Tag: Voice & Style
-
Drop the Fluff and Start Producing Sharper Prose Today
“Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think. If you want to ‘get in touch with your feelings,’ fine, talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade,…
-
Do You Have the Guts to Create Bold Content?
In January 2006, I launched a blog with the tagline “How to sell with blogs.” Within weeks, prominent bloggers were calling me pond scum. Publicly. By name. With genuine contempt. And here’s the part most people don’t believe: that was the plan. I knew that tagline would offend the old guard of blogging, the purists…
-
Distinguishing Between Metaphor, Simile, and Analogy Once and for All
A friend of mine was presenting to a board of directors when someone interrupted to say, “That’s not a metaphor, that’s a simile.” He froze. He stumbled. He lost the room over a distinction he couldn’t articulate. He never made that mistake again. Neither should you. Here’s the thing: these three tools are cousins, not…
-
Crafting Intimate Prose Without Crossing into Narcissism
I almost didn’t write this introduction. Not because I had nothing to say, because I had too much to say about myself, and I could feel the slide beginning. The one where a perfectly useful essay becomes a diary entry with a megaphone. Every writer who dares to be personal knows that slide. It’s the…
-
Developing Your Writing Personality Without Going Overboard
I once read a blog post that opened with three exclamation points, deployed the word “amazeballs” without irony, and included so many emoji that my screen looked like a teenager’s phone had exploded across it. The topic? B2B software implementation. The writer was trying to be lively. I respect the impulse. But somewhere between “conversational”…
-
Crafting an About Page That Connects with Visitors and Drives Revenue
I have watched people agonize over their About page for weeks, rewriting, reorganizing, second-guessing every word, with an intensity they did not bring to their actual marriage proposals. Something about writing about yourself makes otherwise confident people seize up like an engine with no oil. You become both the subject and the object. The photographer…
-
Creating Prose That Connects Deeply with Your Audience
I once spent three hours on a blog post that I was certain was brilliant. Published it. Crickets. A week later I dashed off 400 words about a small frustration I figured nobody else would care about, and it generated more response than anything I’d written in months. The difference wasn’t quality. It was connection.…
-
Captivate Your Perfect Audience Through Meaningful Content
In 2014, Jerry Seinfeld sat down with Alec Baldwin for a podcast interview and said something that should have been boring but wasn’t. He explained why his show was good: “In most TV series, 50 percent of the time is spent working on the show, 50 percent of the time is spent dealing with personality,…
-
Channel Your Genuine Enthusiasm to Level Up Your Copywriting Skills
I once got so excited about a content strategy framework that I literally clapped my hands together and said “oh, that’s delicious” in a restaurant. My dining companion looked at me with a mixture of affection and alarm, the way you’d look at a dog who’s just discovered a tennis ball machine. I am not…
-
Borrow Tarantino’s Storytelling Method to Create Magnetic Content
I saw Pulp Fiction on opening night in 1994, and I remember two things with perfect clarity. First, the audience burst into applause after the opening scene, not the ending, the opening. I’d never seen that before. Second, I spent the next two hours with a question humming in the back of my brain like…
-
Adopting Hemingway’s Bold and Simple Writing Style
Whenever I tell business people to write like Hemingway, someone inevitably says: “Hey, I’m no Hemingway!” To which the only reasonable response is: exactly. You’re not. Neither am I. That’s not the point. The point is that Hemingway chose to eschew obfuscation at every turn, to write simply and clearly instead of hiding behind flowery…
-
Editing Techniques That Turn Rough Drafts Into Compelling Masterpieces
I used to think writing was the hard part. Then I became an editor and learned the truth: writing is the first part. Editing is where the work actually happens, where you take the raw ore of your thoughts and hammer it into something that gleams. The content people share, bookmark, and email to friends…