I’m a sucker for an alliterative list.

When a client asked me to write a piece on the 28 languages now available on her company’s technology, I wrote this lead:

“Whether you speak Chinese or Czech, Korean or Catalan, Finnish or French, Tetra radios speak your language.”

Got a list? Why not alliterate a little?

“A spoonful of alliteration helps the medicine go down,” write Chip Heath and Dan Heath in Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

It helps the listings go down, too.

Siddhartha Mukherjee uses this approach to communicate a list of side effects in The Emperor of All Maladies:

“The acute, short-term effects of nitrogen mustard — the respiratory complications, the burnt skin, the blisters, the blindness — were so amply monstrous that its long-term effects were overlooked.”

Help readers remember. In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink writes that there are three reasons we’re moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age:

“Abundance, Asia, Automation”

Alliterating a short list like this serves as a mnemonic: It makes the list easier to remember, especially for listeners at TED conferences, where Pink is a frequent speaker.

“Alliterative words … give listeners’ and readers’ minds an auditory hook on which to hang a memory,” writes Sam Horn, president of Action Seminars/Consulting, “Alliterating the key words tickles our intellect and makes ideas easier to grasp and remember.”

Communicate range. Alliteration works for a range as well as a list.

In Innocent, Scott Turow writes:

“But even by the standards of somebody whose emotional temperature usually ranges from blah to blue, I’ve been in a bad way awaiting today.”

I alliterate both a range and a list in my bio:

“Ann’s workshops take her from Hollywood to Helsinki, helping communicators in organizations like NASA, Nike and Nokia polish their skills and find new inspiration for their work.”

Alliterate a list today. Have a long, random list to alliterate? Use The Alphabetizer to quickly sort your list into alphabetical order.

How can you use alliteration to make your language more lyrical?

Play with your words

Want to master the art of making your copy more creative and engaging through wordplay?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to write creative copy for your organization.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Make Your Copy More Creative workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to polish your creative writing skills with one-on-one writing coaching. And find out about Ann’s next creative writing webinar.
• Join the club: Get the whole story in the latest issue of Rev Up Readership. And find dozens of tipsheets on playing with your words at RevUpReadership.com.
• Learn more: Get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.

You could just say that in Cleopatra’s time, women had few legal rights. Or you could illustrate that point with an example, as Stacy Schiff does in Cleopatra: A Life:

“[I]n a city where women enjoyed the same legal rights as infants or chickens, the posting called upon a whole new set of skills.”

SHOW ME Illustrate your point with an example, story, analogy or other concrete detail

They may be the two most beautiful words in the English language: for example. Concrete examples like Darth Vader toothbrushes and Pepto-Bismol-slathered schnauzers change the pictures in people’s heads and move readers to act.

One way to write concretely is to lead by example. Present an illustration — a “for instance” — to prove your point.

Play it SAFE.

Examples are just one kind of concrete material you can use to prove your assertions. Diane West and Jennifer Dreyer of Tamayo Consulting offer the mnemonic SAFEST as a way to remember to add other concrete elements to your copy:

• Statistics
• Analogies
• Facts
• Examples
• Stories
• Testimonials

How can you add examples, statistics, analogies and other concrete details to make your message more vivid?

Make Your Copy More Creative

Want to communicate better with creative copy?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to handle a creative writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Make Your Copy More Creative workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to Make Your Copy More Creative in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next Art of the Storyteller webinar.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s learning tools on storytelling, metaphor and human interest.
• Join the club: Get the whole story in the latest issue of Rev Up Readership. Find dozens of creative copywriting tipsheets at RevUpReadership.com.

A good sound bite can help support your points, give your story a human voice, change the pace of the piece and add creativity and color to your copy. Unfortunately, quotations in business communications often sound as if they were manufactured by a computer, not spoken by a human being.

Want to learn to write better sound bites? If so, please join me for PRSA’s Nov. 10 webinar, “Craft Snappy Sound Bites.” In this session, you will learn how to transform your quotations from blah to brilliant.

You’ll learn how to:

• Make quotes crisp, clear and concise, and how to avoid over-quoting, hiccup quotes and an irritating “bumpety-bump” formula that lulls your readers to sleep.
• Peel back your quotes to make them tighter and more interesting.
• Write a colorful, quotable quote and watch it get picked up by the media.
• Write attribution like a pro, and use some simple tricks and rules of thumb that will give your writing polish and authority.
• Find and craft testimonials.

Hope to “see” you there!

Lear about my other webinars.

The other day, I was brainstorming with clients for ways to make this abstract lead more concrete:

“As the weather warms up and the end of the school year looms, a familiar dread emerges among parents of preteens, middle schoolers and high school students: What will keep their children busy this summer?”

