Copywriting is creative writing
Like countless other copywriters before me, I didn’t think of myself as a copywriter while I was studying undergrad creative writing.
Instead, I thought I was some kind of Hemingway in training, a junior Tolkien.
It was only when I left the comfort of university without a bestselling debut novel to my name that I realised my financial position wouldn’t be secured by massive royalty checks. At least, not anytime soon.
Oh, there’s no doubt that future novel is going to be game-changing. It’ll really shake things up. But in the meantime, I found that my knowledge could be applied elsewhere – and used to pay off that pesky student debt.
Transferable skills
Writing is not writing. Not necessarily.
Writing is an art and a science. A… a sciart… an arence...
Being able to tell an emotive story about Hobbits doesn’t necessarily mean that you’d be able to sell millions of pounds worth of financial services to a business client.
But knowing how to do one really helps you with the other.
You see, just as you can’t write well without reading well, you’ll find it easier to write convincing, sales-driving copy if you have some background in ‘softer’ storytelling.
Here, I wanted to share with you some of the skills of fiction writing and how they can be applied to either B2B or B2C copywriting.
Consider the hero’s journey
Every great story has a hero. In The Lord of the Rings, it’s Samwise Gamgee (Frodo who?").
Jane Eyre is a classic hero with a great coming-of-age arc (we call that a Bildungsroman).
Consider, as well, Luke Skywalker. Yep, you guessed it: hero. (Duh).
Each goes on a journey of discovery, overcoming obstacles, falling into despair somewhere around the end of the second act, then rising triumphantly to finish. This is what we call “the hero’s journey”.
Your copywriting should also take the hero on a journey. And that hero – as corny as this sounds – is your reader.
Your aim when writing should be to deliver your reader to their destination (the CTA) primed and ready to take action.
Your goal is to make them feel like a hero.
In short-form or microcopy, you might achieve this by giving agency to your reader. Think of CTAs like “download your report” over “download the report”.
In longer form, you might consider breaking your copy into definable acts; with the tension rising through each.
Write drama into your copy. Just as the hero “dies and is reborn” in the middle of the classic hero’s journey, you might want to write in a previously unconsidered challenge into a B2B blog post, only to provide an option for overcoming this new challenge in the final act.
If you want to make your hero’s journey a real page-turner (or screen-scroller… or CTA-clicker…), there is another classic fiction writer’s tactic you can employ.
Leave them on a cliffhanger
If you’ve ever written an essay for school, you’ll know that each section should focus on one idea. You begin with the core of this idea and expand upon it, before leading neatly into the next section.
That’s all well and good for academic writing, but when you want to write impactful fiction or sales copy, you want a bit of tension.
Give your readers a reason to keep reading. Keep them guessing and expecting.
An easy way to do this is to leave each section on a meaningful cliffhanger, promising another bit of juicy information if they just scroll a little further, if they just clicked to “find out more”...
The top hustlers on LinkedIn do this all the time, exploiting the platform’s formatting rules to create “read more” cliffhangers in their long-form posts. They’ll lead with a controversial or surprising sentence, hit “enter” a few times and let LinkedIn do the rest.
Because the algorithm understands people’s clicks to open these post as engagement, it will boost these post to other users. This results in even more clicks to open and a further boost. It’s a positive cycle that starts with what is, essentially, a cliffhanger.
Effective copywriting plays with expectation and promise, encouraging the reader to “learn more” and buy more.
Done well, your readers will feel like they’ve come to the cliffhanger’s answer by their own power. And we all know that people are more likely to take action if they feel they’re doing it on their own terms, as the “hero” of their own story.
Writing is editing
One piece of advice really struck me as a student: “Write drunk, edit sober”.
Of course, that made total sense to me in university. But, with a few more responsibilities to manage outside writing, it’s not sensible to rely on wine to get the work done. Try it in the workplace and you’ll find yourself looking for a new job sooner rather than later.
But the core of the advice holds true. When you start writing a piece, whether it’s the intro for a B2B webpage or a thrilling spy novel, I find it helps to write without restraint.
Go hog-wild. Scream. Bash your keyboard. Just get something down on the screen. Get over the blank-page anxiety.
You’ll find yourself far more productive in this “drunk” state. Then, the real dirty work begins.
As the saying goes, writing is really re-writing.
You must be prepared to edit your work to death. You’ll know you’re almost there when you want to throw up every time you re-read that one tortuous sentence.
Copy-editing must be done ‘sober’, and with the cold, clinical mind of a true psychopath. To be a great writer, you have to be willing to kill that which is most dear to you.
Kill your darlings
Strip out all those brilliant turns of phrase. Eliminate the beautiful fluff. Get to the point.
Good writing should be a joy to read. It should flow, lead and paint pictures. It shouldn’t trip people up or make them feel stupid.
While novelists and poets have some license to get a bit more flowery, as a copywriter it’s your duty to consider practicalities. Your salary, after all, depends on how your words translate into profit for your employer or client.
Consider your skills transferred
To be a better copywriter, you should read more fantasy. Read corny romance. Learn what makes really good superhero movie script work.
The more breadth of experience you have when it comes to words, the more tricks you can play, and the better a writer you will be.
And if like me, you’ve always dreamed of writing the next great novel, I urge you to consider copywriting.
The copywriting world could do with more heroes.
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