The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion
The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion |
| A writing lesson from ‘The Apprentice Asia’ Posted: 26 May 2013 05:44 PM PDT
MAY 27 — So what can writers learn from "The Apprentice Asia" premiere? The first challenge for the show's contestants was to make a profit selling fish at a local wet market. Amid all the talk about pricing, profit margins, identifying different fish types and how much to mark the prices up, there was also one very important question that needed to be answered urgently. Who were they selling to? Housewives and aunties looking for fresh foodstuff for their families. To sell to them, we need to know what they want. Simplistically, every buyer wants to get the most value out of their money. What is value at a wet market? For all his other shortcomings, contestant Hendy got this one right. He said the customers are looking for the cheapest price. As long as the fish are adequately fresh, getting the cheapest price would be their top priority. With this in mind, it did not make sense to me when some of the contestants were saying things that effectively mean "we'll sell it a little higher than market price because we have value" or "I think we should mark the prices up so-and-so per cent so we can get more profit." If you decide to sell at a certain price, you must know for certain that your customers would be willing to meet your price. If you want customers to pay a higher price for something that they can get cheaper elsewhere, you need to give them a good reason to pay extra. A willing seller is useless without a willing buyer. In other words, what "value" is should be seen from the customer's perspective, because at the end of the day they are the ones deciding to buy or walk away. They decide if the price matches what they think the value is. And that lesson applies to writers too. By writing we are trying to sell ideas, thoughts and content to the reader. Is your writing offering what your readers are looking for? Is the value in your product (words) enough to justify your readers' time (and money)? Do they want just facts and figures or also opinion and analysis? Do they want you to terrify them or create a fantastic world of magic and dragons for them to escape into? It comes down to knowing your target readership. Understand what they want and deliver it to them. At the very least, they will spend valuable time reading what you write and thus expect that time to translate into a valuable takeaway from what they read. Otherwise, that time they invested is wasted. So if we spend 500 words speculating on how cats are being cooked in China, those 500 words are worthless to readers who are interested in matters like knowing how long the post-election Malaysian bourse uptrend might continue and why (or why not). Trying to make the cooking methods of the Chinese cat dining industry relevant to these readers (if at all possible) would take away from the meat of the story you're telling to the people you're supposed to be focusing on. At the end of the day, you can't please every reader at the same time. Not even the greatest writers out there can mesh every existing genre into a single novel. To reach out to your target readers, what you write about in how many words must match what they are interested to read about and how much time they are willing to spend reading. But there is no universal standard, of course. Business journalists, sports reporters, horror writers, erotica authors, for example, all cater to different segments of the market. Different readers want different things. It is the reason why there are books like the "Twilight" series or "50 Shades of Gray" that can come under fierce criticism yet still sell very well. For all their faults, there are people who like them. They see what they perceive as value in these works and thus are willing to pay for them, literary qualities aside. But this does not mean you don't get to write about what you want. The diverse nature of people out there means no one can possibly hope to provide what each and every reader wants. If you like to write about fashion, you can't expect to attract readers who don't care about the latest fashion trends. Your readers would be the fashion-conscious, not those who consume political news day and night. Whatever you want to write about, you must have a firm idea of who will be reading it. Then write accordingly. Forget those who won't ever be reading what you write. Just focus on your target readership and sell to them through your words. So who are you writing for today? * This is the personal opinion of the columnist. | |
| National reconciliation or retaliation? Posted: 26 May 2013 05:23 PM PDT
MAY 27 — There was no cry of jubilation. Neither were there tears of joy. If you had been in a coma during the past few weeks and were suddenly awakened to the image of the Barisan Nasional's victory speech on television, you would have thought that someone important had died and the whole nation had gone into mourning mode. Why wouldn't you when Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his sidekicks looked as if the apocalypse was upon them? Before you could even make out the hazy details that had preceded such collective sombreness, you found yourself being hit by a train of confusion. "Chinese tsunami" quickly followed by "national reconciliation" — two terms coined together only mere minutes after the announcement of the election results were enough to make me want to crawl back into that coma. Ignorance is after all bliss during moments like this. As I begin to hear comments pouring in from different public figures and the public, of what they thought of the proposed national reconciliation, I felt sheepishly stupid. Am I the only one who doesn't understand what it means or what it's for? The coma must have impaired my intellectual capacity. Full stop. A few days ago, someone asked me what I understood about Najib's notion of national reconciliation. Instead of giving that person a straightforward answer, I went on a crooked tangent. If you were as confused