Chapter 5
How a persuasive writer writes
An attempt to get inside the head of a professional persuasive writer, and examine some of the thought processes taking place there; the three phases of a typical persuasive writing project; and some thoughts on how the left and right sides of the brain divide the responsibilities between them, like job-sharers. Well, a little bit like that.
I’ve always loved those articles in Sunday supplements in which well-known authors describe how they produce their international best-sellers. (I’ve noticed, incidentally, that it nearly always seems to involve using a fountain pen, and working in a garden shed, which is slightly depressing for me, since I possess neither.) I suppose the enjoyment is partly to do with simple curiosity about the lives of the richly gifted and famous; but another factor, I think, is that I like to be reminded that writing – even the most elevated and artistic kind – is a job of work, requiring tools, a place of business and even a certain amount of physical effort, just like being a dentist or repairing vacuum cleaners.
So I was planning to attempt something in a similar vein. On reflection, though, I think that, until I’ve written at least one international best-seller, it would probably be unwise to expect anyone to have the faintest interest in what I wear when I’m writing, how many coffee breaks I allow myself, or the identity of my favourite typeface.
But, while the physical shape of my working life may not be of any pressing concern to you, I think it might be useful if I tried to give an account of some of the mental processes involved in what I do. And, to that end, I’m going to talk in some detail about what goes on inside this persuasive writer’s head, during the three stages of a typical job: before I start to write; the writing itself; and after I’ve written.
Incidentally, it’s worth stressing that I’m not suggesting the way I go about the business of writing is, in any sense, the right or only way. It’s just my way. I hope you may pick up a few ideas that will be useful to you, but if you have a completely different approach that works for you, don’t even think about changing it.
Stage 1: before writing
Nearly every job I do begins with a written brief. And if, as somebody or other once said, the secret of good persuasive writing is to ‘Remember the Reader and the Result’, the purpose of this document is to jog my memory.
Sadly, most of the briefs I receive aren’t very good. That’s to say, they usually contain a lot of information, but very little in the way of insight or incisiveness. So the first thing I need to do, in the vast majority of cases, is to ask the person responsible for briefing me a lot of questions.
1 Interrogating the brief (or the ‘yes, but’ process)
I talked at great length in the first part of the book about the vital importance of being clear about the result that a piece of writing is intended to achieve, and of understanding the reader. So I’ll try not to labour this here. But I do want to give you an idea of what a persuasive writer should be looking for in a brief. In 99 cases out of 100, I ask slight variants of four main questions:
Yes, but what’s the single most important objective?
Many briefs are far from clear about this. Often, they present a longish shopping list of goals that the client would like to achieve:
• Increase sales by 50%
• Continue to build brand awareness among target audience
• Demonstrate commitment to retail partners
• Boost morale of head office staff
• Encourage repeat purchase among existing customers
• Encourage lapsed users to reconsider purchase
• End world hunger and pave way to peace in Middle East
… and so on. Leaving aside which of these objectives any single piece of communication could realistically be expected to achieve, my main concern is always to narrow the list down. Before I start work, I want to agree on one specific objective that takes priority over all the others.
Yes, but what is the reader like?
Most briefs tell me who will be reading my work. But often, they provide only the sketchiest biographical details: ‘ABC1 males, aged 35–54’, for example. Even when they describe who the reader is more fully – ‘HR managers working for FTSE-100 companies, typically responsible for 2,000+ employees; evenly split male/female’ – I’m still not satisfied. I want to know what the reader is like. I want the brief to give me some insight into what kind of person I’m talking to; what matters to them, what their attitudes are likely to be; what will excite or bore them.
Yes, but what’s different or better about what we’re selling?
Most briefs describe the product or service being sold in a fair amount of detail. But, surprisingly often, they fail to address the above question. And when they do, they tend to answer it from the client’s point of view, rather than the reader’s (‘the product features a new all-aluminium spring mechanism precision-engineered to tolerances of 0.1 microns’). If I don’t have a good reason why the reader should prefer and choose whatever it is we’re selling, how am I going to write anything remotely persuasive?
Yes, but why should the reader believe that?
OK, so we have a compelling claim to make: say, our product or service can save the reader hundreds of pounds a month. But is it believable? How, exactly, does the saving accrue? If I were the reader, being offered this remarkable money-saving opportunity, would it sound credible to me?
