Why This Writer Thanks Stephenie Meyer

As a self-professed Twilight Mom, I joined the throngs of screaming teenage girls who converged on my neighborhood multiplex last night for the long-awaited second film in the Twilight Saga, New Moon.

My five buddies and I weren’t the only over-30 faces in the crowd – there were plenty of excited mothers with their girlfriends and daughters. My friend, Amy, 34, a communications manager, described the excitement of the moment on her Facebook Wall as she typed in her iPhone, “Watching Twilight New Moon with three hundred of my closest screaming teenage girlfriends! Fun!” My other friend Cindy, a life coach, returning from the concession stand with a tub of popcorn, overhearing one teen talking about how she was here with five of her best friends, confessed, “Well, I’m here with five of my 40-year-old friends.”

The undercurrent of excitement and excited chatter continued through the previews, until the film’s opening scene (appropriately a yellow moon) was greeted with screams from the teenage Twi-hards. My friends and I just smiled…it’s all part of the Twilight phenomenon – and it took us back to earlier, more carefree times.

So, what is it about this vampire-human love story that has transfixed a fan base of young and mature audiences? Twilight and New Moon screenplay writer Melissa Rosenberg told LA Times Hero Complex blog contributor Gina McIntyre that what’s so great about the story is Stephenie “really explores complex emotions. You could boil it down to girl loses boy, finds boy, but she doesn’t do the easy, black-and-white moves that a lot of young romances do. It’s very complex -- [what happens when] you develop feelings for a friend, romantic love versus platonic love. These are very sophisticated emotions that are very real but also very hard to translate into a film where everything is usually very simplistic and easy to follow. How do you keep that sophistication and complexity? Because that's the book, that's what makes it interesting.”

A writer’s gift is transporting readers to another place where they can feel the emotions of the characters. That’s what Meyer – and by extension Rosenberg – accomplished in print and on screen.

It’s no secret that Meyer, an English graduate from Brigham Young University, loosely inspired each of her books from classic literature. Booksellers from Paris and Prague to Palm Springs are seeing record highs in sales of these classics:
Twilight: Pride and Prejudice 
New Moon: Romeo and Juliet
Eclipse: Wuthering Heights
Breaking Dawn: The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummers Night Dream

I’m grateful to Stephenie Meyers for more than entertaining us and inspiring a renewed appreciation for the classics: I’m grateful that this stay-at-home mother was brave enough to take a vivid dream she had one June night in 2003 about two star-crossed lovers -- an “ordinary girl” and a beautiful, soulful vampire -- and commit it to paper.

Read the story behind Twilight on Stephenie Meyer's official website: http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight.html

'Twilight' screenwriter says 'New Moon' is better than first: 'I know who I'm writing for'

'Twilight' screenwriter says 'New Moon' is better than first: 'I know who I'm writing for'

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Jargon Buster: 6 Ways to Get Past Techno-Speak

Ever tried to get an engineer to explain a company’s newest product or solution to a lay audience?

It can be frustrating. A lot of technical people have difficulty stepping back and speaking clearly outside their universe – whether it is the latest gadget for in-flight connectivity or software for supply chain logistics. But, as high-tech communicators, we serve as a bridge between the no-man’s land of nanotech speak, and the company’s mainstream audience of business decision makers, investors and non-technical staff.

How do you pull the necessary detail from a technical source and still get the big picture across? Geek speak is confusing to both casual online perusers and the more targeted business readers.

Here are six tips for minimizing techno-speak in news releases, marketing materials and website copy -- mastered in 17 years crafting copy in the high-tech world:

1. Get more than one viewpoint. Ideally, sit down with both the technology and marketing sources so you can ask questions a different way and get varying perspectives.
2. Always bring it back to the customer – what customer problem does our technology, service or product solve? Tell a story.
3. Bring in the competition - ask what differentiates our breakthrough, product, solution or service from what is already out there. You may be pleasantly surprised by what you learn.
4. Resist using in-house techno-speak -- especially acronyms that are only known to IEEE members. Your job is to grab readers with a simple, succinct description that they can understand without scratching their head. Ask your expert (and yourself): “Is there a simpler way to say this?”
5. Use numbers and other comparison language -- for example, when talking about the speed or throughput of a data product,instead of stating the megabits per second, try a reference that your readers will understand: "DSL-like speeds two times faster than the current product."
6. Seek third-party credibility – can you get a customer or an industry expert to comment on the solution? Including their perspective can carry a lot more weight than relying just on company sources.

A final thought -- if you face a stumbling block as you de-jargon and simplify the message, seek inspiration and advice from other wordsmiths. Visit the Visual Thesarus, a handy resource that provides word associations in a cool visual format that encourages out-of-box thinking:
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/. The blog commentary on the site alone is worth a look, including a guest Writers Talk About Writing column. Check out a post on Nov. 5 called "Microspeaking" by Mike Pope, a technical editor at Microsoft, who discusses some of the quirky jargon that has emerged at the software behemoth: http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/2058/.