Paul Skah

Tag: copywriting

  • Three Stages of the Writing Process

    Three Stages of the Writing Process

    I am sure that you have been in this situation before. The deadline for your university coursework is approaching all too fast. Therefore you have a Grand Plan to Get to Work ASAP. It’s Saturday morning, you’ve cleaned your flat and caught up on all your TV shows… So you take a seat in front of your computer with a strong resolution to get at least half of the work done. You open up a blank page in Word and begin. Two hours later… you’ve decided on the ideal font. You spend the next two hours setting the margins perfectly. The amount of text you’ve written so far? Zero.

    Is it your fault? It’s not, regardless what all the coaches try to tell you. Well, not all of it. The fault partly lies in the choice of the wrong tools. The writing process can be divided into three stages and Word (or any other classic text editor) should only come up in the third and final stage. So what do we do beforehand?

    Stage One: Inspiration

    The famous “writer’s block” doesn’t result from lacking an idea. It’s not like you stare at an empty page on your screen and no ideas pop up in your head. I would say the opposite is true — you have way too many ideas! And do you know what the problem is? A computer keyboard is a tool that engineers would call a single input stream device. Using a keyboard (or a pen if you want to just write down a line of text) requires your stream of thoughts to be organized. However, it’s not always so. Our brain works on the principle of loose associations, processing a lot of threads at the same time. To start off, you need to tame this chaos. First in your head and then using external tools. How to deal with it?

    • Do not start writing by opening a computer and a text editor! The conceptual part is based on loose associations. A blinking cursor requires a single stream of thought and only adds to your stress.
    • A piece of paper, pencil, loose sketches are your friends. Loose sketches better reflect the natural work process of your brain.
    • The result of this stage is the text outline. The things that come to your mind (and which are noted down) are divided into those you want to write about and those that you can skip.

    When you’re done sorting out things that are useful and useless… go for a walk, take a shower, take a break. Because you will have to repeat this process. And now that you have decided what you are going to write about, you have to figure out how to write about it. Meaning: how to connect the dots. And again, loose sketching and mind maps will be your friends. Ready? Your text outline not only consists of the key elements but also includes logical connections between them.

    Stage Two: Writing

    What do you use for writing? Word (or another similar program)? That’s not good… Why? Let me tell you a story.

    One day a client came to my company asking to design his business cards. He was an accountant who already had the whole thing quite thought through — he even brought a draft of the design for his business cards. Everything would have been wonderful if not for the fact that the sketch was done… in Excel.

    Are you smiling now indulgently? Well, you shouldn’t. The accountant created the business card in Excel for two reasons. Firstly, because he could. Secondly, because he didn’t know what other, better tool to use. They’re the same reasons why you write your texts in Word; because you can and do not know of a better tool. Meanwhile, better ones exist. Why?

    Writing is a difficult process. Cutting and bending words to yield to your will only make your brain squirm to find ways to get out of it. It tries to procrastinate, coming up with easier tasks, the effects of which are visible immediately, not just after a few hours. Such tasks as choosing fonts for example. Setting colors. Checking your e-mail or Facebook also seems to do the trick. When there is a blank sheet of paper in front of you and you’re aware that another 50 pages need to be filled, how do you deal with it?

    • Make your computer… a typewriter. I know at least a few writers who have an old-school laptop on their desk just for writing. It’s main advantage? It is not connected to the internet. There are no programs on it except the simplest text editor. You can’t do anything else but write on it.
    • Find a simpler text editor. The disadvantage of Word (and others like it) is the notion “because you can”. Only once you have a text to transform should you be focusing on changing fonts or adjusting the margins. There is a category of editors which we call distraction free — they do not have any interface elements except the cursor. You cannot do anything except write in them. What do I recommend? Calmy Writer (application for Chrome), iA Writer (Windows, Mac), Ulysses (Mac). There’s a blog post over at VentureHarbour comparing the apps. Check it out!
    • Most of the tools recommended above support Markdown. It’s a markup language that allows you to format texts as you type. It sounds awful, but learning it will take you three minutes. And when you start writing in Markdown, you will not go back to traditional formatting.

    The result of this stage is… your text is almost ready! There are many people who finish writing at this point. However, one more task awaits us.

    Stage Three: Editing

    We call Word a text editor because it is ideally suited for this stage. It allows you to format the text and have your fun with choosing fonts, setting margins or colors. But text editing is still working on its fluidity and style.

    • Read the text aloud to see how it “flows”. Reading out loud will allow you to catch logical errors in the construction of sentences or phrases that do not sound too clear.
    • Delete unnecessary words. There is no one rule to determine which words are “unnecessary”. You can have a more descriptive style and plant adjectives and adverbs in each sentence, or you can also write more to the point. It’s your readers who determine what they like.
    • Avoid repetition. Unless it’s a conscious exercise. Also pay attention to all kinds of linguistic clichés. For example, describing athletes as “fit as a fiddle” is a cliché. Find your own style.
    • Punctuation and signs show that you are not a slave to the keyboard. On a standard keyboard you will not find the “correct” quotes symbol, and you’ll be looking in vain for hyphens — long lines like this . This is something Word can help you a lot with.

    The effect of this stage will be a well-formatted, effortless text that you can publish with a clear conscience.

  • Seven Chores of a Content Creator: How To Improve Your Writing?

    Seven Chores of a Content Creator: How To Improve Your Writing?

