How to Persuade in Words
Remove the first person pronouns wherever you can. When you say “I” or “me,” you become the focus. But the subject is your audience. “You” speaks directly to your target reader/donor and the benefits they gain from doing as you say. “He/She/It/They/Them” directs attention to the people you serve. People remember the first and final things plus anything outstanding in the middle. Shorter paragraphs give you more beginnings and endings. Go through your message to find the key ideas and terms they MUST understand and agree with to get your message. You must give those the proper emphasis. Don’t bury them in the middle of a 5-line paragraph. Make them easy to see by putting them in the hot spots. If you are to...
Read More“Is This a Good Idea?”
Yes, it is. There are no bad ideas (if by bad you mean “not worth pursuing, because no one has any interest in it.”) What matters is not your idea or subject but how you handle it. How you present it. What examples you use. The slant you take on it. And, most important, the connections you find and show between your subject and the reader. The “interest” is not in your subject, since nothing is in itself boring or interesting. What then? We have interest in what we can see connected to ourselves, our goals, our curiosity, our needs. Do you care about the jack in the next guy’s auto trunk? Probably not . . . until you have a flat tire and no jack. Then every car going by you becomes extremely interesting. Everything is like that; interesting once you see the...
Read MoreHow the Ghostwriter Creates Copy That Works for You
Goal: Create ads and web sites that draw the client you want to respond as you want. Strategy: Understand the psychology (decision style, process, values and wants) of target client. Find the “hot buttons.” Tactics: Define the key words or ideas your customer must believe. Analyze your customer by the traits that define him/her for your purpose: age, sex, profession, education, experience, income, lifestyle, music (triggers emotions), special needs, other traits you think of Use professional-quality design and images that speak your key ideas to the unconscious mind. Find or create. Write texts (headlines, subheads and body copy) that reinforce your power messages. Position key words to make them prominent and memorable. (Where you say it makes the...
Read MoreSuperlatives are the Worst
“What’s the best sex you ever had?” Even if I could pick one experience and describe it, then what? You would know only one event at the end of a spectrum, which leads to shallow thinking. And you wouldn’t know anything about my sex life. We see superlatives everywhere, especially in interviews. Often a busy or lazy journalist asks, “What’s the hardest part of your profession?” or “What’s the biggest obstacle to world peace?” or “If you could pick one thing about . . . ?” Can we inventory the world’s conflicts or a city’s problems, measure them by a standard and declare ONE the most important or biggest? How would we do that? See what affects the most people? What costs the most to remedy? What changes most slowly? Extreme words work for things we can measure:...
Read MoreWhat Do Writers Do?
(A longer version of this article originally appeared in Active Voice, the monthly newsletter of the San Francisco Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication.) What do you do when you “write”? This conundrum first came to me while editing a first draft manuscript on how to break through writing blocks. When stuck, so that you can’t write, I wondered, what are you not doing? Maybe analogies help. Does a writer perform, as in a school play? Do you learn your lines? Say your little bit on cue? Hope the audience likes you? And take a bow? Does the writer tailor a suit designed by someone else? Do you lay a pattern over the raw material? Cut along the lines? Sew the pieces together? Make a few minor alterations to fit? Tell the customer in the three-way mirror...
Read MoreMake Your Words Work
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