Don't let words get in the way

Writing original, interesting copy that commands attention is a difficult art. Most lazy copywriters tend to use
well worn industry cliches that readers are bored to death with and have no value anymore.

Here are a few tips on how to write for your audience with copy that works.

• Try to leave out the parts that you tend to skip.
  Think about what you skip when reading long thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. (I'm guilty of this occasionally but I get reprimanded the editor). Readers however don't hop over dialogue. But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill. Keep it succinct, even with a little humour, it works.


• If it sounds like writing, then rewrite it.
  Don't get caught up in what we learned in composition classes in school, disrupting the sound and rhythm of the narrative. If proper use gets in the way- then get rid of it. Just be careful. You need to know what you're doing before you throw them out. Remember, rebellion only goes as far as the mind of the rebel and doesn't make you a good writer.


• Don't get too bogged down with grammatical rules.
  Most of the rules are only "forbidding" things that weak writers use as crutches to try and pass off their written word as real prose. Sure, there are plenty of great writers who break those rules, but there's a reason we call them great, and it has nothing to do with rules. There's a reason we call bad writers bad, too, and it also has nothing to do with rules.


• Read newspapers, magazines, books
  anything by acclaimed authors and journalists, Aldous Huxley, Mark Twain, Summerset Maughme, Paolo Choelo even Daniel Quinn damn it! Leave the stuff written for the Paris Hilton's, the Jordan's and the basketball players alone.


• Use the Thesaurus that's easy enough isn't it?
  Oh, and please be as liberal with the use of; unique, ultimate experience and the like, they are so ubiquitous that they have totally lost their meaning. The other thing of course is that no-one believes them anymore. I mean what's left after "ultimate"?