Linden’s Top Tips for Writing Just About Anything
Want results? Then watch your words.
Like it or not, our written words reflect upon us way longer than we would sometimes like. That’s especially true in business these days.
Slap some lousy copy onto a website or blog for half the world to see and you’ll get the same response you would with a poorly written ad, media release or newsletter.
Zippo. Nada. Zilch.
Conversely, you can promote your business with a proven pro and get the professional results you and your business deserve.
I bring 30 years of national journalism experience and 20 years of ghostwriting (including a national bestseller) and collaboration expertise to my work.
My web copy—which can include content architecture and search engine optimization (SEO)—will sell your business by using your language and reflecting your personality, expertise, and passion.
In short, your blog (and site) will sound like you, only better. Ditto for social media, newsletters, ads (including advertorials) and brochures.
How is that possible? Because I actually use your words and weave them together to make your case. I’ve been doing this for years as a ghostwriter. Let’s face it. If I can write a national bestseller for Julia “Butterfly” Hill (the woman who sat in a Redwood for more than two years to keep it from being chopped down) and then write books for Charles Schwab’s daughter and Tammy Faye Baker’s son, I can definitely capture your voice.
On the other hand, I know that some of you will want to write your own content. If you’ve tried, then already know how hard it can be to convey your ideas “the write way.” Over the years, I’ve come to realize that most of us struggle with many of the same issues when it comes to putting pen to paper or fingers to a keyboard. So I created a list of my top five writing tips:
1) Start Out Sloppy
Google the phrase sloppy letter and you will find a series of diatribes against the practice of careless correspondence. So it will probably surprise you to learn that I advise all my writing coach clients to write sloppy letters. Not to their clients, of course, or even to their friends or relatives. I urge them to write me. “The sloppier, the better,” I tell them.
Why? Simple. Most writers are so concerned about the quality of their work that the quality of their work suffers. Ideas and creativity don’t flow in the face of self-criticism. And how do you discover your own voice if you’re constantly judging its flaws? All that scrutiny spawns nothing but doubt and, eventually, immobilization. The Sloppy Letter to Linden diffuses those self-imposed constraints.
The rules are simple. You can’t worry about spelling, grammar, language, sentence structure, repetition, logic or anything else. You just write as fast and as long as you want, or until you’ve brought me up to speed about yourself and your project, including why it’s important to you and what you’re trying to say and/or accomplish, and any other background information that might be helpful.
Don’t worry about what you’re saying, how it sounds or whether you’ve said it before. Just get the words out. There will be plenty of time to prune, re-organize and edit later.
Some people finish this brain dump in less than an hour. Others work on it for months. Whether they wind up with whole chunks of prose that drop right into their blogs or websites, find the voice they’ve spent months or years struggling to cultivate, or simply relax, without exception they find the exercise liberating. After all, how can you sweat something that’s supposed to be sloppy?
During the writing coach process, we return to the sloppy letter whenever someone gets stuck. “You know what I think you might want to try?” I ask if brainstorming hasn’t helped clients break through the impasse. With enthusiasm that reflects their obvious sense of relief, they answer, “Sloppy Letter to Linden!”
Try it the next time you need to jumpstart—or restart—your own writing.
2) Focus On Your Client
Look at most websites and blogs and you realize they could be ads in the Personals section of a newspaper. The authors are often so busy flaunting their own attributes that they don’t even pause long enough to address the potential clients’ problems and needs.
Before you can sell yourself, you have to convey the fact that you understand the pain or the need that brought people to your site in the first place. Only then can you can talk about the benefits of your product or service in a way that they’ll relate to.
Let’s face it. To some degree, we’re all in it for ourselves. And the people we’re trying to attract as customers are no different. Even copy that is supposed to be about you (a blog post or a web page titled ABOUT, for example) can be client-centric by focusing on why you relate to the issue at hand, how your product or service solves that problem and why that solution means so much to you.
The trick, of course, is to tap into—and reflect—your real passion along with your true self. Increasingly these days, people want to know who’s behind the product or service they’re spending their money on, and they they’re darn good at discerning the real thing from a fake.
Once you’re connected to your potential customer by presenting the problem and how you can help, you need to make sure there’s a call to action on each page. But go easy here. You want to be direct, but there’s no bigger turn-off than sales copy that’s trying too hard. So just let the facts speak for themselves.
