cb-presentation-howtowriteadamngoodsentence-140922084745-phpapp02.pdf

8/11/2019 cb-presentation-howtowriteadamngoodsentence-140922084745-phpapp02.pdf

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5 W AY S T O W R I T E A

Damn GoodSentence
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Averagecopywriterswrite averagesentences.
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You, Im guessing, dontwant to be average.
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You want to be great.

You want to be

remarkable.
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That means you need to writedamn good sentences

without even thinking about it

day in and day out.


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Do that and youll becomean unstoppable writing

machine.

Youll become a

killer copywriter.


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See, everything you write

begins and ends with a

sentence.


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We have a number of

research studies to thank

for this discovery.


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The first one is primacy.

It refers to our tendency

to rememberitemsatthe

beginningofalist.
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Other studies suggest youll always remember:

morewords

from

the

endof

a

list

than from the beginning simply because thoseare thelast words you read.
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This is called recency.


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T H I S C A N B E S E E N I N T H E

S E R I A L P O S I T I O N C U R V E :
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In 1946, Solomon E. Asch upped theante with studies that evaluated the

impact the position of words had on

people.

The study we care about involves

how we position adjectives to

describe a person.
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Read the following two sentences.

Steve is smart, diligent, critical,

impulsive, and jealous.

Steve is jealous, impulsive,

critical, diligent, and smart.


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These two sentences

contain the

same information.


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However, when a group ofparticipants were given the first

sentence ...

they reported Steve in

apositivelight.
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And the group given the secondsentence?

Yep.They reported Steve in

anegativelight.


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Thirty years later,William Crano

decided to sharpen

the distinctionthe impact

order

has on meaning.


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His studies uncovered

additional effects, particularly

with the use of adjectives.


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Change of meaning hypothesis

Early adjectives establish an

expectation, which the reader

then filters all the subsequent

adjectives through.


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Inconsistency discounting

Options presented later thatdont match earlier

expectations are downgraded.


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Attention decrement hypothesis

Early adjectives wield

considerable influence than

later ones (we saw this in the

Steve sentences).


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All these conclusions are

important when it comes topersuasive writing for several

reasons.


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Take this long-winded

sentence from Lisa Millers2012 article Listening to

Xanax...


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Twenty years ago, just before Kurt Cobain blew

off his head with a shotgun, it was cool for Kate

Moss to haunt the city from the sides of buses

with a visage like an empty store and for Wurtzel

to confess in print that she entertained fantasies

of winding up, like Plath or Sexton, a massive

talent who died too soon, young and sad, a

corpse with her head in the oven.
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That Miller ends this sentence

with young and sad, a corpsewith her head in the oven

is NOT an accident.


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Decisions had to be made

when crafting that sentence.

Guaranteedit did not flow from

Millers mind in the published form.


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It was a piecemeal affair.

An experimentation with

effect.


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And this is the craft of writinga damn good sentence.


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Bone up on yoursentence-writing skills

and those pieces of content

will only get better

and be more

widely shared.


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1InsertFacts


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This is nothing more than basic subject andverb agreement:

Moses ate a muffaletta.

Logical and consistent.

The building blocks of a story.


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Compare these two sentences.

On the first day of winter, Moses fed his

muffuletta to the woolly mammoth.

On the last day of winter, Moses fed his

muffuletta to the woolly mammoth.


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And notice how your sympathies

change when I write:

On the first day of winter, Moses fed his

muffuletta to the three-day old woolly

mammoth.


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Those new facts heighten

the emotional appeal ofthat simple story.


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2CreateImages


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Its not a coincidence

that the root of imagination

is image.


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Imagination is the capacity for

people to see the world you

are trying to paint.


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Intelligent people like to usetheir imagination.

So, dont insult their intelligence by

over-explaining but also dont abuse

their intelligence by starving it.


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Use active verbs and concrete nouns

and you will naturally create images.

The buzzard bled.


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Introduce one (or all) of the five senses

and youll enhance those images:

The screaming buzzard bled.


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Use phrases like imagine this or

picture this to signal to yourreader you are about to paint a

picture.


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Imagine a fifty-something man in a blue

long-sleeve shirt, the cuffs unbuttoned,

his knuckles thick and coarse. Hes on

the side of the road, quibbling over astack of used cinder blocks with a

merchant.

from 10 Productivity Tips from a Blue-Collar Genius
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In those two sentences,

you learn the color of the shirt,the state of the cuffs,

and the condition of his knuckles.


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You learn where he is and

what he is doing in concretelanguage.


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The writer uses very precise language to

tell you what he was doing.

For example, the character in the story

wasnt talking, he was quibbling.

Something entirely different

than chatting.


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3EvokeEmotion


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You can naturally get mood into your

sentences if you follow the two previous

steps.

But as a copywriter you dont want

emotion to be an afterthought.


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You must carefully planand manufactureemotion.


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This starts by asking:

What is the dominant mood of your reader or customer?

What problem is he or she trying to solve?

Is it fear over losing a job? A spouse? A scholarship?

Pride of donating to a good cause? Joy for finally getting

muscular definition in his calves?
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Heres an example.
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How often are these little tragedies

repeated in your life?

You write something clever, but everyone ignores it.

You hear about a new opportunity, but dont pursue it

because you dont have the skills or confidence to

attempt it.

You get overlooked by everybody including your boss

because the guy in the next cubicle seems to know

everything about SEO, email marketing, or copywriting.

You hear about all the new clients your peers are pickingup but none are showing up at your door.
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In that short opening,

I identified the relevant painand agitated it so the solution

was ano brainer.


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But notice those four conditions are all

about rejection. Yet

I didnt use the word reject, or a

derivative, once. I didnt tell you the

emotion you should feel. I simply

showed it to you.


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Big difference in thequality of writing.


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4MakePromises


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Entertainment is not a

copywritersbread and butter.


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Getting action is.


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The promise is that you can learnhow to write in such a way people

cant resist your words.

And thats compelling

for the right people.


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Writing great sentencestakes work.


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At first it may feel

mechanical, wooden.

Thats okay.


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The goal is to get to a point where

you unconsciously blend theseelements so they feel natural in the

sentence and cant be pulled apart.


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Sort of like when a golf instructor

stops your swing to adjust yourmechanics.


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That may feel mechanical and

unnatural, but eventually yourswing becomes natural and he

stops interrupting you.


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Exercise #2: Concentrate on your

opening and closing paragraphs

Its arduous to consciously think about each

and every sentence you write in a 500-word

article.

Concentrate your powers on the beginning

and the ending.


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Exercise #4: Labor over subject lines

Unlike headlines, you can use your subject

line in an unconventional way.


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Exercise #5: Labor over your tweets

Twitter is the perfect mechanism for perfecting

your sentences.

You are forced to say a lot in 140 characters.

And you get feedback.


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People either respond or they dont.


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Check for retweets, favorites, and

replies.

And if you dont get a response, try

sharing it again at a different time.


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Your Turn


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Each sentence in a 500-word article may

not be great

but the more you practice the

fundamentals, the closer you are

going to get to perfection.


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Dont give up.


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Keep pluggingaway.


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One sentenceat a time.


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Click to learn more at

copyblogger.com
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