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Making a dull subject interesting?

by coolandinteresting
6 replies
I am looking for help with how to portray an uninteresting and mundane thing as cool and interesting. I want my audience to see my subject as something compelling and I need to be able to express it with enough of an emotional high that the person listening will be able to feel my passion. The problem is I am having trouble trying to approach a dull topic and make myself seem passionate about it.

Any tips for how to spin things like this?
Any techniques to make the boring sound interesting?

Thanks
#dull #interesting #making #subject
  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    I would "step up a level" and broaden your topic, that will allow you to write about many more subjects. More importantly it will allow you to talk about more interesting topics. Very rarely does it make sense to write about your specific product line or service in your blogs/articles, you should almost always talk about "buzzy" topics in your general market to encourage better readership and followers.
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  • Profile picture of the author Charles Goodnight
    While it may not be exactly what you are looking for...consider this. So your topic is widgets a boring topic to most.

    Consider everything you see that may or may not relate to your widgets and try to find a way to connect them.

    SEO is currently a popular topic...write an article about how to properly build a Widget webpage using some of the new SEO techniques.

    Is there something happening in the news that is trending? Find some way to tie your widgets into the story...even if it's just a headline.

    Lucky for me, I have a fun niche to work in, but when I am thinking up new content ideas, I look for assistance from other industries and figure out how to spin their fun content into content my readers will find useful.

    -CG
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  • Profile picture of the author mikefashen
    Originally Posted by coolandinteresting View Post

    I am looking for help with how to portray an uninteresting and mundane thing as cool and interesting. I want my audience to see my subject as something compelling and I need to be able to express it with enough of an emotional high that the person listening will be able to feel my passion. The problem is I am having trouble trying to approach a dull topic and make myself seem passionate about it.
    I think you need to really pay attention to what you've said.

    It's really, really hard to sound passionate about something that you personally feel is dull and boring.

    Why are you only trying to sound a certain way? Why not write about things you're actually passionate about?

    Passion in writing really is about expressing emotion on the page. It's kind of hard to do that if you don't actually have the emotion.

    Having said all that, in my AP composition class (ouch, nearly 30 years ago) I remember we had to passionately describe lightbulbs. She said that the way to do that was to take something you feel strong emotion for and apply the emotions for that, to the lightbulbs we had to write about.

    Does that make sense?

    Now, if you actually are passionate about your "dull and boring" topic one way you can help to convey your passion is with your own self talk.

    Stop using names like dull, boring, mundane, etc and instead in your own internal dialog use words that actually tell yourself you really are passionate about it. That might help you to bring out emotion you can convey in your writing.

    Hope all this helps.
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    • Profile picture of the author GloriaWrites
      There are a few tricks you can use to keep your reader's attention no matter how dull the topic is.

      First, you can ask yourself what kind of problems the subject is meant to solve. Engineering or patents -to take a couple random examples- can be dry as all get-out, but if you can paint a vivid picture of the issue the product happens to address, that's an easy way to hook people in before you get into the really boring stuff.

      Next, I would suggest being liberal with the analogies and examples. The more complex (or mundane) the subject matter, the more stories, analogies, and metaphors you'll need in order to keep things interesting. Speech illustrations, inspiring business stories, and fascinating statistics go a long way here.

      Finally, an informal or conversational tone will often make up for dry subject matter where your readers are concerned.

      Use lots of subcategories and bold headings so that people aren't faced with a giant "wall of text" on a subject that's not necessarily interesting. Obviously that's sound advice when writing for the web in general, but it matters even more for extraordinarily boring topics. Also, interesting asides or fascinating pieces of trivia can add an extra edge without coming across like you're trying too hard.

      Unfortunately, the degree to which you can use these tips depends on your audience. If you're writing to business owners, for instance, then you'll probably want to tone down the chatter and be more matter-of-fact in your writing. Any tangents would have to be benefits-driven except for where an analogy is needed in order to make sure your audience understands what you're talking about.

      If you're writing for Joe or Jane Citizen as opposed to a more well-defined group on the other hand, the more analogies and stories you can fit in, the better.

      Mikefreshen I think covered everything else I would've said as far as your mental approach is concerned. In any case, I hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author kk075
    Feel free to PM me the topic and I'll tell you how I'd personally make it interesting and relevant. Or just post it here if you don't mind everyone seeing it.

    I've literally written about everything from expat taxation to pest control to financial advice and home repair over the years, plus hundreds of other topics that were boring enough to put a crying baby to sleep. It's not really the topic itself but how you make it come to life on the page. You can do that through telling stories, making fun analogies and dozens of other ways...but it's almost impossible to give you a good example without knowing what we're talking about.
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    • Profile picture of the author sanjaysharma
      Originally Posted by kk075 View Post

      Feel free to PM me the topic and I'll tell you how I'd personally make it interesting and relevant. Or just post it here if you don't mind everyone seeing it.

      I've literally written about everything from expat taxation to pest control to financial advice and home repair over the years, plus hundreds of other topics that were boring enough to put a crying baby to sleep. It's not really the topic itself but how you make it come to life on the page. You can do that through telling stories, making fun analogies and dozens of other ways...but it's almost impossible to give you a good example without knowing what we're talking about.
      Would you mind tell us all that how can you create interesting stories from the the ordinary moment in life. Any link to book, course or any resources is appreciated. I love to write and wanted to add stories so that people glued to my article.

      Sanjay Sharma
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