The Crisis and the Medium

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 31 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

For the American people of 1776 the most important document of the year was not the Declaration of Independence.

It was Thomas Paine's Common Sense.

Released as a pamphlet, it was nothing more than a series of articles – blog posts, really – that spoke to the soul of the ordinary person.

It was written with passion, it had one author, it was filled with pithy nuggets, and it told a story in the clear language of the day. Jefferson's Declaration, by contrast, was the work of an elite committee. It was a document of the head. Paine spoke to the heart.

All people today remember the Declaration, and few remember Common Sense, because Paine was just a pamphleteer, a rabble-rouser, while Jefferson was a philosopher-politician, a great man who did great things, like getting the Declaration passed unanimously by the Continental Congress. But when you're in the time of Crisis, it's the pamphleteer, the story-teller, who will have the most immediate impact.

So it has always been. Uncle Tom's Cabin  was not great literature. To modern readers it seems hackneyed. But it told a story people wanted to hear, and it moved them toward facing the Crisis of their time. And what made Lincoln great, in his time, were his speeches, short, to the point. Like blog posts.

The medium will change. The requirement remains the same. The ingredients of passion, of story-telling, of a writer living in the moment, drive us today despite the apparent sophistication of our media. Al Gore, having failed to be Jefferson, decided to become Paine. And the work moves people.

I happen to think it moves them in the wrong direction. I happen to think it moves people toward conflict, when consensus is called for. I happen to think it's made things worse. But Gore speaks to our time, he writes clearly, he tells a story, he got it published, and he drove his point deep into the hearts of millions.

For most organizations, for business groups trying to activate their members, it may seem foolish to point to great works like this and say, do that. But the ingredients that will drive your members, or your customers (if that's the public you're serving) are exactly the same. The medium doesn't matter. It's the massage, not the message.

The message is writing. A clear story, told with passion, will move people.

How do you find that story? The first rule is it's always told by one person. No matter how big the final project may be, it starts with one writer, one story, one consistent viewpoint. Hollywood knows that. And the story must speak to the now. Gone with the Wind  did that. Ironman did that. It can come in the form of a novel, a comic book, or a treatment  – doesn't matter.

Story. Writing. Passion. That's the formula for being heard. That's what you have to develop, and believe in, before you launch any effort. You have to get your story straight. You have to give someone the power to craft your story. You can direct its points toward your goal, but the story and the passion have to be real. Everyone can see through artifice.

Once you have your story, you build your community around it. You break it down into parts – overview, elements, action – and you publish them in a form appropriate to your target audience. Could just be words, like these. It could be a series of podcasts, or videos. And you'll have a call to action.

Because of the nature of today's Internet, the action you're calling for is community. What you want is interaction, shares of the passion of others. You want their stories, told their way, and you want them to get feedback that will validate their efforts.

What the community feeds back will change your story. Communication is no longer one-way – it must be two-way or it's worthless. But you can accommodate that. Your aim, on a site, is to build community leaders, who will drive the story organically, and your mission then becomes to ride the wave like a surfer, to direct that energy in the direction you chose before you ordered the first story written.

In the case of Paine, Common Sense led to a series of pamphlets called The Crisis, all equally passionate, whose catch phrases still move us, like its opening passage:

These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Anyone who has ever wanted to rouse the rabble from that day to this has usually used these lines. But the bulk of The Crisis, like the bulk of Common Sense and his later French Revolution series, The Age of Reason, today seem pedantic, stiff, and distant. And it's hard to get today's young people interested in Gone with the Wind, too.

No matter. I don't write literature, I write in the moment, and so do you. Whenever I write a blog post, I have a passion for the topic, and it moves me. Practice has made my writing better, but it still comes from the same place it did when I was 16, and it always will. That's my process.

Yours will vary, so I'm going to finish by repeating the goals you need to strive for. Story. Writing. Passion. If you want to move people, that's how you do it.