Feature

Say It with a Card
Meet Three Hallmark Writers Whose Job It Is to Say It for You

We've all given one — we've all received one. The perfect greeting card. Whether it was humorous, thankful, or sympathetic — it distilled your sentiments down to their essence. The card beyond all cards that precisely conveyed your emotions in a way that no one else could … except perhaps you?

Well, maybe. I spoke with three writers at Hallmark who explain that writing greeting cards is a challenging creative process that is too often perceived to be "easy."

Jim Howard is a Stylist with Hallmark's Idea Exchange division. The Idea Exchange functions as a jack of all trades within Hallmark, providing services to all divisions or "lines" of cards in the company. In 1980, he started out as an editor but soon became involved in writing cards when someone recognized his talent in the impromptu birthday cards he wrote for his co-workers.

Renée Duvall is a Master Writer, also with the Idea Exchange, who has worked for Hallmark since 1979. Renée started working at Hallmark in the employee card shop before moving into a research position and finally an editing then writing position.

Scott Emmons, a former college professor, works as a humour writer and has been with Hallmark since 1993.

When I asked them how they stumbled into the profession and about how they arrive at finished products, they lovingly described the process as one that requires, among other things, patience and skill as a writer.

Writer's Block: What attracted you to writing greeting cards?

Jim Howard: I wanted to be able to use what I thought was my gift for language.

Renée Duvall: I've always loved writing. A lot of my friends from high school got jobs at Hallmark in secretarial positions. My main reason for coming to Hallmark was to go to school and have somebody help me pay for it. Hallmark has really good benefits and they really prize education. But I had always liked to write. I've always loved communicating in writing as opposed to communicating verbally; it's just much easier for me.

Scott Emmons: I decided at one point that I wanted to write humour. It was a career change for me because I was teaching at the time. I was not very happy with the academic life. I was not really looking forward to spending the rest of my life in academia anyway and was thinking that the only other thing that I really wanted to do was to write humour. What I did to get a foot in the door was start writing for a freelance cartoonist. That was a way of building up a portfolio. From there, the next logical step seemed to be greeting cards.

WB: What qualifications did you need?

JH: You had to have a B.A. You had to fill out a portfolio. At that time it was pretty big: you had to fill out about 35 pages of exercises to see if you understood the basics of rhyme, meter, grammar, the idea of greeting cards, "sendability" issues, and matching words with design. The portfolio is a little bit more refined now. They bring you in for an all-day interview. Some people come in for two days.

WB: What is the creative process like in the Idea Exchange?

JH: We do these brainstorms here a couple of times a week. A lot of them are what we call "opening line" brainstorms. They are really more like forced writing sessions where we try to write as many ideas as possible in a short amount of time. For example, you might get the opening lines for a card and then you have to come up with a punchline. You have eight people sitting around a table trying to come up with the best punchline. We've developed a lot of great cards that way, the basic rule being that you can say anything you want so we get a lot of stuff that's obscene and sacrilegious that we won't ultimately use but that open up what the grey area might be. You get some things that make you think "I don't know if we can do that or not" but it's funny.

RD: Sometimes we'll name hand-held computers that people take inventory with, or we'll name a new product line, or an editor will bring in photos and we'll supply writing for that. Or sometimes we'll come up with new product ideas. We never really know what we're going to be doing during those brainstorms.

WB: What is the result of the brainstorming session?

JH: Generally, the stuff is sent on to the editor of whatever line we're working for. We did it a lot for the alternative humour areas like Shoebox. The editor takes them into the planning room and looks them over with the planning team, then the planning team presents the new writing to their managers. Or sometimes it goes into a writing meeting with a writing manager/editorial manager looking over a group of things and deciding, well this works or it doesn't. We do a tonne of work just to get a few ounces.

WB: Who makes the final decision about copy?

JH: It depends on the line that you're working for. Sometimes the editors have the power to approve their own copy. Writing managers manage writers. They meet with editorial managers who manage editors and who have more direct oversight over a product line. They get together and hammer it out.

WB: Approved copy then goes to the artist?

JH: That's one way that we work. There are a lot of different ways. We do projects in which you are assigned, with an artist, to a particular task. For example, Easter cards that have a strong nature theme. Then you try to work out some good combinations. Other times the artist will do pure design projects, which writers will take the results of and try to write to. This generally tends to be a little more challenging. A lot of times I think the writers have a clearer conceptual idea about why someone would send a card. That's not always true. I think there's a particular kind of conceptual thinking that writers do that is unique.

Scott Emmons describes the creative process in the humour department.

WB: How do you come up with new ideas in the humour department?

SE:We sometimes participate in brainstorms, but by and large, the writers in this department work on their own. Brainstorms in a group are fun to do; I think they are good for coming up with rough ideas. I don't think they are very good for producing finished type copy. That generally needs more focused work and honing.

WB: Does your manager give you themes to work on?

SE: An editor working on a line of product or cards will give us a requisition. That usually comes through the manager and is distributed to us. Whatever the editor needs will be on that requisition. We are usually working on one or two major requisitions like that. Aside from that, there will be other requisitions that we can work on from pretty much anywhere in the company. Someone might need copy for the box of a puzzle. Once the editor has the idea, the editor works with an art director, and the art director assigns the idea to an artist to work up.

