee”. They might make you feel insecure.
- Do you make this stupid mistake with your push-ups? This is wrong, wrong, wrong!
- This little fella will really separate the iron men from the “baby-weight” pumpers!
- These Gecko push-ups truly separate the wannabees from the real thing.
- Obey these important caveats before you start bridging … or risk injury.
- The dumb, fickle, want-it-yesterday way to fail in your long term Convict Conditioning training.
Balance Yoga and Wellness uses a positive tone of encouragement instead:
You may think you are not cut out to teach yoga. Or that you aren’t advanced enough. But this is far from the truth. During our course you develop your own yoga practice. You build skills and grow in self-confidence.
Do you want to agitate and stir up fear? Or comfort, encourage and soothe? How positive do you want to sound?
Do you use strong or subtle sensor words
Dragon Door uses strong language, borrowing terminology from prisons and war:
- One crucial reason why a lot of convicts deliberately avoid weight-training.
- Bar pulls … an old convict favourite for good reason.
- How to effectively bulletproof the valuable rotator cuff muscles.
- Transform skinny legs into pillars of power, complete with steel cord muscles, rock-hard glutes and thick shapely calves.
The copy of Balance Yoga and Wellness strikes a warmer tone:
- Do you nurture an intense love for Yoga?
- Are you astonished how much your life has improved since you stepped into your first yoga class?
- You gained strength, flexibility and fitness. You tapped into a deep calmness, and experienced a new sense of peace and inner beauty.
- Now, what’s next? (…) Our Teacher Training helps you nourish a deeper understanding of yoga, delve into human anatomy, and gain the confidence to share the magic of yoga with your friends and family.
How do you spice up your content? With fight analogies? Or Cooking metaphors? With hints of seduction? or warmongering?
A word choice exercise: Get out of a writing blank:
Ready to explore your voice? And play with different words? Try the exercise below and experiment with your word choice. Try to impersonate different personalities. Also pay attention to how your voice changes when you borrow phrases from, for instance, cooking, fighting, dating or sports
Word choice exercise: Complete the following sentence: I’m a … and I’m on a mission to …
Examples:
The standard, drab version : I’m a trainer on a mission to change people’s lives.
The power-puncher : I create powerful training programmes that excite and motivate people
Another strong-armed trainer : I write compelling training for people who plan to stand out in their chosen disciplines.
The competitor : I create the ultimate learning experience so you can give your competitors the middle finger.
The quiet rebel: I’m an irreverent trainer on a mission to stamp out boring training
Have fun with as many options as you like. Leave the options percolating overnight, and choose a favourite the next day. Consider adding your mission statement to your social media bios.
Playing with words is like trying new clothes
Pick up a new style, try it on, and see how it looks in the mirror.
Does that jacket make you feel confident? Want to try a different style? Or a different colour?
Playing with words puts the fun back into writing.
It enlivens our eLearning copy. And invigorates our soul.