Creative copywriting

And … action! Benefits vs features copywriting

Write in verbs, not other parts of speech

Talk about painting a picture. In City of Bohane, Kevin Barry brings the titular town to life in sentences like this:

“Amputee walnut sellers
croaked their prices
from tragic blankets
on the scarred tile floors …”

And:

“The tottering old chimneys were stacked in great deranged happiness
against the morning sky.”

… Read the full article

Use ‘narrative shorthand’

Squeeze a big life into a small space

How do you pack a large life into a tight space?

Try a “pocket profile.” That’s the technique Anjelica Huston used to describe her great-great-great grandfather in her new memoir, A Story Lately Told:

“… a prospector, John Gore, who started up several newspapers from Kansas to New York.… Read the full article

The (One-Page) Magazine

The New York Times goes brief

Talk about brief: The New York Times packs 13 stories onto its briefs page, called The (One-Page) Magazine.

Notice the combination of:

One-paragraph profiles, trend pieces and new nuggets
One-sentence reviews
Charts (History, in Kardashians)
Glossary items (This should be a word: Denigreet)
Timelines (This one’s running across the top and down the right side)
Infographics (This one’s running across the bottom of the page)

How brief are your briefs?… Read the full article

The Mighty Metaphor

Karen Brooks brings the Portland dining scene to life

The rumor that I moved to Portland, Ore., solely because of the restaurants is only slightly exaggerated.… Read the full article

‘Don’t light your clothing on fire’

WCB-Alberta teaches safety through ‘The Hunger Games’

Some topics are hard to tackle. Brand guidelines, casual dress codes and safety, for instance, all come across as finger-wagging, nagging stories.… Read the full article

Create local heroes

Hallmark Cards sees successes through its people

Are you communicating internally? Create local heroes.

That is, celebrate the people who are moving the company ahead. Let employees stand for the successes of organizational programs.… Read the full article

It’s like …

Get great metaphors from GistOut

Find analogies, metaphors and similes at GistOut. This site uses Google Custom Search to find metaphors for your topic that have appeared online.… Read the full article

Play the metaphor game

Practice creative analogies like Hemingway

In A Writer’s Coach, Jack Hart shares this story:

“In A Moveable Feast Hemingway recalls the days when he and Fitzgerald careered through the Spanish countryside in an open car, playing the metaphor game.… Read the full article

Extend your metaphor

Explore the base

Once you come up with an analogy, you can make more of your metaphor by extending it.

“If you want to try an extended metaphor, think carefully about your comparison entity,” writes Nancy Kress in Writer’s Digest.… Read the full article