as I was, you would probably understand why. This was my answer: "You know what? It took me two years to learn how to reconcile my accounts. Why did it take me so long? Well, honestly, I had no clue how to do it! Accounting is like a useless foreign language to me. Neither do I understand it, nor do I have the desire to learn it. So it took me two years to finally nail it down. Anyway, to answer your question, I think national reconciliation is a bit like me trying to reconcile my accounts. The federal government has no clue what it's about and most likely has no desire to learn what it really is about." Horrified at my analogy, the person finally said: "If what you said is true, let's hope they'll at least nail it down in the end." Of course, hope is a good thing and one can always hope. Anyway, Najib had come out in public and said that national reconciliation is needed to heal racial and political divide. Never mind what he said because since then, I've had more opportunities to hear what other people thought about this notion in person and, unsurprisingly, different people seem to hold very different opinions of it. Although some agreed wholeheartedly that it's all about reconciling racial divide, others said it's more about the urban-rural divide. A few said that there's really no racial divide and it was the politicians who have spun it to instil hate and fear because the real issue here is economic divide. A few vehemently claimed that it's all about political party divide, much to the chagrin of those who quickly rebutted that political party division is a good thing and the pillar of a robust democracy. Listening to these opinions reminded me of the story of the elephant and the three blind men. (Scary or what? But anyway, Malaysia boleh!) Without turning this article into something unnecessarily lengthy, I shall cut to the chase. Let's just suppose that the prime minister is honest about his intention, how should he and his Cabinet go about developing the framework of this national reconciliation? Here's my take as a layperson. (I realise I'm running the risk of oversimplifying the issue but I think simplification is exactly what we need now.) I believe in order for a national reconciliation to be successful, it must first fulfil three criteria — it must 1) command the public's confidence, 2) be a meaningful exercise, and 3) result in action. At the same time, it must be guided by these core principles — 1) truth, 2) repentance, and 3) justice. In order to achieve the first criterion, the government owes it to the public to provide a clear and truthful explanation of what this national reconciliation is all about. As it is, the public's confidence of the new government is already at an all-time low, it is now up to the latter to convince the public of the true purpose of this process. Without the public's confidence and faith in this, it is likely going to suffer the same fate as the 1 Malaysia slogan, one that reeks of a political rather than human agenda. To curb this, the government must secure the public's participation in developing its framework; not just their supporters but also dissenters. As such, it is imperative for the government to listen to both sides and this necessitates freeing up media space to allow opinions from both sides to be heard. Secondly, for this exercise to be truly meaningful, the government must understand the true meaning of reconciliation. In order for reconciliation to work, all party must be willing to admit their wrongdoing, repent and agree to move forward together. The closing of one chapter so that a fresh one can begin, so to speak. As the initiator of this agenda, the government must first admit that it has played a role in allowing racism to manifest and, as such, resulted in this divide. By initiating this process, the government must be willing to admit that the 1 Malaysia campaign, the National Service Training and the National Economic Programme have in a way failed or contributed towards perpetuating racial-based politics because otherwise, why on earth do we need national reconciliation? By doing this, the government shows repentance and sincerity and this will help to restore the public's confidence in the process. Finally and perhaps most importantly, all this must in the end result in the government taking real action towards reconciliation. There has been far too many projects and agenda that ended up being nothing but mere politically rhetoric with no real benefit or meaning for the people. I've listened to various people giving recommendations of what should be done to achieve this goal — from establishing a parliamentary select committee to unifying our education curriculum. All noble solutions which will take a long time to implement and before you know it, the public loses interest and nobody remembers why the process was proposed in the first place. For a quick start just to get things rolling, in order for the government to prove its sincerity and will, why not get rid of those boxes that seek to verify our races in all government-related forms once and for all? Punish ministers who incite racial hatred and make an example out of them. Justice must be blind and not just for the powerful. In conclusion, after all that is said and done, the secret ingredient that will eventually create a Malaysian culture that abhors racism is really quite simple. All it takes really is for the government to first set an exemplary role in eradicating racial sentiments and once that is accomplished, I am quite confident that the rest will follow. Not unlike reconciling your accounts, the two sides must be in tandem with each other. Otherwise, let's not fool ourselves by calling it reconciliation but retaliation instead. If I were an avid conspiracy theorist, I would have concluded that "Chinese tsunami" and "national reconciliation" were part of a national retaliation strategy to divert the people's attention from what's really to come. So Mr Prime Minister, which one is it going to be? * This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
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