How to Become a Better Writer (11)
I just found this on Quora this morning:
http://www.quora.com/How-does-one-be...-better-writer
Some of the best tips I've ever read on improving your writing.
Put them in to practice and you'll see results. Simples.
(You have to be signed up to read all of them, but it's worth it. Quora is a time vacuum.)
I think it was Ca$hvertising which helped improve my writing more than anything else.
Biggest tip was short sentences.
Fuck it's so much harder to read long winding sentences that can be cut down to less than 10 words if they were just proof read once or twice.
Simple, but effective!
i just study what works.
monkey see, monkey do.
reverse engineer it and go to work.
write like you talk.
more effective than writing out 7 sentence paragraphs.
"Write like you talk." Yep that's another one that a followed. I used to follow some kind of serious "proper" tone I was taught at school.
However don't get too carried away with "write like you talk". A few industry newsletters write so casually (in their own lingo) I don't have a clue what they're on about.
Another one is, write for skim readers by using subtitles.
Building on that - jargon is one of the things I find both hardest and most helpful in copywriting. And by that I mean both removing it when people won't understand it and using it where appropriate.
Acronyms (STM rather than Stack That Money), slang terms, technical names ("web stack" rather than "web server with a database and a programming language") - all super-powerful stuff.
It's are powerful social proof if you target it correctly (using MMO slang when talking to MMO players, for example) and absolute conversion poison if you use it on an audience that doesn't understand it.
One simple example - I managed to triple my CTR on a banner for a webcomic site by using the nickname that the readers had for the comic, rather than its "official" title.
Oh - if anyone isn't familiar with it, check out Copyhackers: http://copyhackers.com/ . Awesome newish copywriting site.
Originally Posted by Mr Green
Originally Posted by Finch
Some of the ideas are less relevant to copywriting and more relevant to fiction writing, expository writing or long form journalism. That said, anyone who appreciates excellence in writing will find a lot of inspiration and insights from the advice found there.
The suggested reading list is superb.
Reading list:
The Art of the Novel, Milan Kundera
Becoming a Writer, Dorothea Brande
The Careful Writer, Theodore M. Bernstein
The Golden Book on Writing, David Lambuth
Living by Fiction, Annie Dillard
The Writing Life, Annie Dillard
On Writing, Stephen King
On Writing Well, William Zinsser
Politics and the English Language, George Orwell
The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode
Stein on Writing, Sol Stein
The War Against Cliche, Martin Amis
Writing in Restaurants, David Mamet
The Writing Life CD British Library (various authors)
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott (audio version)
Story, Robert McKee
Telling True Stories, ed. Mark Kramer and Wendy Kall
The Art of Fiction, John Gardner
Elements of Style, Strunk and White
Originally Posted by Mr Green
I've trained several hundred copywriters over the years, and this is invariably the biggest obstacle.
For whatever reason, school generally teaches people to be bad writers. The art of writing itself becomes a battle between the writer and the "rules" he thinks he's supposed to follow. It's like there's a filter between what he wants to write, and what he thinks he's ALLOWED to write. As if his English Teacher is going to pop up somehow and reprimand him for it.
Fuck that.
It should be about getting your point across as quickly and concisely as you know how. Inject your personality too. It will help, usually.
I could talk about this for hours, but work beckons. Nice thread, Mr Finch!
I think it was Apple where I first learned how effective short sentences can be: number one http://blog.kissmetrics.com/persuasive-web-content/
Wow, that really is a very good reading list indeed - although much of it is more applicable to fiction.
"Story" is tremendously useful reading if you're writing long-form anything, though, particularly sales pages - understanding the structure of narrative makes a huge difference.
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