Clarity is King
Not sure if you need to create clarity? Ask yourself these three questions.
- Do you struggle putting your ideas down on the page?
- Perhaps you have too many ideas and don’t know how to organise them.
- Or maybe you just don’t know where to start.
If you’re nodding right now, you might be like a celebrity chef I recently worked with. Let’s call her ‘Chef Belle’.
Why Chef Belle found it hard to find clarity
Chef Belle is a bubbly chef who knows her stuff. She has a thriving cooking school in Queensland, often appears on local TV, has a fabulous YouTube channel and has won numerous accolades for entrepreneurship. She is also often asked to write snappy articles at short notice for national and international magazines. They want the energy and verve she shows in her classes and videos in their magazines…which for someone like Chef Belle is hard to pin down.
What was the challenge?
Chef Belle was asked just before Christmas to write a couple of articles for a prestigious international magazine. It was her busiest time of year, as she was launching her ‘Easy Christmas’ workshops as well as running her busy cooking school. Chef Belle knew she needed some help to distil her ideas into an engaging article. So, she contacted me.
Belle is passionate about helping people be better cooks, so has lots of tips. She also has a really fun way of conveying information – her recipes are ‘sexy’ and add ‘glam’ and ‘look expensive’.
Belle’s first drafts of the articles were great – full of passion and humour – but also a little disjointed and had too much information overall.
I wanted to capture her personality and gather her zillion ideas in a way that shared her passion so her readers could be just as excited about her recipes as she is.
What we did
Given the publication’s reputation, it was clear that her profile was going to get a huge boost and she would be asked to write more articles in the future.
- So, first I helped her understand how to plan and write an article for the specific audience.
- Then we created a template for the recipes. Each had a short (1-2 line) introduction – why this was a great recipe to use, how it could save you money or how it could be versatile – and then a list of ingredients in a two-column table, followed by ordered method steps. So far, not rocket science.
- Where things got interesting was when I took out all the tips and variations she’d scattered throughout her recipes and put them in the same paragraph. Pretty soon it became clear that, while it was engaging, some of her advice had been repeated numerous times.
From here, we were able to condense the key tips for each recipe and create a story that matched Belle’s excitement and sense of humour.
Results
Chef Belle now has two cracking articles accepted for publication and a framework for future articles.
Working with Chef Belle has been such great fun and I can’t wait for her new cookbook to come my way!
To see how I helped to create clarity for Chef Belle, read the Case Study Before and After.
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