Creative writing

When to use adverbs and adjectives

‘Applewood-smoked bacon’ just tastes better

Turns out a Southwestern Tex-Mex salad by any other name would not taste as good.

Vivid menu descriptions — “applewood-smoked bacon,” “Maytag blue cheese” and “buttery plump pasta,” for instance — can increase restaurant sales up to 27 percent, according to research by Brian Wansink.… Read the full article

Tips for organizing magazine articles

Romance meets finance in this feature

How do you organize a compelling feature?

Model this piece, which Loring Leifer wrote for Northern Funds’ marketing magazine, Northern Update.… Read the full article

Communicate, don’t decorate, for creative content marketing

Creative copy can attract or distract

“Prose is architecture. It’s not interior design.”

— Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize-winning novelist

Study after study shows that when you add interesting, concrete details to your message, people remember them — sometimes to the exclusion of less fascinating, more abstract ideas.… Read the full article

Help people remember with acronyms

Create a mnemonic

First there was FUBAR: F***ed Up Beyond All Recognition. Now, thanks to the Urban Dictionary, we also have PHOBAR: PHOtoshopped Beyond All Recognition.… Read the full article

How to write in detail

Steal tips from these holiday messages

Hey, we know. Thanksgiving was so November 2015. But we couldn’t resist sharing these delicious holiday messages from two of our brilliant clients.… Read the full article

Metaphor at work

6 reasons analogy is more persuasive than literal language

Metaphor is more persuasive than literal language: It’s been proven in the lab.

Make that 41 labs over more than 50 years.… Read the full article

Up close and personal

Metaphor creates intimacy, builds understanding

People who read metaphors are more likely to understand what someone else is thinking.

Or so say Andrea Bowes and Albert Katz, two researchers at the University of Western Ontario (London).… Read the full article

‘The Emperor of All Maladies’

Siddhartha Mukherjee clarifies cancer with comparison

If you were … say … a brilliant oncologist and a spectacular writer, and you wanted to tell the story of cancer in a way that people who weren’t brilliant oncologists could understand and enjoy it, what literary tools might you use?… Read the full article

‘Save a guitar on car insurance’

Make messages vivid with metaphor

Analogy makes your benefits more tantalizing by making them more tangible. So use metaphor and simile to make your concepts concrete.… Read the full article

‘The wind made the reeds gossip’

Kindle your creativity

All these years later, I’m still grateful for the Kindle app on my iPad.

I thought the thing I’d love most about reading on my devices would be the extra mini-fridge-sized space it leaves in my luggage for necessities like thick Marimekko sweaters and airport-sized Fazer chocolate bars that I collect on my trips.… Read the full article