for people who write

One of the cardinal rules for writing a successful blog is to write with ‘authority.’

Brian Clark of Copyblogger, who himself is without doubt one of the leading authorities on successful blog writing and internet marketing, makes it one of the cornerstones of his advice.

He has released a free e-book on the subject, one I can recommend, and which makes a powerful case for why one should always use an authoritative tone of voice on a blog.

Is it morally right to pretend you are an ‘authority’ on a subject just so you can build a blog?

Brian is by no means alone in offering this advice. The message is the same everywhere you turn. Darren Rowse of Problogger says the same, as do scores of other bloggers. Now, I’m in no position to argue with these folks. They know far more about how to build a successful blog than I do. (Hey, they even post regularly, which is more than I can claim).

I have little doubt that they are correct. If you want a successful blog, if you want to make money and sell e-books and the rest, then you should follow their advice.

They are right.

Up to a point.

Because there is a wider question. Is it always honest to do this? Is it morally right to pretend you are an ‘authority’ on a subject just so you can build a blog?

You can end up with the absurd situation where someone’s first blog is a blog about how to blog. You can see why. Blogging is a subject they are researching, so they blog about it as way of learning. That’s cool. But why the authoritative tone of voice?

We have the situation now, online, where people can establish themselves as an authority on a subject thanks to their ability to launch a successful blog.

Is that a good thing? At least it’s a powerful testament to the importance of knowing how to write well – so maybe I shouldn’t be complaining.

A twenty year old offering life wisdom runs the risk of sounding like a complete bl**dy idiot.

However, what about – and I’m going to show my age here – what about when you come across some blog where someone is solemnly offering you the benefits of their wisdom, their insights into life and how it should be lived, and you go to the ‘about’ page and discover they are aged 22 or something.

I’m not making this up. The internet seems to be full of people in their early twenties who think they have life sussed.

I’m sorry if this is offensive to anyone in their early twenties, but the older you get, the more you realise how little you really know.

You see, there is a danger to always writing with ‘Authority’. Sometimes it comes across as dishonest, or pompous, or foolish, or comical. A twenty year old offering life wisdom runs the risk of sounding like a complete bl**dy idiot. Especially when you realise that the sum of their wisdom comes down to chat up lines and how to pick up girls while making easy money on the internet.

I have links I could be using here, evidence and examples. But I’ve decided not to use them. I don’t want to attack anyone personally, or even to discourage anyone from writing their thing, or doing things their own way.

But I do want to sound a note of caution about the overuse of the authoritative tone of voice.

For one thing, since everyone else is doing it, all those blogs end up sounding a bit the same.

And there has to be room for a little humility here and there. There have to be times when, even if we’re writing about subjects we know well, we have to admit we’re not world-leading experts, gurus or philosophers.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I’ve become a little jaded and tired of the authoritative blog voice. I’ve become suspicious of it.

I tend to assume that people who write this way are trying to sell me something. And that’s not good, because then they start to lose my trust.

I guess when that happens, then something has gone wrong, and it just needs to be fixed. So, I suppose what I’m struggling to say here is… write with authority by all means (especially when you have some), but please… remember to give it a sanity check once in a while.

‘Cos you know what? No one likes a know-it-all.

Let me ask you a hypothetical question: what’s the best way to make money during a gold rush?

I’m sure you’ve heard this one before: the best way to make money during a gold rush is to sell shovels.

All those crazy people dreaming of getting rich, they all to need to buy a shovel or two.

What does this have to do with blogging? Well, the dream of making easy money online is kinda like a gold rush. Someone makes a pile and word gets round. Sooner or later, someone else makes money too. Suddenly everyone rushes in.

There’s a mad frenzy of excitement. Most people do an awful lot of digging, an awful lot of work for little or nothing. But so long as someone somewhere is making money, there will always be new dreamers hoping to strike it rich – and lining up to buy a shovel.

So they start their blogs and get writing. But there’s so much they don’t understand, and so much they need. Like hosting, and a template, maybe some design. They might buy some e-books on how to make money online, or how to blog, or how to sell ebooks. You get the drift.

Who’s making the money? The people selling the shovels. They people selling the tools which allow you to live the dream.

Which is why most of the people who seem to make money blogging are those who are selling information on how to blog, how to make money blogging, how to sell ebooks, premium templates and so on.

There’s nothing wrong with what they are doing, and if you want a shovel, why should they give you one for free? After all, you’re not going to cut them in on your share of the gold, now are you?

So, the moral of the tale is clear: if you want to make money from the blog rush, open up a shovel shop. Sell people the tools they need, be it information, templates, whatever.

You won’t get rich quick. But you can always run a blog or two on the side, just in case you strike lucky.