WRITER'S BEST FRIEND Turn abstract ideas into concrete images like this schnauzer. Photo by Happy Batatinha

To make an abstract idea concrete, you might:

• Come up with a creative technique to illustrate your story angle.
• Run down a list of types of concrete details until you find one that fits your story.
• Ask questions that drill down from the abstract— “What will keep kids busy this summer?” — to the concrete.

We tried the third approach.

“What have your kids done that’s kept them engaged over the summer?” we asked. “What have they done when they were bored?”

And from the back of the room, Greg Smith, learning design specialist for Thrivent Financial, shouted out:

“Paint the schnauzer.”

“Paint the schnauzer” is my new mantra for finding examples that prove the point. That’s important. Because everything we know about how people respond to information tells us that they’re more likely to pay attention to, understand, remember and act on concrete messages than abstract ones.

Name names, number numbers.

One way to make your copy more concrete is to cite specific details. So name names and number numbers.

William H. Broad names names to make this passage about the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge more concrete:

“The span, at the time the world’s third-longest suspension bridge, crossed a strait of Puget Sound near Tacoma, Wash. A few months after its opening, high winds caused the bridge to fail in a roar of twisted metal and shattered concrete. No one died. The only fatality was a black cocker spaniel named Tubby.”

Poor Tubby. But notice how “black cocker spaniel” is way more effective than “dog” and how “Tubby” is way more effective than “black cocker spaniel” alone. As The Poynter Institute’s Roy Peter Clark counsels, “Get the name of the dog.”

Smith’s schnauzer’s name? Frisky.

But I’m still not seeing poor painted Frisky. We need to step down a rung on the ladder of abstraction to make him more vivid. So we asked, what color did the kids paint him?

“They used Pepto-Bismol,” Smith said.

Now I see.

Make Your Copy More Creative

Want to communicate better with creative copy?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to handle a creative writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a “Make Your Copy More Creative” workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to Make Your Copy More Creative in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next “Art of the Storyteller” webinar.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s learning tools on storytelling, metaphor and human interest. And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: Get the whole story in the latest issue of Rev Up Readership. Find dozens of creative copywriting tipsheets at RevUpReadership.com.

Creative copy can attract or distract

Creative copy is powerful. It attracts attention, helps people learn and remember — even makes them more creative, according to the research.

But the power to attract may also distract readers from your main idea. If your “seductive details” don’t illustrate your key points, they can:

• Draw attention away from more important ideas (Luftig & Greeson, 1983)
• Disrupt text processing (Garner, Gillingham & White, 1989)
• Cause readers to forget the important information while remembering the interesting stuff (Baird & Hidi, 1984)

“Interesting but unimportant information frequently disrupts the learning of more important ideas,” writes Suzanne Hidi, associate member, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Centre for Applied Cognitive Science.

Avoid ‘Visual Vampires.’

Call these interesting but unimportant elements “Visual Vampires.” That’s PreTesting’s term for images that attract audience members in television ads but that don’t draw them to the product.

PreTesting is a Tenafly, N.J., company that gauges consumers’ reactions to ads by measuring their “saccadic” eye movements, or how fast their eyes vibrate.

Ads featuring men with wacky, red, pigtail wigs (Wendy’s), dogs wearing dentures (Citi) and an exotic woman stretching (Hormel) all grabbed attention. But they failed to keep it long enough to for viewers to read the copy or hear about the products.

Build an argument.

So take a tip from Hemingway. Ask, are your creative elements architecture, helping you build your argument? Or are they interior design, just putting wallpaper over your message?

If they’re interior design, they could be distracting readers from your key ideas. Instead, support your abstract, important ideas with concrete, interesting material.

Remember: It’s not enough to make your copy interesting. Our job is to, in the words of James Fallows, author of Breaking the News, “make the important interesting.”

___

Sources: Suzanne Hidi, “Interest and Its Contribution as a Mental Resource for Learning,” Review of Educational Research, Winter 1990, Vol. 60, No. 4, pp. 549-571

Kenneth Hein, “Beware of Visual Vampires, Warns Measurement Firm,” Brandweek, Nov. 26, 2007

Make Your Copy More Creative

Want to communicate better with creative copy?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to handle a creative writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a “Make Your Copy More Creative” workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to Make Your Copy More Creative in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next “Art of the Storyteller” webinar.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s learning tools on storytelling, metaphor and human interest. And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: Get the whole story in the latest issue of Rev Up Readership.Find dozens of creative copywriting tipsheets at RevUpReadership.com.

When my grandfather first saw a car, he didn’t think “automobile.” He thought, “That’s a carriage that moves without a horse — it’s a horseless carriage.”

