Copywriting – the King Herod approach.
"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take a way." – Antoine de Saint Exupéry (1939).
Copywriting is a strange way to make a living. You are paid on what you can do for the customer and the customer’s customer. You are paid to sell. You are paid to make people sit up and listen.
In order to do that effectively each copywriter must suppress their natural desire to say ‘look at me’ and ‘look at what I can do!’ An earlier Word Forge article warned of the dangers of smugness; of using your brief as a soapbox and rendering the content indulgent. But it’s not just the content and the tone that can leave your writing on the discarded pile. It’s the relish with which you employ the ‘delete’ key.
Harry Potter: less is more?
Amongst the less favourable reviews of the latter Harry Potter books there was a common theme. J K Rowling, it was said, was in need of a damned good editor. She was (and is), of course, all conquering. Millions hang on her every word and it would take a powerful editor indeed to have the guts to say "You know, Jo, let’s leave the sub-plots out shall we?"
But an editor is what we all need. And in the world of copywriting you’d best make sure you are your own fiercest critic, because if it’s the customer trimming your words you can rest assured they won’t be coming back.
50% copywriter; 50% editor
So how do you effectively critique you own work? Here are three tips:
- Read! Re-read your work. Read it loud so that there’s less likelihood of you skipping words. Get your mouth round those syllables. Test that alliteration aloud. Read aloud and you’ll spot the sentence structures that don’t work. You’ll identify the glaring missed words and typos. You’ll see where you’ve missed elements of your plan (and do, please, plan).
Don’t read it aloud and your brain will fill in the gaps for you. You’ll miss the errors because of your over-familiarity with the piece. A first time reader will spot them immediately.
- Trim! Reading aloud will identify the redundancies. Saying what you’ve written will show where you have, effectively, said the same thing twice. Like we’ve just done there. One of the first two sentences in this paragraph can be culled. You choose – we’re not precious.
Trim repetition. Trim irrelevance. Trim indulgence. Stick to your plan and if a paragraph doesn’t sit comfortably with it then either your plan needs another visit or that paragraph needs deleting. Stick to the plan; stick to the point.
- Kill your babies! Sorry about the rather dramatic title but this is a key factor in ensuring what you’ve written meets the brief and delivers what your customer wants.
Take a look at the last piece you’ve written. Was there a passage within it of which you were really rather proud? Do you read it now and grin? Do you kick back having finished it and light a metaphorical (or actual) cigar? That’s your baby. And you need to be really careful when it comes to your babies.
Read it again. And again. Leave it a day and then revisit it once more. If it still strikes you as entirely reasonable, well founded, accurate and well-written then leave it in. But be sure to be extra-critical about such pieces. Any doubts about any of your babies and it’s time to get all King Herod on them.
Here’s why: the reason you were so proud of that last piece; the reason it made you smile is because what you wrote appealed to you. And if you’re appealing to yourself you’re (probably) not appealing to your audience. Be objective. There’s probably language, an assertion or an opinion that in the cold light of day you’d be tempted to drop. Give into temptation. Drop it. You’ll hate yourself at the time and then be really rather glad you were so disciplined.
You’ll know when you’ve edited yourself to a standstill. It’s when, as writer and wartime pilot Antoine de Saint Exupéry said, "there’s nothing left to take away." It applies to great design. It applies to great art. It applies to great copywriting. Time to start trimming.
© Word Forge 2009
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