Interlude: Empty Chairs, Literature Maps, and Bridging the Gap

A few years ago, I learned that Amazon has a unique strategy for keeping customers in mind during meetings.

At every meeting, no matter what size, they have an empty chair. This chair represents the customer, which Amazon considers the most important person in the room.

What if we could use this strategy for our writing?

For writers, this chair would represent readers, who are the most important people for us to keep in mind while we write.

I do recognize that many writers work in isolation and spend most of their time staring at a monitor and their workspace. So, an empty chair by their desk may not be the best (or space-appropriate) visual cue to focus on writing for their readers. But here are a few other ideas to try.

🪑 Add an image of a chair to the header of your document so you see the visual cue on every page.

🪑 Buy a dollhouse chair to place on your desk.

🪑 Buy a mouse pad with an image of a chair.

What strategies do you have for keeping readers in mind while you write?

Now onto this week's round-up...

💌 Round-up

📆 Upcoming

Connection Compass: Create Flow that Guides Readers Through Your Writing – March 27, 2024, 10 am PT
If you missed my presentation at the 2023 American Medical Writers Association conference, join me for an expanded version. During this webinar, I'll share how writers can apply valuable writing principles to create a smooth flow that guides readers through the content, builds on their knowledge, and keeps them engaged in the writing.

👓 Reading

​The power of language: how to bridge the gap between healthcare research and patients – a scoping review
​“Four major themes about the use of language were developed from the literature analysis and were used to develop the set of recommendations. These recommendations include guidance on using standardized terminology and plain language when involving patients in healthcare research. They also discuss the implementation of co-development practices, patient support initiatives, and researcher training, as well as ways to improve emotional awareness and the need for greater equality, diversity, and inclusion.”

​Why doctors and nurses should use more plain language and less jargon​
"...the Ask Me 3® programme. This programme was developed by health literacy experts and aims to help patients by providing these three questions as a starting point to improve conversations between patients, caregivers and healthcare providers. The three specific questions to ask to better understand their health conditions and what they need to do to stay healthy are:

What is my main problem?
What do I need to do?
Why is it important for me to do this?"

🧰 Tools

Litmaps​
Litmaps uses a unique approach to identifying relevant literature. This app uses Seed Maps of the citation network to find articles based on their connections via citations and references. You can even visualize the relationships between the articles in your collection with literature maps (Litmaps).‍

💬 Quote

"I think writing is really a process of communication... It's the sense of being in contact with people who are part of a particular audience that really makes a difference to me in writing." – Sherley Anne Williams

✅ Action

The next time you sit down to write, visualize your reader sitting in a chair next to you. What writing advice would they give you?

Thank you so much for reading.

Warmly,

Crystal