Are you ready to hear my story? Yes? Are you sitting comfortably? Everyone been to the toilet have they? Right, OK. I’ll begin my story. This is my story, and it will be told by me. So here we go. My story, by me, starting…now. Ah-hem. OK, I’ll start at the beginning of the story, going from there right through the middle sections and all the way to the end. Oh…most of you are looking very comfortable indeed now, and a good many of you have decided to close your eyes to help you concentrate better. Very good. So let us begin…
No. We're not there yet.
Hey, congrats for making it to the second paragraph – a true vindication of your powers of concentration and determination. I feel flattered. But many of your fellow readers have probably fallen by the wayside by now, and clicked off somewhere else. Just as they do when they read a piece of marketing writing that requires them to get ‘sitting comfortably’ first. And so beginneth today’s lesson: Don’t wait till they’re sitting comfortably – hit ‘em with what matters early on.
You may have heard that marketing writing should tell a story. It has to grab attention, create interest, draw people in. Yes true enough. But you must still be wary of the ‘once-upon-a-time’ approach, even if you are writing what we call ‘long copy’. Whatever the length of the piece, you want your readers pretty clued up after the first few lines. That means known what you’re selling and how it relates to the reader’s needs. The rest is persuasion. And call to action.
So check through your marketing lit. Does it take people on too long a journey first? Or are you not sure? Bung it on down and I’ll take a look. (Cos I want you to live happily ever after. Really I do.)
Hooray for Doug! Aristotle would be proud of you. ‘Beginning, middle and end’ is all that generally gets remembered from section VII of Poetics. This is a shame because what Aristotle was really saying is that a plot must be whole, but a story must be beautiful – and for that it must be the right size.
Aristotle eh! Now there’s impressive, Simon. I’m delighted to be attracting a better class of visitor at last.
Well before we start discussing Aristotle, what do you mean a better class of visitor?
I mean clearly, before you had your own rag here, your visitors couldn’t have class, or space, simply because you didn’t have space for them. So let’s get that out of the way first.
But – what I really mean to get at is that, to claim that one shouldn’t start at the beginning must surely be a tautology, because even if you place your pen in the very centre of the paper and write the first paragraph there, in filling around it, that’s still the start innit?
Of course your reader won’t know this.
Perhaps you’re referring to the old copywriter’s trick of writing in free flow, and then throwing either the whole sheet of paper away, or and rather better, just throwing away the first paragraphs – thus creating the illusion that the piece started in the middle?
But that’s irrelevant really, because I’ve now digressed into a polemic, when really I intended, first and foremost, to support your excellent advice, which in essence says:
‘Grab your reader by the balls’
Brilliant Doug. I’m not looking forward to the day everyone writes this way though!
Stephen, my ‘better class of visitor’ statement was just an attempted wisecrack. No slight on you intended.
Nevertheless, I wish you’d started your comment at the end!
Cheers,
Doug