copywriting
Painting Pictures with Words
Are words simply written media or are they something more? Whether for websites, speeches, books or adverts, is writing copy simply a matter of getting words onto paper?
21st October 2019
What do your words say?
A picture paints a thousand words, they say, but when you think about it, words paint pictures. For example - don't think about a cup of coffee... aha ...you just did, didn't you?
To think about a cup of coffee - to understand the sentence above - the first thing you had to do was picture it in your mind...then you could begin to understand what was written. Of course, all this happens in micro-seconds and we are so used to it that we often don't even notice it.
When learning a new language (French for example) if I say to you 'Tasse' - at first you have to mentally translate the word into your native language (in this case, English) before understanding it means 'Cup'. For most people, this means relying on the sounds of the words and learning the correlation of the two...tasse....cup. After a while though, once you are more familiar with the language and some of the vocabulary, there will come a day when you hear the word Tasse and immediately picture an image of a Cup! It's a shift that takes place over time when language learning (for most people) and often goes unnoticed at first.
To think about a cup of coffee - to understand the sentence above - the first thing you had to do was picture it in your mind...then you could begin to understand what was written. Of course, all this happens in micro-seconds and we are so used to it that we often don't even notice it.
When learning a new language (French for example) if I say to you 'Tasse' - at first you have to mentally translate the word into your native language (in this case, English) before understanding it means 'Cup'. For most people, this means relying on the sounds of the words and learning the correlation of the two...tasse....cup. After a while though, once you are more familiar with the language and some of the vocabulary, there will come a day when you hear the word Tasse and immediately picture an image of a Cup! It's a shift that takes place over time when language learning (for most people) and often goes unnoticed at first.
“
Don't think about a cup of coffee...
aha... you just did, didn't you?
aha... you just did, didn't you?
Of course, we then complicate it further by remembering that some people are more visually inclined (they tend to think more in pictures) and some more audibly inclined (they interpret the world far more through sound than do the visual types).
We also need to remember the rest of the population who predominantly interpret life through the other senses, but fortunately for us most are of the first two varieties.
Therefore, when writing any sort of copy, you need to think carefully about the sentence construction and the words used carefully. Ideally, every text should be written to appeal to the 'visuals' as well as the 'audials'. So make sure your writing paints pictures! And at the same time it needs to sound appealing - the words and sentences need to flow naturally and not grate audibly. Choice of word, then, is as important as the picture you are trying to paint.
In addition to the above, writing should also appeal emotionally as well - not only does this make the writing more attractive, but it also usefully engages the third group of readers - the 'feelers'. Yes - those who travel through life interacting mainly through feelings, emotions, etc.
So when discussing the cup of coffee, perhaps we should describe it as warming, comforting or one that just 'hits the spot'.
I see a lot of advice (correctly) explaining that you should do the above, but not often does anyone take the time to explain why - and I think understanding the 'why' is so important otherwise there is no incentive to apply the method.
If you always write in this fashion, you are appealing and directly speaking to almost all your readers - the visuals, the audibles and the feelers - and you are also writing great copy that engages and attracts the largest possible audience.
We also need to remember the rest of the population who predominantly interpret life through the other senses, but fortunately for us most are of the first two varieties.
Therefore, when writing any sort of copy, you need to think carefully about the sentence construction and the words used carefully. Ideally, every text should be written to appeal to the 'visuals' as well as the 'audials'. So make sure your writing paints pictures! And at the same time it needs to sound appealing - the words and sentences need to flow naturally and not grate audibly. Choice of word, then, is as important as the picture you are trying to paint.
In addition to the above, writing should also appeal emotionally as well - not only does this make the writing more attractive, but it also usefully engages the third group of readers - the 'feelers'. Yes - those who travel through life interacting mainly through feelings, emotions, etc.
So when discussing the cup of coffee, perhaps we should describe it as warming, comforting or one that just 'hits the spot'.
I see a lot of advice (correctly) explaining that you should do the above, but not often does anyone take the time to explain why - and I think understanding the 'why' is so important otherwise there is no incentive to apply the method.
If you always write in this fashion, you are appealing and directly speaking to almost all your readers - the visuals, the audibles and the feelers - and you are also writing great copy that engages and attracts the largest possible audience.