3) Come Up with a Working Title
Want to make things easier on yourself? Of course you do. So make sure you have a title for whatever you’re writing, even if it’s just a few lines. You don’t need a grabber title right now. In truth, unless you’re writing a blog post, you may not even use the title at all. But a working title will keep you on track, reminding you to stay on topic when you threaten to elope with a tangent.
Working titles don’t have to make your heart sing. They don’t have to be good or even mediocre. They just have to sum up the bottom line.
Can’t identify your message? You’ve got bigger problems than the lack of a title. No worries. Go back to the sloppy letter and figure out what you’re trying to say, sum it up in your working title and you’ll be back on track.
4) Create an Outline
All too often, the problem that stymies writers isn’t one of writing, but one of thinking. Whether you’re setting forth to write a blog post, a web page or a media release, making the effort to outline the work once you have enough background information to work with will save time and aggravation.
So why do so many people try to write without an outline? In most cases, it just doesn’t make sense. Say you want to drive from San Francisco to Manhattan. You know that you have to head east, so you jump in your car and start driving. You may eventually reach your destination without consulting a map, but you’re sure going to waste a lot of time and gas with all the wrong turns along the way.
Writing sales and marketing copy is no different. And yet so many writers plunge in with only a vague idea of where they’re headed, and no plan for how to actually get there. When they eventually reach a dead end or get hopelessly lost somewhere around Nebraska, they finally realize they need a roadmap.
Two analogies can help explain the proper structure of an outline.
Picture a train. The locomotive (or introduction) pulls the various cars (independent ideas) which are linked together (with transitions). The caboose (the conclusion) wraps the whole thing up.
Thinking about a lawyer in court also helps. The lawyer—or writer—states the case (the introduction), makes the case (the body of the piece), and sums up the case (the conclusion).
So how you do get from a mess of ideas to the point where you have an outline, particularly if you don’t think in a very linear manner? Let’s say you’re working on your web copy.
Start by jotting down all your ideas. You can even try using a mind map to spark new ideas and make interesting connections.
Group all the ideas that seem to be related into categories, then determine how those categories relate to one another.
Sort all the material that you’ve written—even the odd sentence that’s been scribbled on a scrap of paper—into groups, then determine which idea category each group falls into.
Create a new idea category for any group of material that doesn’t fit into the list, and relate it to the other categories.
Organize your idea categories into a list and write a topic sentence for each. Remember to make your case by focusing on your client’s problems and needs.
5) Opt for Power Prose
Whether you’re writing a business letter, a memoir, a novel or serious non-fiction, you want your prose to pack a punch.
Choose dynamic action verbs that make your text come alive instead of weak favorites like “to be” or “to have.”
Weak: They have many great deals.
Strong: Great deals abound.
Weak: The farmers were fearful that families would starve.
Strong: The farmers feared that their families would starve.
In addition to using power verbs, you also want to avoid passive sentences in favor of more vigorous sentence construction. As you’ll see, these two go hand in hand:
Passive: This charming house will save you money.
Active: Save money and buy this charming house now.
Passive: My family’s history is long, extending back to 18th century Scotland.
Active: My family’s long history extends back to 18th century Scotland.
Passive: It wasn’t a big surprise to me.
Active: I wasn’t surprised.
Avoid qualifiers. State your position as fact. Qualifiers (such as I think, I feel, I believe, it seems to me) just weaken your argument.
Qualified: We feel that this is the time to buy.
Strong: This is the time to buy.
Qualified: I believe that my family’s story typifies the immigrant experience.
Strong: My family’s story typifies the immigrant experience.
Cut the fat. Tightening your writing by eliminating repetitions or all those little filler words that don’t enhance meaning adds power to your text.
Wordy: She was thinking about all this as she wandered along the mountain trails when she stumbled on the hut.
Powerful: Lost in thought, she stumbled on the mountain hut.
A Final Note
While it helps to consider these rules when working on your initial draft, they’ll mostly come into play during the editing phase. So put your inner editor on hold until then. Otherwise whether you’re putting together notes or an actual draft you run the risk of criticism-induced writing paralysis (also known as writer’s block). You’ll have plenty of time to drag out your inner editor once you’ve completed a draft. Until then, just write!
Oh yeah. And don’t forget to sign up for my free and fabulous insights on how to deal with—or better yet avoid—writer’s block.
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