What do exposition and 'sausage making' have in common?
I've been firing on all cylinders in the last week. My daughter caught a debilitating stomach virus. I ended up self-medicating with YouTube videos and experimented with social media. I rubbed my daughter's belly and sang, "belly ache, belly ache, go away, go away." She's better now.
Writers struggle with how much exposition to use while storytelling. Genre and subject play a part. The worst criticism is to have your work compared to Tolkien's. They're saying your writing is too complex, TLDR.
In Leadership, we 'leave out the sausage making' to improve executive presence. Skip the details. Focus on outcomes, benefits, and how we can save the customer time and money.
The concepts are the same.
Leading with the sentence, "I increased the number of my BlueSky followers from 34 to 803 within 3 days", you, my reader, saying,
"But, Dilla, tell me more..."
In the same way, if I lead with,
"Human! Human is here!" cawed a crow.
"Harmless, he is," cawed another, "leave him alone."
"He steals our mangos."
"Then give him one," the elder cawed.
Anu had no way of knowing which direction it would come from. The wind caressed the back of his head moments before the mango hit.
What do you, as the reader, ask?
We want the audience or reader to ask for more. They are listening and engaged.
In the comments, let me know which answer you want first. I'll write the answer in my next post.
-D.M. De Alwis