A long time ago, a famous advertising man gave the following advice to copywriters: ‘The consumer isn’t a moron. She is your wife.’ Today, this sounds gobsmackingly patronising, but the underlying sentiment remains sound. I would want to go further, though. When you write persuasively, I would advise you to test the credibility of what you are claiming not just against what your wife, husband or significant other would be willing to believe, but also against what you yourself would be willing to believe.
I realise that when you write persuasively, you’re probably not presented with a written brief. So the last couple of pages may not seem relevant to you. But I think they are. For one thing, I would warmly recommend that next time you have a difficult piece of writing to do, you should try producing a brief for yourself. To help you, I’ve included a typical briefing form of the kind used in the advertising and design industry in the PS section at the back of this book. Completed with intelligence and insight, it’s a remarkably powerful tool for analysing what the client (in this case, you) has to say and how that might be both relevant and motivating to the reader. It doesn’t guarantee that the end result will be a powerful piece of communication, but it massively increases the likelihood.
But, even if you don’t feel that writing yourself a brief would be helpful, the interrogation process I’ve described is indispensable. Every assumption you start out with about what you are going to write, why your reader will find it interesting, and how the words you use will help you achieve the result you want can, and probably should be questioned.
2 Background reading/pre-thinking
I remember that the very first copywriting manual I read, many years ago, told me that I should always have the client’s product on my desk when I was writing. Not easy if the client manufactures jet engines or advises on corporate finance deals, but basically sound advice, nevertheless. It’s perfectly true that there is no substitute for really thorough first-hand knowledge of what you are writing about.
But I have to admit that, when I write, my knowledge of the subject is often rather less encyclopaedic than I would like. It’s simply a matter of time. When a job is needed yesterday if not sooner, as is often the case, it just isn’t possible to visit the factory, or interview the finance director, or mystery-shop the store. It’s a shame, but there it is.
Most of my familiarisation with what I’m writing about, therefore, is done by reading – product literature, websites, marketing strategies, research reports, whatever. Meanwhile, I’m doing something that may sound slightly strange: I’m consciously not thinking about the job. That’s to say, at this stage, I make a point of not attempting to solve the communications problem posed by the brief; and certainly not thinking about what I’m going to write. If I had to explain this (and I suppose I must), I’d say that I think it’s a mistake to let the conscious mind start baking the cake before the subconscious has assembled and sorted the ingredients. And, less poetically, I’ve coined a phrase for this zen-like mental inactivity that comes before the big intellectual push: pre-thinking. I rather like it. (‘Are you sure you’ve really pre-thought this through?’)
3 What’s the idea?
Now the most difficult part of any job can’t be postponed any longer. I need an idea.
I’m using that word in a rather specialised sense, so let me explain what I mean. In this context, an idea is the component which (I hope) will make whatever I’m writing engaging to my reader. What this component actually consists of can vary enormously from one job to another, but the function it performs is always the same: to make a connection with the reader which makes her feel that the story I have to tell is worth the time it will take her to hear it.
It follows, then, that the stronger the story, the less hard my idea will have to work to seize and hold my reader’s attention. And, conversely, when I’m arguing a weaker case, I’m going to need a more compelling idea. What does that mean in practice? To demonstrate, let’s take two fairly extreme points on a hypothetical spectrum representing degrees of difficulty in persuasive writing.
First, at the easy-peasy end, we’re writing to inform Candidate A that, following her interview, XYZ Corporation is delighted to offer her the job, at a starting salary of £N,000, subject to a three-month review. We don’t need to be very persuasive, do we? In fact, you may well be thinking that we don’t need to be persuasive at all. But we do, since Candidate A may well have received job offers from other companies, and we want our letter to make XYZ’s offer more attractive than theirs. What kind of idea will help us achieve this? A teeny weeny one, to be honest. In fact, I’d suggest that the ‘idea’ we’re looking for in this case is nothing more than what I’ve said above: the little flicker of insight which revealed that Candidate A might have other irons in the fire. Our idea-ette is to write the letter in a way that reflects our understanding that she probably has a choice.
At the other end of that spectrum I mentioned, we need to produce an ad campaign for – well, what? I was going to say beer, but I’ve mentioned it before, and I don’t want you to think I’m obsessed. So, let’s say that Supermarket XYZ is about to launch its new online shopping service. Supermarket XYZ.com is basically no different from Tesco.com or Sainsburystoyou.co.uk, it’s just arrived about four years later. So we’re going to need a BIG idea.