BABY, YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR Grandpa didn't know from cars; he called this a horseless carriage. Analogies help people understand new ideas by linking them to familiar ones. (Photo from The Library of Congress on Flickr)

He added to his knowledge by comparing the new concept to something he already understood. In other words, he learned through metaphor.

“Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature,” write George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By.

In other words: Metaphor is how we think.

We use metaphor all the time. As Lakoff and Johnson point out, we compare:

• Arguments to war (Attack your position. Claims are indefensible. Criticisms were right on target. Shoot down arguments.)
• Time to money (spending time, wasting time, saving time, investing time, costing time)
• Computers to offices (desktops, files, folders, documents, notepads)

In our brains, love is a journey, problems are puzzles and the Internet is a city.

Metaphors work because they compare the concept to something more familiar: cars to horse-drawn carriages, for instance. That helps people understand new, complex or conceptual information — computers, the Internet, love — by means of something they already understand.

And that makes metaphors shortcuts to understanding.

Compare complex concepts

If metaphor is how we think, then writers can help people think through metaphor.

That’s the approach Richard Preston used in The Demon in the Freezer to help people wrap their brains around the science of smallpox:

“Variola particles are built to survive in the air. They are rounded-off rectangles that have a knobby, patterned surface — a gnarly hand-grenade look. Some experts call the particles bricks. The whole brick is made of a hundred different proteins, assembled and interlocked in a three-dimensional puzzle. Pox bricks are the largest viruses. If a smallpox brick were the size of a real brick, then a cold-virus particle would be a blueberry on the brick. But smallpox particles are still extremely small; about three million smallpox bricks laid down in rows would pave the period at the end of this sentence.”

Why does this work?

“Human thought processes are largely metaphorical,” write Lakoff and Johnson. “The human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. … Metaphor is as much a part of our functioning as our sense of touch, and as precious.”

Bottom line: If you’re communicating technical,
scientific or complicated information, use metaphor.

___

Sources: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980

Richard Preston, The Demon in the Freezer, Random House, October 2002

Make Your Copy More Creative

Want to communicate better with creative copy?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to handle a creative writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a “Make Your Copy More Creative” workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to Make Your Copy More Creative in one-on-one writing coaching. Or find out about Ann’s next “Art of the Storyteller” webinar.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s learning tools on storytelling, metaphor and human interest.
• Join the club: Find dozens of tipsheets on creative copywriting at RevUpReadership.com.

My husband used to leave the room when I turned on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” Then he’d stand behind his chair in the living room while I watched. Finally he sat down.

'EYE' IT, TRY IT, BUY IT: A rhyming triad is a shorter, sweeter, more engaging way to make your point.

When I saw him spray, delay and walk away, I knew he was hooked.

“Spray, delay and walk away” is a mnemonic Kyan Douglas used to teach men to use aftershave. Instead of dousing yourself in Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme, he suggested, spritz a little in the air, wait a moment, then step through whatever’s left.

But there’s a shorter, sweeter, more engaging way to express that idea:

“Spray, delay and walk away.”

Double your rhetorical power

“Spray, delay and walk away” uses two rhetorical devices: rhyme and triad. That doubles your rhetorical power, making your message even more eloquent, attention getting and memorable.

That’s the approach Lyris used in this slogan for a webinar on social media and email marketing:

“Simplify, unify, ROI.”

Chevrolet used this rhyming triad:

“Eye it, try it, buy it.”

And Wired used a trio of rhyming words to name its department on what’s in and out in technology:

EXPIRED, TIRED & WIRED: A rhyming triad's a great way to organize information.

How can you use a trio of rhyming words to make your message short, sweet and neat?

Play with your words

Want to master the art of making your copy more creative and engaging through wordplay?

• Rev Up Readership members: Read the whole article.
• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing project.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Make Your Copy More Creative” workshop.
• Work with Ann to make your copy more creative in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on playing with your words at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next creative writing webinar.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

You don’t have to know me for long to know that the crazy cat lady inside of me is just the tiniest nudge away from getting out. And, were it not for geography, “Sundays at the Shelter” would be that nudge.

BIG PICTURE: Maggie Swanson shoots snapshots of PAWS cats with a small Canon camera, available light and "lots of weird noises." Try that on your CEO!

“Sundays at the Shelter” is my favorite e-zine. (You can also follow the blog.) I forward it, archive it, respond to its every call to action, review old issues when I’m feeling low. I’ve gone so far as to fail to board with my zone just so I could open it the instant it arrives.

And it’s not just the cats that I love about this e-zine. The format rocks, too — and it’s a format you may be able to steal for your communications.