Is print newspaper journalism too long, too florid, too full of conventions compared to leaner, sharper online writing?

Is traditional newspaper journalism doomed? Is the style of writing itself one of the reasons for the decline of newspapers? Is that why people often prefer to get their news online – because it’s better written?

There’s an article in The Atlantic magazine online here, which says online writing is much simpler, more straight-forward, and gets to the point much faster than traditional print journalism. The whole article is worth a read, because the author back up this assertion with some convincing detail and evidence.

ONE REASON SEEKERS of news are abandoning print newspapers for the Internet has nothing directly to do with technology. It’s that newspaper articles are too long. On the Internet, news articles get to the point. Newspaper writing, by contrast, is encrusted with conventions that don’t add to your understanding of the news. Newspaper writers are not to blame. These conventions are traditional, even mandatory.

Now, I’m from the UK where our newspapers tend to be a bit less formal in their writing style than those in the USA. That’s a pretty sweeping generalisation, I know, and might take some people by surprise. But I think it’s the case.

Nonetheless, I think the writer of the piece in The Atlantic has nailed something pretty important. He analyses a report in the New York Times, and shows clearly just how verbose it is, how long it takes to really get to the point, how many words are wasted justifying things unnecessarily.

In the newspaper article. people you have never heard of are quoted, yet explaining who they are takes up more room than what they have to say. There is hype all over the place. The reader is constantly being reminded of things they must surely already know, and the article is packed with ‘florid subordinate clauses’.

You look at the style of online writing, especially in blogs, and you see something very different.

Online writers tend to get straight to the point, be clear what they are writing about, kill all those ‘florid subordinate clauses’ and pack articles with useful information.

Blog writers, of course, are free to put forward their own opinions, rather than having to quote those of others.

And blog writers don’t have to write 1,000 words where 500 will do, just to fill a space.

The summary of The Atlantic article is itself pretty succinct: ‘newspaper articles are too long.’

Is it time for the newspaper industry to take stock, learn some lessons from the blogosphere?

Are the conventions and traditions of print journalism holding it back, and contributing to its demise?

I’d love to hear you opinions.

No. That’s all I really feel the need to say at this point. Just … No.

However, I’d better explain.

Someone, some real genius, has developed a punctuation mark to let people know you’re being sarcastic.

Like, that’s a good idea, huh?

Personally, I hate exclamation marks and virtually never use them. So I find the idea of a sarcasm mark to be, well, scary.

But what’s worse, what’s really, really bad about this is that the ‘inventors’ think you should pay for it. I can feel all my principles coming unstuck here… they want you to PAY for it!!!!

I suppose $1.99 isn’t a whole heap of money. But I’d rather give the cash away. Or burn it. Or feed it to my dog.

You won’t be finding any ‘SarcMarks’ on this site any time soon.

But if you’re interested, here are some links where you can find out more.

Here we have a test. Would you like to join in? Here’s what you do: you write a short piece. Not too long. About half a page or so. There are two rules. Rule one is this: keep the units short. From full stop to full stop, ten words or less.

You got that? Good.

Rule two now. Did you guess? The words must be short as well. Real short. No words with more than one sound. One stroke. One beat. No words with two beats. None of those two part words those posh folks use.

Trust me, it is hard, real hard. But what is the point? For that we have to end the test.

Phew. That’s a relief. Did it even make sense to you?

It is, in fact, an interesting writing exercise. There are two rules, just to clarify: no sentence can be more than ten words long; and no word can have more than one syllable.

I came a bit unstuck, of course, trying to explain the second rule without using the word syllable.

The exercise comes from a book called ‘Developing a Written Voice’ by Dona J. Hickey (1993, Mayfield Publishing Company).

She has given the exercise to many students in her writing classes, and observes that the first rule forces the writer to place the key words in the sentence close together, and this makes the writing forceful:

‘The most powerful position in a sentence are the first and last words. The closer these words come together, the more forceful the message is.’

The limit on syllables enforces a simpler, more everyday vocabulary. She writes:

‘When monosyllabic words end in a hard consonant, they form a power unit in English. When monosyllabic, consonant-ended words are placed at the end of a sentence (the most powerful position), their force is doubled.’

She goes on to point out that a succession of monosyllabic words, especially those ending in consonants, make the message emphatic and forceful.

Multisyllabic words, on the other hand, soften the language. They can make it more tranquil, compassionate and tender.

Give it a go yourself sometime. It’s a good reminder that those short and simple words really do resonate with power.

Sometimes the words won’t flow. You don’t know where to start. The prospect of actually writing something and committing to it, getting it right and good enough, is so daunting that it freezes you.

There are ways around this. Here are eight of them, discussed briefly. Many of them are areas which warrant a deeper examination, and I intend to return to them in the coming weeks (and maybe months). Let this serve as an introduction.