Let’s brainstorm it. I know … how about a campaign starring a sassy little girl called Amy, who teaches her dumb, technophobic dad how to find his way around the virtual store, and click his mouse when he finds what he needs? No? Then here’s another idea: we could base the campaign on the benefit of internet shopping – i.e. the amount of time it can save busy people. I’m seeing a series of posters, each showing a different online shopper doing something vaguely eccentric or picturesque. Say, just as a starter for 10, a bloke building a cathedral from matchsticks or a woman meditating on a Scottish mountainside. And, along the bottom, next to the Supermarket XYZ.com logo, a discreet line of type reading: ‘What will you do with the time you save?’
Still not happy? Well, you come up with a better idea, then. And while you’re thinking, I’ll move on to make the point which all this has been building up to. Which is that, in my view, the success of every piece of persuasive communication depends on an idea of some kind. Usually, in your writing, you won’t need a big one, like – well, like the one I’m waiting to hear for Supermarket XYZ.com. But, if you want to connect with your reader, you will, invariably, need a brief flicker of insight about how what you have to say intersects with what she might be interested to hear; a tiny lateral leap – more of a sideways shuffle – that will enable you to shape your story in a way that makes it fresh and compelling.
4 Structure and content: a brief outline
With an idea in mind, I’ll soon be ready to start writing. But, if the finished piece will be more than a couple of pages long, there’s one more preliminary stage: producing an outline/synopsis. At its simplest, this might consist of half a dozen bullet points on the back of an envelope. But, more often, I’ll produce a fairly detailed document which includes suggested headings for each section; a description of the content that will be covered under each of these; and some indication of the proposed style.
There are two reasons for doing this. The first is to demonstrate to the client how the idea will actually work. Let’s say, for example, that I have proposed to a client in the catering business that they should produce a corporate brochure that takes the form of a recipe book. Understandably, my client may not immediately see how this idea will be able to accommodate the fact that his company has recently introduced a revolutionary new cook-chill system, or won an Investors in People award. So, at this stage, I’ll need to come up with, say, 10 recipes each of which enables me to make a slightly different competitive claim on behalf of XYZ Catering.
The second reason for writing an outline – which, unlike the first, will certainly be relevant to you – is to get my own thinking straight. The ideas stage of a persuasive writing project is ‘creative’ in character. It’s all about looking for an unexpected insight or a rarely made connection; and, to that end, it involves allowing the mind to roam freely, to flit from one image or association to the next, to wander at will. But now it’s time to impose a little discipline. The logical left side of the brain takes charge, and the idea is subjected to a ruthless interrogation. How does it work, precisely? How, within the constraints of the idea, should the main argument be structured? How much supporting evidence will be needed to clinch the argument? And should the bit about the client’s new quality control process come before or after the section about his international distribution network? (Or, of course, should it be left out on the grounds that, while the client may want to talk about it, the reader won’t find it interesting?)
Writing an outline or synopsis enables me to organise my material, marshal the arguments and provide myself with a blueprint for the finished piece of writing; a set of plans which I will be able to refer back to when I’m locked in ferocious single combat with the English language – attempting to wrestle an intransigent metaphor to the ground, maybe – during the next phase of the process; the actual writing bit.
Stage 2: writing
So, I’ve interrogated the brief; I’ve done my reading, research and pre-thinking; I’ve had a big, medium-sized or minuscule idea, as appropriate to the persuasive task in hand; I’ve written an outline, which has enabled me to determine the structure and content of the finished piece … now all I have to do is write the damn thing.
Should be a piece of cake, shouldn’t it? Well, up to a point. Certainly, it’s true that I usually do find writing quite a bit less gruelling than the preliminaries that precede it. Partly, of course, that’s because those preliminaries are the spadework; the back-breaking toil that has to take place before the Fancy Dan bricklayer arrives, and the walls rapidly start to take shape. And partly, I suppose, it’s because stringing words and sentences together is something that, most of the time at least, comes fairly naturally to me. (I believe anyone can learn to be a better writer; but I suspect that real verbal fluency is, if not inborn, acquired in the early years of life.)
In any case, I’m rarely stuck for words. But describing the mental process which produces them … well, er … um, where do I start?
