December 2005/January 2006

Volume 46, Number 3

STC RMC President to Co-Present Telephone Seminar

by Marella Colyvas

Free-writing! Character interviews! Hooks! What do these creative writing techniques have to do with technical writing? More than you may think.

This seminar will help you improve your technical communication skills by teaching you how to jump-start your writing with creative writing tools, use character interview techniques to elicit information from various sources, build personas to facilitate product development, and capture the end users' attention using opening hooks and design structures.

On February 22, 2006, STC RMC's president Marella Colyvas will co-present an STC Telephone Seminar entitled "Improve Your Technical Communication Skills through Creative Writing Techniques." Marella co-presented the basic content of this seminar at a two-part workshop entitled "Creative Writing for Technical Communicators" at the 52nd STC International Conference in May, 2005. Her co-presenters were Susan Haire of Canada, Amy Himes of TX, and Ron Bliq of the island of Guernsey. The first part of the workshop focused on tapping into your inherent creativity to jump-start your writing (Marella) and using character study techniques to improve your interviewing skills (Amy). The second part focused on dialog (Ron) and how to write hooks to keep your audience interested (Susan).

For the telephone seminar, Marella will present with Amy and Susan. They will narrow the scope of their workshop considerably, while focusing on the essential message. Marella will talk about how free-writing jump-starts any writer, and how using creativity exercises opens the right side of the brain so technical communicators can better see the big picture of whatever work they are producing. Amy will again work with characters, and Susan will wrap up with how to keep an audience, any audience, interested.

Please join Marella and the others for an exciting telephone seminar on February 22, 1:00 - 2:30 p.m., EST.