5 Copywriting Skills I Wish I’d Known Starting Out
Copywriting. The bane and blessing of my existence. It pays the bills and provides me with the kind of orgasmic anguish that usually only a cotton bud shoved too far in my ear can bestow.
It takes years for a craft or skill to be honed, and I don’t believe that anyone ever reaches the acme of professional enlightenment, merely a point of understanding and acceptance that there’ll always be a lesson to learn.
Here are five lessons that I’ve learned from copywriting that I wish I’d known from the get-go.
CRITICISM
There was once a time when any criticisms of my written word would crush me. My professional composure always remained intact, but inside I’d be clawing my way across the desolate tundra of creative integrity the way a disemboweled zebra might claw its way across the grasslands. It wasn’t pretty.
I’d see it as a personal attack. I’d won my primary school’s Poetry Competition in 1994 and again in 1995, so why was my client tearing strips off my creativity like some malevolent owl when I had a host of literary accolades under my belt from my pre-pubescent years? Not cool, John. I’m a great copywriter, and your opinion is wrong!
But clients are always going to have an opinion on your work. They are the client after all, and it’s their project you’re working on. Copywriting without criticism benefits no one, and making yourself creatively impenetrable to the critique of others firewalls your learning and stalls inventiveness.
Some of my best work has been born from criticism. As a copywriter, it’s so easy to fall into a cycle of repetition, and working across numerous projects simultaneously can blur your vision like a jab to the retinas.
Gone are the days when I’d be floored by amendments to my work. On the contrary, I welcome criticism: we’re best mates. It makes me easier to work with and broadens my capabilities.
EDIT
It’s far too easy to form an emotional attachment to copy you’ve written, treating each word as though you’ve personally rescued it from some grammatical orphanage. But the truth is, nothing you’ve written should have eviction immunity.
A good copywriter knows when (and what) to let go. Your job isn’t to convince the client that what you’ve written is akin to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales or a work to be revered with Pulitzer Prize recognition. The brilliance of great copy should be a reflection of the client’s own, and this is impossible to do if you don’t edit with prolific objectivity. Don’t be precious.
Yes, the copy should stay true to your writing style and personality (after all, this is probably why you were hired in the first place) but treat every word and every sentence the way Henry VIII treated his wives; with aggressive disposability.
NAILING THE BRIEF
This one should go without saying really, as it’s usually the starting pistol of any copywriting project, but the success or failure of any assignment lives and dies by how well you smash the brief.
“Remember to read each question twice,” was my mum’s pre-GCSE exams advice and I have an inkling that if I still lived at home, this would be the same proffering before I set to work on a copywriting project. But as with most things my mum says, she was right.
A brief can often take the form of your worst enemy. It can speak in riddles, being simultaneously revealing and reticent like a lap dancer with an inferiority complex.
Whatever the brief, you need to be adept at extracting its secrets. Remember when Dumbledore assigned Harry the task of finding out precisely what Slughorn had told Tom Riddle about Horcruxes? Well, the same can be said for copywriting, with Harry the copywriter, Dumbledore the client, and Slughorn the brief.
Of course, there are good briefs, just like there are serial killers who don’t kill children, but most briefs require you to read between the lines and unearth their secrets. Kick the shit out of it and then sit and sift through the glittering pool of its entrails like a box of old photographs you’ve just found in the loft. You’ll be astonished at what it unveils.
PATIENCE
When I started copywriting, I was astounded and embarrassed that some days words didn’t flow from me like some literary river. No amount of caffeine-fuelled keyboard pokery could concisely articulate what I wanted to say, and the rest of my day was spent submerged in a puddle of salty, salty tears.
Some days I can sit and watch the Word curser blink mockingly for hours, whereas others I can bash out thousands of pages of copy that can end up being one paragraph of usable content once it’s been put through the meat grinder of editing.
I used to view Writer’s Block as the leader of a gang that counted Self-Doubt and Anxiety among its ranks, but the difference between now and then is that I’m now at peace with the dry days. It happens to everyone in all areas of their life. Some days it just doesn’t happen at all. End of.
GATHER
For most copywriters, I imagine that they never fully switch off. Each project I’m working on consumes every minute of my day, and I don’t mean this negatively. Even in the evening as I’m peeling twice as many garlic cloves than the recipe calls for, I’m constantly thinking about copy. I care about it that much that I want to go above and beyond what’s expected of me.
Over the years I’ve collected oodles of copy-related material, from scribbled notes on petrol receipts to saved pictures on my phone. If an idea comes to me that isn’t fit for a project I’m currently working on, it doesn’t mean it won’t be for a future assignment. Sometimes great ideas are few and far between, so grab greedily at any creative juices that seep from your being.
Unusual names and sexy syntax really get my knickers wagging, and I’m partial to the odd foray into the world of alphabetic narcotics. I find myself dissecting every bit of copy I see, learning from the poor and filing away the good to use as my own inspiration. As long as inspiration doesn’t scissor-kick across the line of plagiarism, you’re fine, and eighty percent of the pictures on my phone is inspiration of great copy I see every day (the other twenty percent is Harry Potter memes).
www.martynanderson.com | hello@martynanderson.com | @copymartyn