Unlike Professor Hawking, and despite the fact that my subject is a lot less complicated than his, I can’t offer you a Single Unified Theory. But, if we begin at the beginning, I think I can provide a few insights into how the rather wonderful metamorphosis of thought into words takes place. And what to do when it won’t.
1 How’s this for openers?
I said quite a bit in Section Two about the critical importance of the opening lines of any piece of persuasive writing. So I’ll restrict myself here to a couple of brief follow-up points.
The first is that, when faced by a blank screen and a blinking cursor, I don’t think of a compelling opening line, I feel for one. I know roughly what I want to say, and where the argument is going to lead me; but it’s very rarely logic that dictates what those first few words should be. I think about who the reader is, how and where she’s likely to be reading, and how I want her to respond. And then – sometimes soon, but often after a lengthy wait, and another cup of coffee – an opening phrase or sentence forms in my mind.
Then, the rational mind takes charge. If those are the opening words, what needs to follow immediately? Usually, in the manner of a newspaper front page lead, the job of my first paragraph or two will be to provide the reader with a potted version of the whole story; giving her, at the earliest opportunity, the chance to decide whether it’s worth her while to read on. But, just occasionally, I may feel that I can afford to be less up-front; to begin the meeting without, so to speak, an agenda. In which case, the first few sentences I write will need to be so intriguing or otherwise engaging that my reader won’t be able to resist the invitation to set off into the unknown with me. Once in a while, it’s a risk worth taking.
2 Finding the right words
Let’s try an experiment. I’m going to write a sentence, like this. Actually, no, it will have to be a longer one, because what I’m planning to do is write a sentence – like this – and, while I’m actually writing it, think very hard about how I’m doing it.
In fact, I’ve been doing that quite a bit lately, and I have reached a few tentative conclusions. The first is that, for me, writing is almost exactly the same as talking, only with more time. That’s to say, I form phrases and sentences in my head when I’m writing in precisely the same way as I do when I’m having a conversation – but because there isn’t a real live human being sitting across the table from me, looking enraptured or quizzical or bored to death, I can go back over the phrases and sentences and remodel them until I’m happy with them. In writing, then, what the French rather charmingly call ‘l’esprit de l’escalier’ – the thing you wished you’d said when you’re going down the stairs and it’s too late – comes as standard.
Let’s examine the similarity between talking and writing a bit more closely. When I talk – and I suspect you are the same – I nearly always start without knowing exactly how I’m going to finish. What happens, I’ve observed, is that as I am talking, a word or short phrase, representing the next idea I want to express, bubbles up in my mind. The effect, I imagine, is rather similar to a TV interviewer hearing his producer’s voice in his earpiece, prompting him about the next question he should ask. As I continue to talk, I start mentally constructing a bridge that will take me from what I’m saying now to the idea or phrase in question. Being articulate, I suspect, is largely a matter of how quick and skilful a bridge-builder one is.
Take away the pressure to complete the building work on time, and this is also exactly how I write – right down to the fact that I often begin a sentence without knowing how it will end. I’m not even slightly apologetic about this: almost always, I want my writing to be conversational; to sound like a friendly and knowledgeable voice, chatting away inside your head.
Having said that, there are times when, in order to make what I have to say more engaging, I deliberately write a sentence more complex in structure than anything I’d usually say in conversation. Scanning the last couple of pages, I find this example:
Unlike Professor Hawking, and despite the fact that my subject is a lot less complicated than his, I can’t offer you a Single Unified Theory.
Let me try to tell you exactly how I wrote that sentence. I thought, rationally, that I wanted to make it clear that my remarks on the mental processes involved in writing were precisely that – a few fairly random remarks, not a coherent, scientifically tested theory. The phrase ‘Single Unified Theory’ sprang to mind, bringing with it a mental picture of the world’s best-known wheelchair-user. So now the sentence started to take shape. Instead of following ordinary conversational word order (‘I want to make it clear that what I’m about to say isn’t intended to be a coherent, scientifically tested theory … ’), I put Professor Hawking first, to make the sentence more interesting for the reader. And then, after I’d written this …
Unlike Professor Hawking, I can’t offer you a Single Unified Theory.
… I decided, rather riskily, to add this:
… and despite the fact that my subject is a lot less complicated than his …
Why? Because I thought that it would make the sentence even more interesting and enjoyable; by first intriguing the reader (‘what the hell has Stephen Hawking got to do with persuasive writing?’), then deliberately postponing the moment of realisation; and finally delivering the pay-off.
