Remember that novel I talked about a few months back? I recently completed the final draft (insert huge sigh of relief here). I’m lucky to have had an amazing group of writers who critiqued the manuscript throughout its numerous versions and offered some solid feedback that helped me improve it along the way.

When you’ve been in writing groups long enough, you start to notice recurring questions that readers ask to determine the strength of the work. Some are questions we ask subconsciously as we read, others are questions we ask out loud to get a discussion going. And while my book is a work of fiction, I’ve found these questions also apply to copywriting.

Next time you’re getting ready to edit your own copy, take a cue from my writer’s groups and ask yourself these questions:

Do the characters feel real? Before you say, “My copy doesn’t have a character,” think again. Your company’s persona and brand are the main characters in the story you’re telling. They’re essential to making your message something people will connect with. Take a moment to study the impressions you’re putting out into the world. If you want customers to trust your brand, it absolutely has to be authentic and sincere.

Do the characters have a distinctive voice? In fiction, one of the signs of great dialogue is that you know who’s speaking even if the writer doesn’t tell you. A writer who pulls this off is creating a bond between the reader and the character—the reader feels like they really know this person (similar to how they know a close friend). Does your copy have a unique voice? Is it true to your company culture and what it stands for?

Is this action justified? Characters in novels do crazy things. Sometimes they’re justified because they seem like something the person would do. Sometimes they’re so out of left field that readers start thinking, “That doesn’t sound like her at all.”

What ends up happening is that this disconnect chips away at the authenticity of the character. To make sure this doesn’thappen to your brand, it’s important to be consistent. Your brand should align with your message, but so should your actions. So let’s say you have a product that’s meant to help simplify people’s lives. But your copy makes it difficult for them to find the information they’re looking for, check-out is an eight-step process, and returning the product is an even bigger hassle. If the experience doesn’t live up to the promise, people will simply stop buying into it.

Think about the things that draw you into a good book. How can these elements be translated to help your copy?

photo credit: doctor paradox

Copywriting is so important because it basically boils down to this:

Words carry your message.

How can you be sure you’re doing it right? Today I’m guest blogging (and also venting a little) for Brass Knuckles Media about the six most common copywriting mistakes and how to avoid them.

Check it out and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Are there other copywriting mistakes that should be on the list? Are there any (uh-oh) that you might be guilty of?

If you’re obsessed enough with something, you’ll find yourself learning about it in the most unexpected places. Ever since I met my husband seven years ago, this unexpected place has been DVD commentaries.

My husband’s quite the film enthusiast. Anytime we finish watching a movie on DVD, he’ll check the special features and see what he can find about how it was made. And, because of marital osmosis, I end up learning a thing or two about the craft of storytelling.

Take Disney’s Aladdin. Those Disney guys did some serious reworking to the script.

– Initially, Jasmine and Aladdin met in the palace, after Aladdin tries to hide from guards that are after him. There’s a whole scene where Abu hangs from a tree, and Aladdin talks to Jasmine

– Aladdin had a mother whom he wanted to make proud. This, in addition to his love for Jasmine, is an important motivator for him wanting to be a prince. There was actually a whole song dedicated to this, and many subsequent scenes

– In addition to Abu the monkey, Aladdin had three other friends who help him with his antics of stealing food to get by

– Jafar’s character was initially the loud, panicky one, while Iago the parrot was cool and collected

If you’ve seen the movie, you know that the end product hardly resembles the initial vision. This means characters were cut, songs were reworked or omitted, roles were switched and it probably felt like they were starting over from scratch every time the creators made these tough calls.

Moving back to move forward

In any type of writing, whether it’s a novel or a company’s web copy, you don’t always get it right the first time. Actually, you’ll rarely get it right the first time.

For example, when I’m writing copy for a client, I don’t just write and send it to them. I’ll write something, step away from it, then write it again with an entirely new approach to see what works best. Sure, the client thinks they’re seeing my first draft when I turn something in, but what they’re really seeing is my first working draft. It’s the one that works because it’s been revised and polished and fine-tuned.

It’s the same with fiction. When I realized the major revisions I’d have to make to my novel’s rough draft, it felt like I might end up pulling the one piece from the Jenga puzzle that would make everything come falling down.

I rewrote it from a new perspective, then completely changed the setting, and then realized that it was actually another character’s story. These edits have only made the story stronger.

The Fluidity of a Story

The commentary for Aladdin isn’t the first to demonstrate the fluidity of a story. Nearly every single one I’ve watched (and I’ve watched tons) prove this point: You rarely start out with the end result.