    The first: write

    Do it each and every day, not only when inspiration strikes. Write for yourself, your diary or that bin icon on your desktop, don’t necessarily write for your blog exclusively. The purpose of this is to create a certain set of habits and procedures to help you with preparing your texts. We’ll touch more on said procedures later in the article but as a foreword let me tell you this: writing is a skill that – if left untended – chips and fades away. Write for your personal stash because quite frankly – not all of your texts will be good enough. You are, of course, free to publish the ones you feel are solid, but remember that publishing everything you write isn’t the best idea. 

    The second: the persona

    Be mindful of who you’re writing for and adapt your text, vocabulary, and arguments to what you know. You’ll find many great persona-building tools on the web, I highly recommend the following:

    • Personapp.io
    • Xtensio Persona

    How to use your persona? In your texts, remember to refer to what people already know – you’ll gain extra credibility! If you’re writing for bodybuilders in the LA area throw in some flavor text like “I’m sure you’ve hit Santa Monica to flex those muscles and work your daily set” It will make the text more relatable and your readers will feel it’s written especially for them. A persona influences what and how you write – your style, vocabulary, jokes and of course, topics! (If you’re writing a blog for fitness aficionados in the Chicago area, it’s generally a bad idea to glorify that deep dish pizza you ate at Bartoli’s last night).

    The third: the purpose

    Once we’re absolutely sure who we’re writing for, one of mankind’s greatest questions comes into play: why?

    A good text is useful to the readers. To what degree it satisfies their needs is another issue altogether (some people may want to learn something from you, others might also want to experience something). If you don’t write with your purpose in mind, you’re bound to stray and muck about.

    What does the reader want to learn? You have a few tools at your disposal which will help you find topics for your articles. The first of them are micro-moments. Google – based on the analysis of the browser queries – selected four categories of information that people are looking for, they are:

    • I-want-to-do (How to enable screen filters to help with color blindness on my iPhone X?)
    • I-want-to-know (How can I tell an avocado is ripe?)
    • I-want-to-buy (Best cigar stores in downtown Chicago)
    • I-want-to-go (What to see in Austin, TX?)

    There’s more about micro-moments in a separate article. Suffice it to say, adapting this approach will significantly diversify your posts!

    The second method which I use to find new topics (Still bearing in mind that I want to write things of use) is browsing industry forums. Take for instance LinkedIn or Quora which offer thematic groups. Whether you’re writing about planning a wedding or cooking, you’re bound to find a treasure-trove of inspirations among the questions asked by your potential readers. 

    The fourth: the work

    One of Pixar’s storytelling rules states that if something fun to talk about, it’s probably hard to listen to. In terms of blogging, I’d rephrase it into: if it’s easy to write, reading it isn’t worth much. Research is invaluable, seeking bits and bobs of trivia for the text or digging up unknown facts – these toils yield the best results and give the readers a feeling that your article was well worth the read and that they have learned something new. Think about it, you came up with an idea to write a text about disposing Halloween decorations. If you write just it off the top of your head, what you write will be nothing more than your personal thoughts on the subject – something that just about anybody can muster. I tend to consider such blogs nothing more than trivial chitchat or slightly harsher – to YouTube reaction videos, entertaining, sure – but of little intellectual value and I steer clear of them, because I fear that in a moment of weakness I could commit such a text myself. But! If you do your work right, find the information about Halloween decorations, ask the readers what they tend to do with theirs, do an interview with a woman who divorced her husband because of flushing thousands of dollars in decorations down the drain each year (provided you can find one!) – THAT will be a text worthy of my attention. 

    In my case, the creative process is as follows:

    • I jot down all of the aforementioned points (Whom am I writing for, what do I want to write about, what is the purpose of writing it);
    • I jot down what I already know (This is the “off the top of my head” bit) and I don’t move an inch further until I manage to write down things I have to put actual effort in finding (data which interest me, surnames of the researchers and so on);

    Third and most important part is…

    The fifth: how do you want to tell the story?

    Start off with a story? That’s a fantastic method. Best make sure that you have a story at the ready with two elements: humor (or any other emotion for that matter) and a good punchline (in the form of a good moral or a surprising ending). A story is by no means mandatory – but it helps. Instead of one, you can present a particular example to which you’ll return in your text (just like the story about what to do with Halloween decorations). Concrete things are an essential element of what you write. 

    The fifth “chore” is the point at which you can inject your own style into what you’re writing about. Jokes which amuse you (What do we call a group of eight hobbits? A hobbyte!), sayings which you commonly use (aw mah gerd! , Wot N’ Tarnation?! ) or comparisons (New taxes are about as welcome as an outhouse breeze). Thanks to these, you can talk about widespread ideas in a way unique to you. 

    The sixth: the title

    The strategic place of your article. When it comes to attracting the attention of your readers, the title does 80% of the work. Suffice it to say, it’s worth ironing out all the kinks before you let the final title fly. You can use one of the so-called fascination triggers (In her book “Fascinate” Sally Hogshead described seven of them, I’ve taken the liberty of selecting four which work wonders with article titles):

    • Lust – the promise of pleasure: “7 Best scenes of ripping off Halloween decorations from the sidings”
    • Mystique – you tell the readers that they don’t know something: “Want not, waste not! Top 5 uses for old Halloween decorations that will blow your mind!”
    • Alarm – you’ll lose something if you don’t act NOW: “Tons of discarded Halloween decorations secreting poisonous substances into the ground waters!”
    • Vice – Show how others fall: “Fail compilation: Funniest Halloween decoration blunders!”

    The seventh: redact

    Be sure to read through the text before you press “submit” and think about how you can improve it. First and foremost: make sure it isn’t too wordy, are the commas in all the right places? Next, give it to someone who could be your potential reader. Is everything clear? Is the language comprehensible? 

    If everything is as it should be… Publish!