1. Write the easy bit
Whatever you are writing, be it an essay, a business report or a novel, there will be some parts that seem immensely difficult, while others will be much easier. It’s an easy pit to fall into: you stare at the cliff face in front of you, the hard climb, the difficult part, and wonder how you will ever get up there.
Turn away from it, start with the gentle slope. Write the easy parts first, and once you are warmed up, once you have got some words under your belt and you are acclimatised to the altitude, then you can tackle the rockface.

2. Write lots now
Try writing as much as you can in one sitting, without a break and without editing or concerning yourself too much with quality. Get lots down, and some of it will be useful and useable.

3. Stop at the right time
When you’ve had enough, take a break and a rest. Think about the best place to stop too. Some writers choose to stop in the middle of a sentence, so that when they come back to their writing, they know exactly where to start. You could also consider stopping at a point where you know what comes next, you know precisely where you are heading. Then, when you come back to the draft, you can get started easily.
If you stop just when things look difficult and you don’t know which way to turn, then returning to the draft and getting going again will be hard. You might even keep putting it off, because you know you have that tricky problem to solve right from the get go.

4. Freewrite
This is a tried and trusted technique. There’s actually quite a lot to it, and I’ll return to in more depth soon. But it is essentially a kind of writing game in which you set a time limit such as five minutes, ten minutes, whatever you feel like. During that time you write continuously, letting words pour forth, writing as much as possible. Pay no mind to whether it is good, or useful, or right. Just get as many words down as possible. It’s a terrific warm up exercise.

5. Loop back
If you get bogged down while writing something, loop back. Go back to a point where things were going well, pick a sentence from there, and start again from that point. This time your writing may lead you in a different direction.

6. Write a summary
If you don’t want to write the whole thing now, write a summary instead. It takes off a lot of pressure. Summarise your argument, or the information you want to get across. It’s a good way to get the writing juices flowing, and it might just clarify your thinking too.

7. Paraphrase
Don’t write what you want to write. Paraphrase it instead. Give a different version, not the one you intend to use or publish, or submit. But a version which says what you want to say, in a totally different way. It can lead to new ideas, new approaches, and can free you to write in new ways.

8. Write blind
This is similar to freewriting above, where you are not supposed to look back over what you have written. But this approach takes a slightly different tack. The idea is to actually cover up your writing so you can’t even see the words going down on paper or appearing on a screen. You can achieve this by putting a piece of light material over your writing hand, making sure it covers the paper too. On a computer, you may need to experiment to find a way to make the window in which you are writing invisible. Simply turning the monitor around so it faces away from you works (though you might get some odd looks if you try this in the workplace).

I’ll be exploring these and other techniques in more detail in coming weeks.

If you want to make a documentary film, you need funding. This may entail persuading other people, such as TV companies, to stump up the money in advance.

They’re only going to do this if you can convince them that you know what you’re doing; you have a great idea; you can make it work; you’ve planned it properly; and most importantly of all, that it will pull in an audience.

The documentary proposal or treatment is, therefore, a sales document. For copywriters, this is a potential source of work. For film-makers, it is a necessary evil and something they will have to complete, one way or another. Either they do it themselves, or they pay someone else to do it for them.

But what should a documentary proposal contain?

A synopsis

This is the most important section – this is where you summarise the overall project. It needs to sell, and hard.

The audience

State clearly your anticipated audience. ‘Everyone’ is not sufficiently specific. You need to convince the TV company that you can pull in an audience for this programme, and that they will sit through the film with you all the way to the end. If you’re making a series, you need to convince people will keep coming back for more.

The big idea

What is the programme all about? WHat is different about this programme? What new ideas or information will it contain? What is the programme’s main goal?

The conflict

You need conflicting views to be brought out during the programme, otherwise it will be dull and lack drama. Even a factual documentary tells a story. Outline the conflict, in ways that the buyers and planners working for the TV company can easily understand.

Structure

A paragraph or two on how you intend to structure your film.

Resolution

How will the programme end? Where is it heading?

The presenter

Who is the presenter? Why has he or she been chosen? What special qualities do they bring?

A treatment

Documentaries rarely if ever have a script. Film makers can’t control what will happen when the cameras are rolling. They are not working with actors and cannot dictate what their subjects should say.

Instead, you should include a treatment. This might describe in detail the people who are the interviewed, the places the programme will visit, the topics to be discussed, the areas of conflict which will help to bring it all to life.

The treatment will usually be written in the present tense. So: ‘The programme opens with the presenter standing in front of the Taj Mahal. He tells us about….’ and so on. Treatments are usually a narrative, and do not use technical language or jargon. There is no need for camera angles or similar detail. It is an outline of the content, and the emphasis should be on making it as interesting and compelling as possible. The people with the money want to know that this programme will be interesting and engaging to a wide audience – usually s that they can sell advertising and so turn a profit on the whole deal.