That doesn’t just go for writing. It goes for business plans, and marketing plans, and product launches that end up evolving into something no one ever imagined (um…Twitter, anyone?). It goes for brands that realize that they need to change their messaging, and businesses that notice untapped markets. The real progress lies in revision.

What part of your life, your business, or your writing could use some revision?

photo credit: Loren Javier

Lately, I’ve been noticing how small the online world can be despite its vastness. We all have our favorite bloggers, websites, and Tweeters that we interact with. We even have a select few that we look up to and draw inspiration from. And even though this list is unique for everyone, we all have one thing in common:

We’re here to learn something.

Which also means that we feel we have a lot to learn. Which means we feel like someone out there is better than us at what we’re trying to do. Which means if we’re not careful, we can do some serious internal damage to our own confidence and aspirations if we spend too much time comparing ourselves to them.

And by “we” of course I mean “I”

Because that’s what I did this week. I’ve been thinking of offering new products and services through Inky Clean, so naturally I started doing some research. What’s already out there? What are other writers doing? How are they making it work and how can I approach it differently?

The deeper I got into my research the louder this little voice inside of me started saying, “What makes you think you can do this? What makes you so special?”

I got into quite the slump, and I realize it’s risky to share this online. Online, we’re supposed to showcase ourselves. We’re supposed to sell our expertise and know-how in a neatly-bundled package. Perhaps this is how we end up with online idols who, in our minds, never experience self-doubt, never question whether or not they’re getting everything right, never wonder how they’ll pull things off.

How I got out of this slump

I’ve been having a lot of great conversations with writers lately, and they are all in different stages of their career. One of them actually told me that they looked up to me, that they considered me an example of a successful writer. And I really had to step back, shift my perspective away from the impossible standards I’d set up for myself, and realize that they were right. Not in an arrogant, “You’re right, I’m wonderful” kind of way, but in a healthy, “You’re right, I should be proud with what I’ve accomplished” kind of way.

I should mention that the person who said this to me is a fantastic writer, and I also know for a fact that she experiences moments of self-doubt just like I do. And if that’s the case, then that’s probably the case for the people I look up to, and the people those people look up to, until it all becomes this crazy cycle of accomplished, but occasionally insecure, awesome people.

Only, we don’t often see that. We see beautifully-designed websites, prolific blogs and swarms of comments and we forget that the people we admire are more than their traffic numbers or client lists. And then we compare ourselves to them based on this incomplete ideal that we’ve created in our minds.

Maybe it’s time we broke that cycle. Maybe it’s time we stopped comparing ourselves—our real, living, breathing, thinking, selves—to the online brands and personalities we become attached to. If we stop idolizing them, an interesting thing could happen: we could learn a lot from them, without putting ourselves down like I did. We could get to know the real people behind the personas and realize that we’re not all that different.

What do you think? Have you ever been in a similar slump? Or is it just me?

photo credit: Mike Kanert

Last week I went to the doctor for this terrible soreness I was having in my jaw. The pain was so bad I couldn’t even chew, and my jaw bone was clicking and snapping out of place to the point that my bottom teeth were no longer aligning with my top. This wasn’t something my dentist could fix—I had to see a specialist.

I got to the office with two main concerns in mind: what’s going on with my mouth and when will I be able eat more than just milkshakes and soup (not that I minded the milkshakes).

photo credit: Mister Sprock
The doctor must’ve spent maybe one minute examining my jaw, and another fifteen explaining to me, in detail, what was going on with it. And he did it with pictures–little scribbles that he drew on the back of a recycled sheet of paper. He compared the joints and tendons in my jaw to an overused hammock that’d been stretched too far and was now swollen from the effort.

He knew I hadn’t gone to medical school, so there was no point in him getting all technical with me. He didn’t bother using anatomical terms, and when he did, he took the time to explain them to me.

And because of that, I left his office completely satisfied with the consultation and trusting that I was in good hands.

All because he tried to speak my language.

More often times than not, we are not at all like our target audience. We’re specialists in one thing, and clients need us precisely because they don’t know much about that one thing. A teacher might look for a nutritionist to advise her on eating better. A doctor might hire a dog trainer to help her get through to her new pup. A writer might try to find a blog template designer because she doesn’t know the first thing about coding.

None of these people use the same terminology in their work. So if you’re the person being hired, it’s up to you to cross that language barrier and get your message across to the potential customer. It’s up to you to make them understand how you can help them.