I like that sentence; I think it works. But, whether or not you agree, my point is that, however much writing may resemble talking, there are also important differences; things I can do on the page or screen that I’d never try face to face. Because, just as I have more time to find the right words when I’m writing, so my reader has a little more leisure to unravel my meaning.
And there’s one other crucial way that, for me, talking and writing are similar. Er, I talk when I write. I can’t help it. As I’m sitting here tapping away at the keys, I’m muttering every single word to myself. True, it would make me a nightmare to share an office with; but nevertheless, I’d warmly recommend this slightly disturbing practice. Speaking the words as I’m writing them is an indispensable way of testing them: I hear a weedy word or a puny phrase as soon as I utter it; and I’m immediately aware if a sentence fails to flow, or the emphasis falls in the wrong place. For me, writing in silence would be roughly to equivalent to cooking without seasoning (or maybe swearing) for Gordon Ramsay.
3 Unleashing the subconscious
I’ve already touched on this, I know, but I want to expand a bit on the role played by the non-rational mind in making writing come alive.
Similes are a particularly good illustration of what I’m talking about. On a recent holiday in the south of France, I was walking along a country lane, lined with large houses set back from the road. As I came level with each house, a huge ferocious-sounding dog would race out from inside and bark furiously at me – until it was perfectly satisfied that I was continuing on my way, and meant its owners no harm. Then, as I came to the next house, another dog would emerge and give a repeat performance; and so on at each house, along the lane.
An image sprang into my mind. The dogs were like air traffic controllers – each shepherding me through its own portion of ‘airspace’, before handing me on to the next.
This simile made me smile. But the reason I mention it is because I’d like you to consider where such images come from. Absolutely nowhere. That’s to say, they emerge, unbidden, from the subconscious. No mental effort or rational thought process is involved. The mind takes one piece of information and cross-references it with another; forming a connection that allows a current to flow through the sentence, resulting – however briefly – in a flash of illumination.
True, good writers must be logical thinkers, otherwise coherence and compelling argument go out of the window. But unless we can also learn to let our creative subconscious off the leash, our writing will lack freshness and colour. I do that, usually, by staring blankly into space, and deliberately emptying my head of conscious thought, like … a vicar chucking the Rotary Club out of the church hall, to make space for a playgroup full of hyperactive toddlers.
While we’re on the subject of allowing instinct and intuition to play their part, it’s also worth recording that I quite often fold up the plans, shove them in my back pocket, and redesign the building as I’m actually constructing it. It wouldn’t work with real bricks and mortar; but, as a creator of verbal edifices, I find that thought processes have a tendency to evolve as I put them into words. Sometimes one idea, when expressed, clearly leads on to another – despite the fact that I wasn’t planning to cover them in that order. Or a single word or phrase suggests a connection with another part of my material which I hadn’t previously spotted. And 19 times out of 20, I’ll follow where an idea or instinct leads.
4 Editing and appearances
Of course, I edit as I write. For less experienced writers, I think there’s a good case for just splurging it all down as fast as possible, from beginning to end, and then going back to cut and shape it afterwards. But, partly for practical reasons, I prefer to do that in real time.
The practical reasons are to do with deadlines. Nearly always, I’m writing against the clock, so I want to ensure that when I get to the end of a piece of writing, it’s very nearly finished: just a quick read through; a couple of final tweaks; and then I can hit ‘send’. Of course, it doesn’t always work out like this. But usually, when I get to the end of a paragraph or the bottom of a page, I don’t continue until I’m 95% happy with what I’ve written.
Editing, incidentally, isn’t about trying to make what you’ve written shorter. That may be the effect; but the aim, as ever, is to make the words on the page or screen more engaging to the reader. This means continually asking the following questions:
1 ‘Will my reader find what I’ve just written interesting or useful or enjoyable?’
2 ‘What could I do to make it more interesting/useful/enjoyable for my reader?’
If the answer to question 1 is no, out it goes. But, depending on my answer to question 2, I may actually add rather than subtract something (I’m thinking, for example, of my Professor Hawking sentence). Or I may exchange one word for a more accurate one. Or get rid of a weary phrase and replace it with something perkier. Or delete a sentence that doesn’t make sense. Or change the order in which a sentence is constructed. Or simplify the punctuation.
