How to Make the Mundane Interesting

Create scenarios to liven up dull subject matter

Waiting for inspiration (Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash)

In the 2010s, I was working as a freelance writer and a great boost to my earnings was a monthly commission to produce articles for a management training company. The brief was usually for around fifteen articles per month, of 500 words and over, to be written on various aspects of management and Microsoft Office applications.

Glancing at an old invoice from those days, I can see that some of the topics I covered that month included stress in the workplace, managing upwards, procrastination, and the Office applications Excel and PowerPoint.

Creating Scenarios

That’s a fairly mundane selection of topics to write about, so you might wonder how I repeatedly came up with fresh and engaging content on such uninteresting subjects. Because this was a world away from bashing out an account of, say, a review of the Glastonbury festival, where the words would just flow.

I was tasked with working my magic on such humdrum topics as how to ensure unique values in a column in Excel. I did this by creating scenarios.

Taking the above example of unique values, I could probably say all there is to say on that subject in under 100 words; the purpose of the rule, and how to apply it…