Blank pages are daunting. Students in school are familiar with the anxiety which accompanies the last few questions in the multiple choice section, a final glimpse of limited probability before uncovering the vast expanse of a free text response. “Writer’s block” ails all who approach a pencil or keyboard with the goal of expressing complete thoughts or ideas on a page.
Though I am not an artist by any means, I excel at coloring between the lines. And like many authors and writers, I am capable, sometimes even prolific when building information upon some sort of commonly understood model.
Often models are simple and canonical. A common example is the flow of a news article. This inverted pyramid from George Mason University’s Writing Center depicts an overall flow from a single summary sentence called the “lead”, down through the most important facts to the information understood as the “background” of the article.
Even simple frameworks like these provide the scaffolding for a complete written piece to take shape. Though counterintuitive, a cursor’s lonely blink is stifled by the foundation of a predefined structure.
As enterprise content strategists and information architects, we work with our customers to create the right amount of this scaffolding to enable authors to quickly and easily produce high quality, consistent, and understandable materials for their customers. A content analysis leads to an understanding of information types and their delivery which evolves into models which describe the placement of each informative brick. These models manifest as templates in an authoring environment, providing writers with a reliable and consistent foundation to build on.
Inevitably, though, there are going to be occasions when using something defined or understood is not possible. Perhaps you aren’t aware that what you’re working on resembles a type of information already found in the wild. Or, perhaps it is truly unique. Regardless: when in doubt, componentize.
To componentize is to treat each idea as a standalone unit of information. Write each complete idea or concept and give it a meaningful title to mold and shape a modular brick. Repeat until you have a set of pieces which you can step back from and look at as pieces of a whole. You may find that the first brick in the bucket really belonged far from the top of the tower, a realization greatly hampered by the linear top-down approach of a page or word processor. You may discover three dissimilar bricks actually fit together perfectly, a possibility obfuscated by attempts to piece information together before having the complete picture. Decoupling the creation of information and its organization relieves pressure and creates opportunity.
At Content Rules, we move enterprise writing teams from a page-based to component-based paradigms. This involves crafting a strategy to discover, recommend, design, and implement a structured content strategy typically alongside tooling such as a component-based content management system. Content Rules partners with and has deep knowledge in scaling teams with all leading CCMS software solutions. Contact us to learn more – we are always happy to chat.
Component-like authoring in Microsoft Word
Purpose-built component-based authoring tools provide the best experience. But if you’d like to give component-based authoring a try but you don’t have access to a CCMS, you’re not entirely out of luck.
In Microsoft Word, you can lean on the Web Layout, Heading Styles, and Navigation Pane to emulate a component-based authoring experience.
Enable Web Layout and Navigation Pane under the View ribbon, and create components by adding Headings (component titles) from the Home ribbon. Drag and drop components in the Navigation Pane to reorganize the components after you’ve written them.
If you need help determining when, what and how to componentize, we’ve got your back, contact us.
- Content Strategy and Taxonomy: Don’t Make Your Audience Play 20 Questions - August 6, 2024
- When in Doubt, Componentize - February 9, 2024
- When AI Goes Bad - September 27, 2021