And at this stage, while I’m in full flow, I’m not just thinking about the sound and meaning of the words I’m writing. I’m also concerned with how they look.
As a persuasive writer, it’s my job to do everything I can to make my work as appealing as possible to the reader. (You remember, the one who has better things to do.) And, like it or not, that includes giving careful thought to how it will appear on the page or screen. I’m as irritated as anyone by ads in which every sentence, however short, forms a new paragraph. But I would concede that large uninterrupted areas of dense typography can look quite daunting to an uncommitted reader. So I never let my paragraphs reach Dickensian lengths.
I often chuck in sub-headings, too
… just to break it up a bit, and make it easier on the eye. And, as I mentioned earlier:
• not
• completely
• averse
• to
• bullet
• points
• if used appropriately
Or little boxes with key points inside them – preferably in bold type.
Of course, I’d like my reader to give me her undivided attention. But I know that she may well be skimming through what I’ve written – lunchtime sandwich in one hand, phone clamped to ear – trying to get the gist of it, in under two minutes. If there’s anything I can do to help, I will.
5 Writer’s block: what happens when the words won’t come?
I seem to remember making some rather smug remarks a few pages back about how easy I find it to crank out metre after metre of flowing prose. Um, not always the case. Sometimes, I sweat over every word And sometimes … well, sometimes it just won’t happen. I sit, fingers poised over keyboard, mind a perfect blank.
Actually, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often. Because, when you think about it, writing is a pretty scary business. Consider, for example, this simple sentence:
I love tennis.
Perfectly clear, isn’t it? Except that it may give the impression that what I love is watching tennis on TV. So I should probably write:
I love playing tennis.
Yes, that’s better. Hmm, but maybe it feels a bit weak …
I absolutely love playing tennis.
Nah. Don’t like absolutely – something rather forced about it. Perhaps this might be better:
I don’t like tennis; I love it.
Yes, that’s great. No, hang on, just realised I’ve nicked it from that really rubbish song that 10cc did back in the 70s – you remember, ‘I don’t like reggae, I love it’ … So that’s no good. Ha! What about this …
For the last 10 years, I’ve been conducting a passionate love affair. With tennis.
Or:
For me, tennis isn’t just a game, it’s …
… well, I guess I’ve made the point, which is that the scary thing about writing is that there is way too much choice. Even the most banal sentiment can be expressed in a virtually unlimited number of different ways. To be a writer means to be constantly facing decisions; attempting to find precisely the right words, from literally millions of possible combinations.
How do writers learn to overcome this fear and the paralysis it induces? I’m not sure. Answering for myself, I can only say that I’m fortified by the knowledge that there are no right answers. Nobody in the world knows better than me what I want to say; and if I’m happy that the words I’ve chosen to express it will connect with my reader, nobody can tell me that I’m wrong.
I’m afraid that last paragraph may sound glib (‘just do what feels right, and take no notice of what anyone else says’). But, for me, it contains quite an important truth – and one which took me an awfully long time to recognise. Until quite recently, I imagined that, whatever I was doing, there were other people, expert in that field, who knew precisely how it should be done. Very rarely the case, I’ve come to believe. Most of the time, in most fields, most people muddle through. Some muddle more successfully than others; and those who have muddled to reasonably good effect on a number of occasions, gradually gain confidence in their own skills and judgement. I find this thought very liberating – generally, and especially in relation to writing, where I’ve done more than my share of not-too-disastrous muddling.
The consolations of philosophy apart, what can I tell you about how I cope when the words refuse to flow? Easily the most effective measure is to stop trying. If consciously straining and striving to express what I need to say doesn’t work, I leave it for 10 minutes, a couple of hours or overnight, depending how much time I’ve got. This, of course, is to allow the subconscious to go to work. I remember hearing that if you read the clues of a crossword on Monday, then forget all about them, you’ll be able to solve them in seconds if you re-read them on Friday. I’ve never tried it with a crossword; but I can vouch for the effectiveness of this technique when applied to persuasive writing projects.
What if I’m working to a tight deadline, and I really don’t have even 10 minutes to spare? Then I remind myself that when a writer runs into difficulties, it’s very rarely words that are the real problem. Almost always, confused or over-complicated thinking is to blame.
