by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n
Three questions I use as a basic framework for writing.<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the questions that people ask me about writing is:<\/p>\n Where do you start?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n When asking this, they are seeking a basic framework, a place to start when they have a blank piece of paper and need to write something on it with a pencil. I do have a place to start and I use it some 98.6% of the time. I use three questions:<\/p>\n These were given to me by a friend some 15 years ago. He probably doesn’t remember the occasion, but I did. The questions expand to:<\/p>\n What? <\/strong> What is it that you have to say? For example, for this post, what I have to say is that I use three questions as a basic framework for my writing.<\/p>\n So what?<\/strong> What does this have to do with me or my situation? You may be a writer or someone who is trying to pass important information to someone else and are struggling to put it together. These three questions may help you.<\/p>\n Now what?<\/strong> Okay, I understand your point and what it means to me, so now what am I supposed to do? Practice. Try these questions. If they work for you, use them. If not, forget them.<\/p>\n I pass these three questions along to people who are reporting project status to me.<\/p>\n Tell me what happened:<\/strong> There is a leak in the conference room this morning.<\/p>\n Tell me why I should care<\/strong>: We have a Vice President from another company who may partner with us on a key project visiting us this morning and we were to use the conference room for the meeting.<\/p>\n Tell me what you propose to do about it:<\/strong> I have a repairman on his way. We have replacement ceiling tiles on hand. We have also found another conference room and we have someone cleaning it and preparing the audiovisual equipment.<\/p>\n (The above items about a conference room are actually happening this morning as I write this post.)<\/p>\n There is a fourth item or question that I sometimes toss in. It is:<\/p>\n gut<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The gut item asks,<\/p>\n How do you feel about this?<\/p>\n What emotions do I have while writing about this?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Per the conference room example, I feel all chewed up inside. Why did this have to happen today? Then I can address these feelings. Why am I upset about rain? Rain happens. Calm down. And by the way, let’s get someone in here soon to inspect the roof and other possible leaks. Winter is approaching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Dwayne Phillips Three questions I use as a basic framework for writing. One of the questions that people ask me about writing is: Where do you start? When asking this, they are seeking a basic framework, a place to start when they have a blank piece of paper and need to write something on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,5],"tags":[154,128],"class_list":["post-674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-writing","tag-communication","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":675,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions\/675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n