 

WB: How do you personally come up with new ideas? RD: I keep paper with me all the time. Sometimes I'll get the first six lines and I need two lines to end the piece and I struggle with it all day and it will hit me while I'm walking. Hallmark brings in a lot of educators for us to listen to, people who are experts in sociology and the way people relate. We also have visiting lecturers from different art schools or different writers. We've had a lot of big writers come and give workshops and that kind of helps you get unstuck. We've also got a huge creative library with periodicals for designers, and writers and editors. It's not really hard to come up with ideas because I love the study of relationships. If I have to write for a situation that I haven't personally experienced, I think of a friend or a relative who has. Or I'll watch a movie or read a book. The study of human nature is so fascinating; it's not hard for me to imagine what somebody's feeling or thinking. Getting it down in the right words is tricky.

On writer's block One of the things that I have learned in the last couple of years is that when ideas are coming to me, I have to stick with them as long as they're there, no matter how tired I might be or what else I should be doing, because I don't know where inspiration comes from. I think that's why we all fear writer's block so much. If you could point to the source, then you would know where to go to get more. I think that's a fairly common thing among writers. You can't really explain where inspiration comes from so when it's there you can do one of two things: you can use it until it's gone or sit there and worry about how soon it's going. —Renée Duvall

WB: What makes a good greeting card?

RD: A card that someone picks up and says "God, they were thinking exactly of me when they wrote this." The beauty of that circumstance is that we were thinking of you and that it works for you, but it works for about 100,000 other people too. It's just the whole science of emotions. We're all a lot more alike than we know we are. People also appreciate honesty in greeting cards. If something sounds like it's really sincere and there's an important message behind it — it's not just something strung together — that makes all the difference in the world.

WB: Would that assessment apply to humorous cards as well?

RD: Yes, because sometimes when you're trying to be funny, it sounds like you're trying to be funny. A lot of times the criticism for humour cards is "It looks like you're trying too hard. You're concentrating too hard on the joke rather than on the message." A piece of writing may be a beautiful piece of writing, but if it doesn't communicate, it's not effective.

JH: It has to have a combination of truth that seems undeniable. In funny cards or serious cards, or in something that's kind of both is where you try to create something that seems light or whimsical — where you have an opportunity for a kind of poignancy, and yet there's a sense that there's humour behind it. The main thing in any of those kinds of cards is that it seems to be expressing something true about being human. And it expresses it in the kind of way that makes you want to share it with someone else. It may be expressing a truth about the relationship. It may be something that's so true that the person who sees it wants to share it just because it seems like a really great thing for someone to have said.

SE: Mainly that it is a good integrated package — a good match between the artwork and the copy. Of course it has to have a strong idea. When we've done focus groups or consumer feedback, one thing that consumers repeatedly say is that it's the message of the card that sells it to them. But by the same token, it's the look of the card that's going to make them pick it up in the first place. So, if you have a card with an appealing design, and one that works well with the copy, that's really the chief thing.

In [the humour] department, the humour really ranges from very funny to just kind of soft, cute. There's a big market for that kind of verse, just light, kind of pleasant verse that's not knee-slapping funny.

WB: Can you give me an example?

SE:
You two go together like coffee and cream, like popcorn and late night TV
You share little secrets, you make inside jokes, you communicate by ESP
You've had a few quarrels like everyone else but your love has remained solid and steady
So, it sort of surprised me when I heard the news
I assumed you were married already

WB: What makes a good greeting card writer?

JH: The best writers here tend to be people who are well read, and who have a lot of different frames of reference. The other thing that really supports greeting card writing is having a life of your own. I think it's sort of the negative capability that Keats talks about when he wrote about Shakespeare being able to step into somebody else's mind. And in a way it's like an actor's skill, because you have to be able to project yourself into somebody else's situation or make a connection between your own and theirs. I've always assumed that I'm not so different from everybody else.

RD: A good greeting card writer has to be able to open her heart for other people to see and not be embarrassed about being called foolish or too personal or too sentimental. The difference between a greeting card writer and other types of writers is that we're all about emotion. Hallmark is often held up as a common object of ridicule. People will say "that sounds like a schmaltzy Hallmark card" but not all our cards are that way. You always run the risk when you're writing from the heart for somebody to say "that's a little bit more than I wanted to know."

SE: Anyone who can think of fresh, funny, or clever ideas, and who can have a good sense of what is likely to sell. That and a willingness to sit and work on it for a long time. It's a business where you can't afford to claim writer's block because you've got to keep producing. The biggest challenge is that your subject matter is so limited. You're dealing with the same topics again and again. You're always going to have another requisition for birthday and for Christmas and Valentine's Day. That, especially, is one of our challenges in traditional humour. In alternative humour, I think they can range a little bit more and have looser tie-ins between the occasion and whatever joke they're making. We are generally expected to provide a pretty direct message about the occasion. What do you say for the hundredth time you've been working on birthdays? What could possibly be new?