The thing is, it’s not always easy to set aside the years of training and education it took to make you an expert on a topic, and put yourself in someone else’s frame of reference. What you think is common knowledge about positive reinforcement in dog training is not at all common to someone who’s memorized what types of bacteria can cause certain symptoms in infants. That’s when it helps to bring in a copywriter.

Oftentimes when I’m talking to a potential client they’ll ask me: Have you written about [neurosurgery, feng shui, printing presses, parenting] before? Sometimes I have. Sometimes I haven’t. It doesn’t matter because my specialty is writing. It’s asking the right questions so that I can understand all sorts of specialists. It’s writing about it in a way that people who aren’t specialists—those who are coming to someone with a need, and with not nearly as much knowledge about the topic—will understand how they can benefit from their service.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my lunchtime milkshake.

Have you ever encountered language barriers with customers? How do you overcome them?

I’ve mentioned this before, but typos are no laughing matter. Except sometimes they are. Especially when you’re part of a community of writers and editors on Twitter that—exhausted from trying to educate the world on when to use peak, peek, or pique—decides it’s better to tackle blunders with humor. We have our fun while gently correcting errors because there’s no reason to be mean about it.

photo credit: Mr. Wright

So for Fun With Words, here are 4 famous typos that brought a laugh, a gasp, or both, to me and plenty of my wordy colleagues on Twitter. I emphasize the Twitter aspect because, while many of us thought these were kind of a big deal, I’m not sure the rest of the world really noticed.

The case of the poll-dancing Iron Man starlet

When MightyRedPen tweeted that a “typo has Gwyneth Paltrow doing some ‘drunken poll dancing’ in her new movie” the jokes about political thrillers and winning elections were simply impossible to resist. We all got a nice laugh out of it, but the guilty party? Blissfully oblivious, since at the time of this posting, the typo still hadn’t been corrected.

Some typos are for life

Before you even think about getting a tattoo, may I suggest spelling out (and then double, triple, quadruple checking) the message for the ink artist? If only these guys had done so…

Typos that just don’t taste right

Ever hear about the one that cost Penguin Australia $20,000 in shredded cookbooks? A recipe in The Pasta Bible called for “freshly ground black people” instead of “freshly ground black pepper.” The publisher blamed it on a spell-check program. I’d blame it on relying on a spell-check program.

The typo that had some truth in it

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve yelled at the TV while watching CNN as a typo just scrolled on by. For once, someone caught this one in action: a four-letter word about the NYC Mosque debate that actually reflects on the state of the situation.

And yes, I know we’re all human behind those keyboards. So we should approach them like we would an 80′s horror movie: Be afraid, be very afraid. Proofread and edit like crazy. If something happens to get by, it’ll either be really bad or really funny. Care enough to correct the error for next time, and try to avoid the trap again.

What about you? Any typos that have always stuck in your mind?

It’s been a while since I’ve done Fun With Words. Today’s FWW was inspired by a recent Twitter conversation I had with PS Jones about Trapper Keepers and Lisa Frank stickers that got me all nostalgic about the early 90s.

You know what I really miss? My favorite television show as a kid. It was SO fun with words. Anyone here remember Ghostwriter?

I’m not talking about the recent Ewan McGregor movie.

I’m not talking about its homophone, Ghost Rider (although when I first met my husband and told him how much I loved Ghostwriter growing up, he thought he’d hit the jackpot with a fellow comic book geek).

I’m talking about the early 90s PBS show about a ghost that helps a group of kid detectives by writing to them. Anybody remember this?

Ah, the side ponytails and scrunchies. The dancing with thumbs up and finger snapping. Don’t you just love how it oozes the 90s?

If you don’t feel like watching the whole opening, at least stick around for the first two seconds when the theme song kicks in: Ghostwriter--WORD!

Last week, it took me two hours to find the right facial sunblock online. A year ago, it would’ve taken me ten minutes—just a quick drive to my neighborhood pharmacy, picking up the same brand I’d used for years.

Why the big change?

About a year ago, I started copywriting for a new skin care line as they prepared to launch. I’ve written their web copy, bottle labels, product descriptions, brochures. Their goal was to make people rethink how they shop for beauty products and take a closer look at the ingredients. There are all sorts of potentially harmful chemicals in skin care products we see on shelves every day, in brands that many people trust (this video sums it up beautifully). Recently I also started writing for another beauty line that has a similar mission and because of this, sticks to natural ingredients.