First, meet the author

Maggie Swanson is an artist so talented that Paper Source prints pieces right out of her sketchbook. You’ll usually find her in her studio, painting her in-demand children’s book and other illustrations. When she’s not working, she might be whipping up samosas on the fly or perfecting a risotto that requires no stirring.

And on Sundays, she heads to PAWS, the local shelter in Norwalk, Conn. There, she cleans the cages, pets the cats and shoots adorable photos. A couple of times a week, she posts one of these photos, along with an amusing headline and caption.

And that’s it. That’s the formula for “Sundays at the Shelter”: headline, photo, caption.

Are you writing about something visual? Could a headline, photo and caption say more about your subject than a million paragraphs?

Low-key calls to action

Once a year, Maggie asks readers to donate to the PAW’s “Bark in the Park” event. Last year, the event earned $44,000.

The shelter doesn’t track the number of cats adopted by people who subscribe to “Sundays at the Shelter” or cats that get adopted right after showing up in the e-zine. But who are we kidding? These cuties sell themselves.

In fact, if I didn’t live 1,250 miles away from Norwalk, Gigi would have a little sister named Sammi. And one named Orion. And Carina. And Hank and Hammie and Mickey and Pepper and Susie and Shadow and Izzy and Bootz and Muffin …

Rev Up Readership

Want to reach more readers by revitalizing your publication, website or blog?

• Bring Ann to your organization for a Rev Up Readership workshop.
• Ask Ann to help revamp your publication, website or blog.
• Get ideas for improving your own publication, website or blog with a communication review.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on planning powerful publications at RevUpReadership.com.
• Read Ann’s Plan Powerful Publications learning tools.

“Facts tell, stories sell.”

— Anonymous

The first song the main character sings in a Disney movie — not to mention many other film and stage musicals — is the “I wish” song, reports Ira Glass in a recent episode of “This American Life.”

In the “I wish” song, the protagonist declares what she wants. That motivation launches the story’s action.

• “Funny Girl” starts with Barbara Streisand wishing to be a star.
• “My Fair Lady” opens with Julie Andrews wishing for a room somewhere.
• The “Hunchback of Notre Dame” begins with Quasimodo wishing he could belong “Out There.”
• Steven Sondheim starts “Into the Woods” with six characters declaring their wishes.

What do your characters wish?

The best corporate stories start with a wish, too.

• Nike’s story began with founder Bill Bowerman wishing he could create a shoe sole that would give runners more traction.
• Hallmark Cards started with entrepreneur J.C. Hall wishing to become a postcard salesman.
• Post-it^® Notes began with 3M scientist Art Fry wishing for a bookmark that would stay put in his church hymnal.

Ragan’s David Murray calls these wishes the desk-pounding moment. Disney calls it the “I wish” song. Whatever you call it, it’s a great way to drive action in a story.

What’s your story’s “I wish” song?

Hear Ira Glass sing his “I wish” song.

“If we can open your mind to laughter, we can slip in a little information.”

— Virginia Tooper, American humorist

PLUG & PLAY: Try these quick tips for jokes that practically write themselves.

Want to add humor to your piece? Two professional speakers shared these formulas in SpeakerNet News, a weekly e-zine for professional speakers:

Jargon jokes

I know, I know. Your organization is overloaded with jargon. Take advantage of the situation, suggests Paul Seaburn, “The Humor Handyman,” by writing funny definitions for the worst gobbledygook.

Use the formula “Back where I come from, a ___ is a ___.”

“Back where I come from,” Seaburn says, “‘megahertz’ is a huge car rental company, ‘Tai Bo’ is the last thing you do to a present, and ‘preferred carrier’ is a mailman who doesn’t read your magazines.”

Light bulb jokes

Write your own light bulb jokes by asking, “How many ____s [members of your audience] does it take to screw in a light bulb?” Seaburn suggests. Or twist the old light bulb joke by making it a remote control:

“How many managers does it take to set the clock on a VCR?” he asks. “No one knows, because they can never find the time.”

Location jokes

Writing an executive speech? You may be able to play off the location of the talk, says corporate comedian David Glickman. One approach: Find a town within 30 miles that starts with a V. Then play with, “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From V___.”

“I know that’s true,” Glickman says, “because I read it in that local best-seller, ‘Men Are From Mars, Women Are From V___.‘”

Get humor help

Are you looking for someone else to fill in the blanks? Glickman and Seaburn write custom corporate humor.

Make fun

Want to make your copy more amusing?

• Invite Ann’s team in to handle a special writing project.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Make Your Copy More Creative” workshop.
• Work with Ann to make your copy more creative in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Get more tipsheets on corporate humor at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find out about Ann’s next creative writing webinar.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2011 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.