Dan Lewis

There is an episode of Sex and the City where Carrie, the narrator/protagonist — a sex columnist for a New York City tabloid — manages to be in a book pitch meeting.  It seems like a natural fit, until the audience (and Carrie) find out that the lady she is meeting publishes children’s books.  It’s a bad fit, to say the least, notes Carrie, and she shares a laugh with her friends.  A sex columnist write children’s books?  Crazy.  The rules do not allow for such things.

Just ask Britt Allcroft, creator of three children’s television series, most notably Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, a derivative of a half-century-old book series.  Thomas has only two speaking parts: a chorus of children who sing sing-along songs; and a narrator, who tells the story and speaks on behalf of the trains and other characters.

When Ms. Allcroft and her team sought a narrator, they assumedly did so with great care; after all, it is the only known voice for the entirity of an episode.   Allcroft and her successors attracted some great talent to narrate: Ringo Starr, Alec Baldwin, and Pierce Brosnan all narrated something from the Thomas franchise.

A few nights ago, while watching an episdoe with my son, I heard another voice  — familiar enough where I knew I had heard it before, but given the context, I could not place it.  It turns out that this narrator worked on 51 (!) episodes over most of the 1990s.  Per Wikipedia:

In 1991, he provided the narrative voice for the American version of the children’s show Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, a role he continued until 1998. He played “Mr. Conductor” on the PBS children’s show Shining Time Station [another Alcroft show], which featured Thomas the Tank Engine from 1991 to 1993, as well as the Shining Time Station TV specials in 1995 and Mr. Conductor’s Thomas Tales in 1996.

But that’s not what he’s most famous for.   Not even close.  And no one who popularized the Seven Dirty Words could possibly be the voice of a beloved children’s show character.   Unless you’re George Carlin, I guess.

Here’s a great rule of thumb that any good writer will tell you, and has been told to me many times: Know your audience.  If you’re writing a term paper, your audience is your professor.  A legal brief, the supervising attorney/partner and ultimately, the judge.  A Facebook status update, your network of friends.

The problem with the rule is that it prevents you from writing when there is no obvious audience, or when you do not have a target one in mind.  If you cannot tailor your writing, how are you supposed to write?  That problem is, primarily, why I have not had my own blog in way too long.

But last week I realized that there is a target audience for this blog: Me.  My goal here is simply to get my thoughts into words, and then to have them stored somewhere (semi-)permanently so I can remember what I thought, and why.  In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense.  No one else out there is going to make me their target audience, at least not on a regular basis.   If no one else reads or comments, that is OK; but if someone else wants to follow along, all the better.  The writer side of me does not mind if more people show up to listen or comment, and the audience-side of me appreciates the company and the feedback.

Fred Wilson leads today with a simple point:

Nothing is standard. You either need it or you don’t. Explain why you need it and most of the time you’ll get it or something like it[.]

Mr. Wilson says this in the context of contract negotitations, but it applies elsewhere.   One can iterate on the scenarios all day.

But I’m more interested in one word: “it”.  Specifically, “Explain why you need it and you’ll get it.”  “It” is not “what you asked for” — but rather “what you you want.”  There’s a big difference.

When you ask for something — anything, really; this even applies to asking a clerk at the supermarket where the paper goods are — you assume that the listener has enough information to give you an answer.  Sometimes that’s true, but not always.   If you ask that supermarket clerk “Where are the paper plates?” and he replies “Aisle four,” chances are you will get what you are after.    In my neighborhood supermarket, though, that is not always true.  Yes, the Dixie and Solo and other every-day paper plates are there, as are the kid-oriented shaped like animal faces or with pictures of Elmo on them.   What you want isn’t there, and to make matters worse, there is no way to find out that high quality paper goods are, well, anywhere — in fact, if you did not know about them beforehand, you would have no reason to think they even existed.

Had you explained “My wife and I are having guests over for dinner and I need some paper goods.  Where are they?” you’d have, hopefully, gotten a different answer than “Aisle four.”   If you want to get what you want — and not just what you asked for — explain your thinking.   It is like turning the other person into a mind reader.

Ask yourself: When does the lone guy dancing turn into a mob? Seth’s Godin says it’s the third guy, but that’s not the whole story.

Take a look at the people sitting around. They’re looking at the solo dancer but their attention wanes. The second guy comes and captures their attention for long enough for the third guy to come in. But it’s another 20 seconds before anyone else shows up.

And when someone else does, it’s actually two someone elses. You can almost here the conversation.

“Look at that guy dancing.”

“Heh. Idiot.”

<silence>

“Another one.”

“Wow.”

<silence>

<third guy joins>

“Dude… wanna join in?”

“Let’s go.”

Seth is right — we need more guy #3s. But they’re rare and we can’t expect to make more. The fourth person wasn’t going alone. Neither was the fifth.

What we really need is more guy #5s for the guy #4s out there, and more #4s for the #5s. That we can make happen: If you’re afraid to go it alone, just find a friend who is similarly afraid.