Magnify the Maxims

Mark Batterson was the only one to read a piece of Church in the Making before it went to my editors, and he gave me a piece of advice that has stuck with me: "magnify the maxims."

Magnifying the maxims is about being biased toward the most important points and making them unforgettable.

There is communication - the kind that comes out of you like a report from your research. Everything is equal, and your audience has to make heads or tails of the content.

And then there is repackaged communication - the kind that has been researched, but then processed for its most important points. Those points are then developed with the right vocabulary, brevity, emphasis, and impact.

Great advice, whether you're a writer or a speaker.

Comments

[Kyle Reed]

which is better?
What would people rather hear? A biased opinion or one that lets you decide?

I kind of like both...
what about you?

[Ben Arment]

well all communication is biased, just some more effectively

[Stephen Bateman]

I agree, all communication is biased. My friends in class always say: "my teacher is so biased" which is probably true.

I want to hear: "this is the data, here's what I think."

But in terms of what Batterson was saying, he is incredible at taking a point or two and hammering it home.

In other news...People will pay a lot of money to have information repackaged for them.

[Carole Turner]

Coming to your blog is like coming to class, I love and appreciate all I am learning here so much!!

[Matt Bowman]

learning this lesson is a class i'm taking now in seminary. we read books or chunks of books, then we have to write brief papers on what we read. An author has pages to break down an idea, but when you are repackaging it for a brief paper, you have to figure out how to capture the essence of the idea briefly but memorably.

[Eric Bramlett]

I only read Maxims for the articles.