"The job helped as a writer in an odd way," Trevor said in a BBC Radio 3 interview. "It helped because to write any advertisement you have got to be very brief. You can't, you know, wander on. It won't do at all, you must get to the point..." Trevor is now famed for his skills as a short story writer.
The Nature of Writing
Although the notion that to be a good copywriter you need to be a good novelist or aspiring short story writer is not a true one, understanding the power of words is crucial. And there are many crucial lessons that some of the world's leading writers can teach every copywriting about how to write well. Perhaps one of the most admired short story writers is the American Raymond Carver. Before his untimely death, Carver wrote extensively about the nature of writing. And his words ring true for all writers. Of course there's a massive difference if you're writing a literary masterpiece to drafting the copy for a double glazing website.
Success or Failure
Whether your aim is to beguile a reader into believing and feeling your story and characters, taking them on a literary journey, or if you're charged with optimising web copy for a hotel website, how you write, structure and edit your copy will make the difference between success and failure. Copywriting demands brevity, directness and should be effortless to read. It should do whatever it says on the tin. If you want to ensure successful copywriting, then it's worth considering some of Carver's wisdom.
Concise and Lean
In the 1960s, Carver discovered he had lost his ability to focus on long narrative. This resulted in his beautifully crafted short stories and poems. Concise, lean and carefully composed – each word is painstakingly right. For online copywriting, you aren't aiming to compose a masterpiece but being short and to the point is a necessity. Attention span is hard to grab and harder to keep. As Carver said, "Get in, get out. Don't linger."
Writing Tips
By his writing desk, Carver taped up postcards with advice from some of the most talented authors including this quote: "Fundamental accuracy of statement is the one sole morality of writing." - Ezra Pound. He also quoted the writer Geoffrey Wolff who told creative writing students: "No cheap tricks." (As Carver said, tricks are ultimately boring, they can alienate readers, be distracting and beside the point, and serve no purpose but to try and make the author look clever.)
Precise Language
You don't have to be writing about grand themes and designs to demonstrate good writing. As Carver said: "It's possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power."
Commas and Grammar
On punctuation and grammar Carver was unflinching: "That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they can best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason—if the words are in any way blurred—the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved."
Finally, Carver had another crucial tip for aspiring short story writers that also speaks to copywriters too – that the use of clear and specific language is vital: "…the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right, they can hit all the notes."