To give you an idea how this helps me in practice, let’s switch, briefly, to a different language. I’m not very good at French. But I’m still a bit better than either of my school-age kids, so they quite often ask me to help with their homework. ‘Hey Dad,’ they say, ‘What’s the French for: “System of a Down are way cool, unlike those sad tossers Limp Bizkit who suck ass big style’’?’
Needless to say, I don’t have a clue. So what I tell them is this: if you don’t know the right way to say what you want to say, don’t say it. Say something else instead. Something you do know how to say. (In this case, I could just about manage ‘System of a Down are my favourite group, but I don’t like Limp Bizkit at all.’)
And actually, I find the same applies when the language is English. If something I want to say just won’t come out right, it may be that I just don’t have the words to capture that particular thought process. So I look at it from a different angle. Turn it back to front. Simplify it. True, I may lose something by doing this: but better a slightly less complex idea clearly expressed than a confused reader. N’est-ce pas?
Still not practical enough for you? Then here’s what I do when I’m really, really stuck: I ask myself, what it would be in one shortish sentence? If I only had, say 12 to 15 words, to convey what’s in my head to my reader, what would they be?
6 Finishing off and polishing up
Unlike openings, I don’t have a lot to say about endings. I don’t share the belief commonly held by advertising copywriters that it’s essential to finish any piece of persuasive writing with some agonisingly contrived play on words. I do think it’s a good idea to remind your reader of your most persuasive arguments. And, usually, I’m in favour of a ‘call to action’ – a polite suggestion to your reader that she might like to do whatever it is you would like her to do next.
But, those considerations apart, my main approach to finishing any piece of writing is simply to stop when I run out of things to say. I suppose I do also try to ensure that my concluding couple of sentences sound … well, conclusive. Leaving the audience in mid-air may work well in Eastern European arthouse movies, but readers of persuasive writing, I firmly believe, want closure; a satisfying sense that an act of communication has taken place, and is now finished.
One way of achieving this effect, I find, is to end with a sentence rather longer than those that have gone before, and perhaps a little more complex in construction, creating a sense that together – reader and writer – we’re putting on the brakes, approaching our destination, preparing for the moment when we go our separate ways.
It’s all about rhythm; and sometimes, it works even better if I add a couple of extra beats:
One way of achieving this effect, I find, is to end with a sentence rather longer than those that have gone before, and perhaps a little more complex in construction, creating a sense that together – reader and writer – we’re putting on the brakes, approaching our destination, preparing for the moment when we go our separate ways. That moment is now.
Anyway, I’ve finished. And if, as is often the case, I’m pressed for time, I’ll only spend a matter of minutes now polishing the finished item before sending it to the client. How do I spend those minutes? First, I’ll run a spell-check – not because I need help with spelling (I’m sorry, we all have our little vanities and, since I gave up plaiting my moustache, spelling is mine), but because it’s a quick way to pick up any typos or or repeated words. Next, I’ll do a very quick read through, invariably muttering under my breath as I read, which allows me to hear anything nasty, like a clumsy repetition. Then, if I still have seconds to spare, I may make a few very minor cuts and changes – just losing a word here, and getting rid of a set of brackets here. (I’ve always had a tendency to over-use brackets, but I do try to fight it.)
Finally, if it’s more than a single sheet – and it usually is – I add page numbers. Then it’s ready to go.
When the deadline isn’t so tight, I always leave what I’ve written and return to it later, preferably the next day. Basically, the process is the same; but, under less pressure, I can afford to be more perfectionist. And I may well reconstruct a sentence, or shift a paragraph, in order to make fairly marginal improvements to the sense or sound or flow of the piece.
In particular, I’m more likely to make cuts. Because, with time on my side, I’m much better able to do what every persuasive writer should always do: look at what I’ve written through my reader’s eyes. And doing that may very well enable me to detect material that fails to pass the 3 Rs test: bearing in mind who the reader is, does what I’ve written make the result I want more or less likely? Speaking from my own experience, I don’t think Blaise Pascal was trying to be funny when he wrote that much quoted line:
I’ve made this letter longer than usual only because I didn’t have time to make it shorter.
Stage 3: after writing
After I despatch the finished job, what usually happens is this. About half an hour later, the phone rings. It’s the client – full of warm thanks to me for getting it done so quickly, and even warmer praise for the wit and incisiveness that oozes from my writing. Would I like to submit my invoice by email straight away, so that it can be paid immediately? I would; and next morning, there’s the cheque on my doormat. And when the doorbell rings a little later, I take delivery of a case of vintage Champagne, accompanied by a note from the client, saying …
I’m sorry, I was hallucinating for a moment there; I’ve been under rather a lot of stress lately. What, in reality, usually happens after I hit send is that there is a longish silence.
