George Orwell wrote “Politics and the English Language” in 1946. One line from it should hang over every fundraising shop in the country:

“Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the meaning.”

A lot of writing violates this principle structurally, not stylistically as the meaning is never established before the template is.

Why the Template Wins

“Transformative impact.” “Now more than ever.” “Make a difference in the life of a child.” These are not failures of talent, they’re the output of a production process that rewards speed, repeatability, and internal safety. A campaign has a deadline, someone opens last year’s file, adjusts the dates, and fills the frame.

Template-first copy persists because it lowers risk while specificity increases it – it can offend a board member or surface a story that makes someone uncomfortable. So, language defaults to warm, vague, and interchangeable. The phrases were accepted more than chosen.

What Chosen Language Requires

We build interview guides designed to do what Orwell described: delay the writing and start with pictures and sensations.

You sit with a parent, you give them an open prompt and shut up. “I’d love to hear your story in your own words, from the moment you first knew something was wrong, through what it was like to arrive at this place, and how life has changed. Start wherever feels right.” Then silence. “Tell me more about that.” “What happened next.”

The goal is a narrative arc that surfaces organically: fear, turning point, hope, gratitude. You don’t impose that structure, you listen for it. When the speaker lands on a vivid moment, you ask them to paint the scene. “Can you take me back to that moment? Where were you? What do you remember most?”

You let the person’s story emerge in their own words. You ask about stakes: what would have happened without these resources. You ask them to talk about what the support makes possible.

What makes the guide strategic rather than journalistic is a second layer. Every story contains multiple psychological entry points. The interview guide is designed to surface them deliberately. After the open narrative, you ask questions that map to validated personality dimensions.

• A question about surprise and perspective shifts draws out reflective language.
• A question about trust and preparation surfaces competence and agency.
• A question about small acts of kindness reveals warmth.
• A question about waiting without answers captures vulnerability.
• A question about a child simply being a child again produces joy.

The same parent’s story, drawn out through these different lenses, produces raw material that can be shaped for different donor audiences without manufacturing anything.  We don’t invent resonance, we capture it from multiple angles so the donor hears the version that connects to how they process the world.

At the end, you ask the speaker to address donors directly. “If you could say one thing to the people who make this care possible, what would it be?” Then you ask permission to share the story. Ethical storytelling is part of the method, not an afterthought or a label.

The Sequence Is the Strategy

The writer’s job in telling another’s story is curation. You sit with the recording and the moments that carry weight and then you write.

Template-first copy produces “your gift makes a transformative impact.” Interview-first copy produces a specific mother describing the moment she trusted strangers with her child’s life.

One is a phrase, the other is a scene and donors can tell the difference.

If your first draft begins with a phrase, you are already in trouble. If it begins with a recorded voice, you have a chance.

Kevin