4 Magical Things About Copywriting

The more you do it, the easier it gets. 

When I started copywriting, I had to delete a lot of words. Superfluous beginnings of sentences, unnecessary endings of sentences, confusing middles of sentences–a ton of words got the axe when I began. But, as time went on, I learned to trim those parts as soon as I wrote them, until I stopped writing them completely. Sure, I still stop to edit things now and again, but most of the time, I write it right the first time.

You can create something from nothing. 

This is the most magical thing to me. In almost every other creative discipline, you need to have supplies, materials, gear, or a team to pull them off. In writing, all you need is a blank page and an idea. You start tap-tap-tapping on the keyboard and then the momentum builds. Word by word, you create something that can move someone.

Words speak. Like, out loud. 

When copy is written well, they sound like they’re being spoken to us. When I wrote papers in school, I didn’t realize this. I just tried to follow the rules. But when I started copywriting, I discovered how loud the written word can be. Word choice and punctuation, in tandem with type, can sound like a sailor, or a dancer, or an enemy, or a friend. And the writer gets to decide that. 

Rules don’t apply if you don’t want them to. 

Teachers taught us to use proper building blocks to write our sentences. They said if we didn’t have a subject or an adjective, our sentence wasn’t complete. Bullshit. You can write whatever you want! Commas and dashes and exclamation marks and hashes–they’re all tools we can use to create what we want. Every piece of grammar and punctuation changes how the reader hears us. Good copywriters understand this, and they break to rules to take their reader on a journey. 

These are four magical things about copywriting. Tomorrow, I’ll share a few things that have made me a better writer, that will instantly improve your writing too. Thanks for reading!