WB: Do most people think they can write greeting cards?

JH: Yes. Most people think they can do it better than you do. We had a writer come out here from the New York Times a few years ago. We had her come in here and do some of our opening line brainstorms. One of the things that came out in her article was that everybody thinks they can do it. It always seems easy when you look at a joke on a funny card. It seems funny, but it doesn't seem funnier than anything you could come up with. The real trick of course is doing it day in and day out, and being able to come up with a new idea.

WB: Writing greeting cards is not like writing a book; you're name isn't on it. Do you feel that you lack recognition?

RD: Some of the cards that we write have our names on them. There's a line of cards called Between You and Me. Several of us have gotten letters or phone calls about cards that we've written that have touched people personally to the point that they wanted to correspond with us. Sometimes when a writer has a quote that is particularly worthy, his or her name will appear. When I get a card for a personal occasion that I've written that doesn't have my name on it, but that the person just liked enough to give to me, it's a huge thing.

WB: Do people still give you cards?

RD: It's really funny. I still get them. Everybody in my family and everyone I know that's close to me knows pretty much that I'll turn it over and look at the back and make sure it's one of ours.

WB: They say there's a card for every occasion. What is the strangest occasion you've ever written for?

RD: This was a very odd occurrence. We had a new receptionist in the building and she called me and said there was a woman here to see me. When I got to the desk she said "I am so sorry Renée, I didn't realize I'm not supposed to do this. This woman is on vacation and she says she wanted to meet you because she sends a lot of your cards to her boyfriend." When I talked to the woman, she looked a little dismayed. She said "I had a fight with my boyfriend before I left for my vacation. Could you write something for him?" So I asked, "Right now?" She said it would mean a lot, and I said "You know, this takes me a really long time, I can't just sit and do this in five minutes." She said "Anything, even if it just says that I came and I met you and I asked you to write this card to tell him I'm sorry." So that was probably the oddest. I hope people don't think they can walk in the lobby and get us to write for them.

WB: How far can you go in writing humorous cards?

SE: There are funny things that go on in the company that are either bizarre or ridiculous. One of the things that we're always dealing with in humour is the corporate taste policy. Generally, if it's going to pack a lot of humorous punch, it will have some kind of a risqué quality to it. The Hallmark taste policy is pretty conservative so periodically they'll have meetings to determine what the new taste policy is going to be. The great thing about that is they have to get into words like "boob." If we say the word "boob" what kind of circumstances can we say it in? One thing that happens again and again is that we'll do something that goes over the taste policy line and it will perform very well in retail, and then someone will say "Oh, but we can't do that" and it will get pulled.

WB: Do people burn out doing what you do?

JH: Yes, some people do. We do have good longevity in terms of people staying. For the most part, the people who stay are the people who can reinvent it and figure out a new way to do it. The creative jobs here are really good. You get a lot of support, so people don't tend to quit very often.

WB: What do people say when you tell them what you do for a living?

JH: Most people are really interested. Some of my friends in academia look down their nose at it because greeting cards are a kind of pedestrian literary form. In fact, they are not even literary. If you hang out with poets and fiction writers and fine artists, typically they're doing something that they think is of a higher order culturally, and maybe it is in a way. But the thing I always come back to is that I'm published all over the world. My stuff gets bought by people who find it intensely meaningful to them and want to give it to somebody else because it means something between the two of them. To me that is just the greatest privilege as a writer. The key to success is doing something that is meaningful and that touches people.

RD: I travel a little bit for business and a lot for my personal life and when you tell people what you do for a living, they say "Oh really, I've thought about doing that," and you think "Oh my gosh, here it comes." They'll say "I used to write in school," and you think "please don't ask me to critique your work right here on the plane." I think the reason that people think they can be card writers is because most people have probably written some form of correspondence in their life and because words are everybody's commodity. People don't realize that there's a big difference between verbal communication and written communication. It can be so off and so wrong without you even realizing it. When you're looking at anybody who performs and they're really good, be it a dancer or a figure skater, it looks really easy. It speaks to the way that we try to hone everything and get it so that it sounds right so they don't have to stop and think about it. If people had any idea how many steps we go through from concept to finished product, they would be amazed. Everybody and their brother has an opinion about what it should look like and what it should sound like so our work is almost passed under a microscope before it hits the marketplace.

SE: Usually they'll say "Say something funny." In general, I, and most of my colleagues, are more quiet, sit-down, work-something-out, mull-it-over, and perfect-it types. Most people think it's very intriguing because it's an oddball sort of thing. Nobody when they're a kid says "I want to grow up and write greeting cards." It's just a quirky thing that people fall into from one direction or another.

WB: What is the antithesis of writing greeting cards?

JH: Probably writing the instruction manual for the Tomahawk missile. Technical writing for something that is intended to destroy human beings rather than to enhance their existence.

RD: My initial response is to say writing in a journal. You're only talking to yourself. You don't have to worry about who's gonna see it. You can be as honest and ugly as you want.

SE: Deep-sea diving. Writing greeting cards is a pretty sedentary thing; you sit and you write a lot. A lot of it is just cogitation. So I was just thinking anything that is very physical.