There’s a point to all this, I swear.

Just yesterday, as I was explaining to my sister that many popular fragrances contain potentially harmful chemicals that are not listed on the label, I realized that I was the perfect example of a marketer’s dream consumer. I heard their message. I believed in it and made it part of my life. What’s more, I even passed the message on to others.

Clients often come to me with the concern that they don’t want to sound too pushy in their marketing copy (or sales-y, which has become a common term). When I initially sat down with the first skin care client, listening to how her products were different and how she was trying to improve her customers’ lives, it was enlightening. She didn’t need to be pushy because she knew exactly what problem she was solving for people. She had a genuine concern for their well-being and wanted to help.

The word “sales-y” has gotten a bad rap. We assume that to sell someone, we have to convince them, possibly even trick them, into thinking that they need what we’re offering. There’s a connotation of deception there, of sleaziness, of having to keep a person’s attention because they’d rather be doing something else. Those are clear signs of two things:

1) you’re targeting the wrong audience

2) you’re focusing on how they can help you instead of how you can help them

When people are truly loyal to a brand, it’s because they consider them a friend. That brand looks out for them, that brand helps them out every time. Instead of being pushy, the best thing we can do is listen to our audience’s needs and be that friend. Only then will they listen to your message and look for more of it. And, when they realize it’s not just talk, that your product can really follow through on the promise you’ve made, they’ll take it in and pass it on to their friends.

As I got my new sunblock in the mail today, I was actually grateful that there are companies out there looking out for their customers’ well-being. I changed my shopping habits and switched brands because I wanted a healthier alternative. Nobody had to convince me to make that decision. It was a matter of me wanting something, and of someone else having exactly what I was looking for.

How about you? What brands are you most loyal to, and why?

I’ve never mentioned this before, but I’ve been writing a novel for a few years now and am finally at the final draft stage. It’s been a crazy ride (I’ve changed characters, entire plot points, and settings, so much that it’s almost as if I’ve written three books) and as overwhelming and close to me as this book is, I never mentioned it on this blog because I thought I had to keep my copywriting and my fiction separate.

And then it dawned on me: that’s just silly. Good copy tells a story, just like a great book does. Why should I keep my copywriting and fiction separate when the skills I use for both are so closely related?

In fiction, one of the most important skills a writer has to develop is that of building believable characters. Readers need to feel like they know these people, they need to believe that they’re real, that they have motivations, virtues, vices, issues, opinions and hot buttons just like any other person. Most of all, the writer needs to create a character that readers care about. Why else would a reader follow someone’s journey for 300 pages if they’re not loyal to them?

It’s the same in copywriting. A company’s brand is like the characters in a book. If it’s bland, forgettable, doesn’t feel genuine, or fails to set itself apart from the thousands of other brands/characters in the marketplace, then people aren’t going to connect with it enough to go on a journey with them. Just like in creative writing, your character needs to be fleshed out. It needs to come alive. To do this through copywriting, it’s all about the voice and the word choice and the messages you put out there.

So…quick question for all of you. If your brand were a character in a book, who would it be, and why?

You can’t take the journalist out of the copywriter—at least not this one, anyways. You could say my journalism background extends as far back as that time I was eight and checked out a “So You Want to Be a Journalist?” book. But for the purposes of this blog, I guess I’ll stick mainly to college and beyond.

In Journalism 101, we all learn the importance of the 5 Ws and one H: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. These are the key components of a story, the main elements that will give us the overall picture. Recently, I was writing web copy for a client when I realized that these factors apply equally well in copywriting.

As I was looking through their original drafts of copy, the one thing that kept tipping me off was that there was no H. There was lots of talk about what the product did, but not how it would do it. There was a good emphasis on benefits rather than features, but not a whole lot of context as to how those benefits would come about. Without the “How”, the copy lacked a complete picture. It wasn’t doing a good job of conveying the user experience. And if it wasn’t selling an experience, how would people be sold?

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that the “How” gets left out so often. When you’ve got 5 Ws that fit so nicely together, the lonely H might wander off occasionally. So maybe the 5 Ws and One H should be rewritten and adapted to copywriting. Rather than applying them to a particular incident, as in journalism, these would apply to a product or service:

Who is this product helping?

What problem is it solving for them?

Where will they be using it?

When will they need or want it?

Why should they choose this one over another one?

and of course, don’t forget:

How will it do this?

What about you? In what ways do parts of your background inform what you’re doing now?