(Time passes. Days, weeks, months, decades. Empires rise and fall.)
Sometimes a very long one. Then, eventually, I get feedback. And I’d like to say just a couple of words here about how I respond to it.
Very badly. Well, I’m half-joking. Because if I was really thin-skinned about the constructive and not-so-constructive comments I receive from clients, I wouldn’t have been able to survive as a professional writer for several thousand years. Having said that, it’s never easy.
I do think, though, that I’ve improved a bit in this respect, over the years; and it occurs to me that the approach I’ve slowly and painfully evolved might be labelled the 3 Ps of responding to feedback:
1 Don’t panic. Often, the first feedback I receive is scarily negative (quite brave of me to admit that, actually). The impression I’m given is that the job is a disaster; everything is wrong, the piece will have to be rewritten from scratch. Nearly always, it turns out to be a lot less bad than that. In fact, quite frequently it turns out that it’s just a handful of individual words or phrases that are causing the client concern; the kind of problems I can fix in five or 10 minutes. So the first step is not to over-react; to remember that people often focus on the doorknobs rather than considering the architecture of the entire building.
2 Don’t take it personally. This is a lot harder. Because, however professional a writer may be, what he writes is highly personal. There’s no getting away from it: when I write, I’m pouring out the contents of my brain on to paper. And if you look at that paper, and scrawl ‘NO!’ across it in red ink – or ‘Clumsy!’ or ‘This sentence is meaningless’ or even ‘???’ – well, I’m sorry if it makes me sound like a wimp, but that is going to hurt.
3 Don’t get pissed off. Sometimes the feedback I get is not just insensitively expressed but, frankly, dumb. I’m tempted to catalogue some of the more foolish requests and comments I’ve received. But that way embittered whingeing lies. So, instead, I’ll mention just one generic example: the fairly common request to cut the length of what I’ve written … while, at the same time, adding a couple of sentences about this, and a paragraph or two about that. Getting cross, I’ve learned, doesn’t help. Sometimes, in such situations, it’s possible to reason with people; sometimes he who pays the writer insists on calling the tune, however verbally discordant it may turn out to be.
Dammit, I’ve just thought of a fourth P:
4 Be positive. Rather grudgingly, I have to admit that there are occasions when feedback actually helps. If I’ve implied above that this writer always knows best, and that anyone reacting less than favourably to every word he writes is an illiterate and muddy-minded cretin, then I really should acknowledge that isn’t the case. As you’ve heard, I usually work quickly. Mistakes do get occasionally made. The odd poorly constructed sentence does slip through. And sometimes I make bigger mistakes – misplacing the emphasis, leaving out an important supporting argument, or misunderstanding how the reader may benefit from a particular feature. On such occasions, listening to feedback and responding positively will result in a better finished piece of writing. Which is, of course, all that really matters.
How to write: left, right, left, right, left, right …
I knew before I started this book that good persuasive writing demands high-level input from both sides of the brain: the logical, order-imposing left and the rapscallion, ideas-generating right. But, as I’ve applied my mind to the subject, I feel I’ve arrived at a much clearer understanding of how the two hemispheres actually work together.
Think of it like job-sharing. Mr Left arrives at work early, and spends the morning sorting things out, putting them in order, making sure that everything makes sense. Just before lunch, Ms Right turns up and takes over. She stares into space, day-dreams a little, then scribbles down a few ideas on a pad – which she leaves on the desk for Mr Left to cast a cool, rational eye over in the morning …
Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t over-extend the analogy. Because, while it does convey a sense of how the rational and intuitive parts of the mind divide the responsibility for producing good persuasive writing, it falls down in one crucial respect. In reality, the handovers between left and right can happen very rapidly indeed; in fact, almost instantaneously – as an incisive piece of thinking sparks a bright idea which is immediately checked for relevance before a further lateral leap occurs … and so on. If it really were a job-share, Mr Left would arrive at 9.00, Ms Left would replace him at 9.01, and they’d both be fighting over the desk about seven seconds later.
Anyway, that – as far as I’m able to find the words to describe it – is how I write. If you have a quicker, easier way that produces better results, please do let me know.