Length

Be clear and precise about how long the programme will be. If there are options to make a long or short version, say so.

Budgets

If you know how much money is needed, this is the place to include the details. If you have no idea, then it will be much harder to get funding.

Production timetable

If you know this, or at least have an idea, it’s a good idea to include it. It shows you’ve done some proper planning.

Biographies

This section should include detailed information to demonstrate the competence and talent of all those involved. The director and producer should be included. Other people you may want to present in detail here include the presenter, any technical or scientific advisors, and possibly some of the interviewees and subjects featured in the programme.

Make it sell

Making a film or programme is a time-consuming and expensive business. It’s worth spending some extra time and / or money on the proposal to make it as compelling and convincing as possible. As a copywriter, I would argue that this is a job for a professional. But it certainly can be done by the film makers themselves, providing they have the time to commit to getting it right, making it sell their idea effectively, and giving the buyers and planners enough information to make a decision in you favour.

Here’s a passionately written blog post which has gone viral, and which should interest anyone involved in writing search engine optimised copy. I found it through Boing Boing (my main source of news these days, I have to admit) – and it’s a post in which the writer has a real good go at anyone involved in SEO:

“Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned.”

That’s just how it starts. There’s more. Lots more:

And so, like the goat sacrificers and snake oil salesmen before them, a new breed of con man was born, the Search Engine Optimizer. These scammers claim that they can dance the magic dance that will please the Google Gods and make eyeballs rain down upon you.

Do. Not. Trust. Them.

I have a lot of sympathy with the opinions in this post, even though I sometimes write about SEO, and offer it as part of my copywriting service. I don’t do everything connected with SEO, simply writing web copy in a way that Google’s spiders will find the search terms.

It’s actually pretty simple stuff – and a way it is obvious, as Derek says in his piece.

On the other hand, I was involved in creating SEO copy for a web designer the other day – a company which itself offers an SEO service, and yet I had to explain to them some of the basics, such as optimising one page for no more than one or two search terms.

The same company was also planning to optimise its site for the term “online solutions.”

I had to explain that I didn’t think anyone goes into Google and searches for “solutions”. Do they?

So, while much of SEO may be “obvious” to those in the know, most people don’t have to engage with all this stuff.

Isn’t that the basis of most professions, from lawyers and doctors to designers and chefs? You specialise in one area that may not be rocket science – but because you specialise, you know what needs doing.

Nontheless, Derek has a lot of good points to make about how the quest for Google love is distorting and harming web content. It’s actually a subject close to my heart.

And one I’ve ranted about myself, on occasion.

Email is not just a means of communicating quickly. It’s also a way of storing information so you can refer to it later. So when writing effective emails, you need to bear in mind both how to get your point across in the short term, and how useful the message will be as a means for the recipient to store and later retrieve information.

Continue reading →

Do you write like Shakespeare? Or are you more like Mark Twain? Or Tolstoy?

If you want to get an idea, there’s a website that can compare your text to that of the great writers.

It’s fun, that’s for sure. I entered a piece of recent text, and was told it had a 15% resemblance to Mark Twain. Probably because it was (intentionally) a little old-fashioned.

Then again, I’m not really sure how accurate the results are – or how many authors they have in their database. To test the system, I tried entering the opening page of Dostoevsky’s classic ‘Crime and Punishment.’ It came out as 25% like Leo Tolstoy.

Close, but no cigar.

A while back I reviewed some of the alternatives to the mainstream word processing tools. I’ve always held that word processors are not designed for writers: they are office administration tools first and foremost.

Now I’ve come across a very promising new writing software package, called Ulysses. I haven’t tried it yet, but if you’re looking to break up with your word processor, and you also use a mac, then this one might be worth a look.

Ulysses was developed mainly for writers who work creatively with text and want or need to realize large amounts of text. All currently available word processing systems on the market do not or just merely grasp the specific needs of this group.

If I find the time (and that might be tricky) I’ll give it a trial and write a review. If you’ve tried Ulysses, please let us know how it went in the comments.

Do you want your writing to stand out, to have power and persuasiveness, to have life and zest and energy? Then here are four ways to take your writing to another level: Continue reading →

My one-year-old Airedale Terrier knows how to get to the point. She’s much better at it than most people I know running businesses, teaching classes, or even some people who write for a living. Continue reading →

There are three crucial things you must know before you start to write:

What are writing about?

Why are you writing?

Only when you know these can you really organise your thoughts and your writing effectively.

If you’re briefing a copywriter, one of the most important things they need to know is:

Who is your audience? Continue reading →