Read Me

The great American novelist Elmore Leonard summed this up nicely when he said, ‘If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.’

Plenty of real-world copywriting isn’t writing at all, it’s editing and reworking existing text. To get you comfortable in this role we want you to redraft the following chunk of copy – taken from a fictional airline print ad – in one of the structures we suggested earlier: •Issues>implications>actions •Past>present>future •Context>a

No, going from nothing to something is a four-stage process during which you research, plan, write and review.

If you want to be a good writer you need to write every day.

Problem>solution>results The classic case-study format. Not particularly imaginative in its naked form but a solid basis on which to build.

words are ideas in another form.

It also pays to keep your paragraphs tight – in most situations five sentences are plenty. If a paragraph is running away with you then divide it in two.

Finally, a really useful technique for the Writing stage is to create a ‘core story’. This is just a fancy phrase for a document that contains everything important about your subject, written up under appropriate headings to a good (but not finished) standard. It’s a content pool that will itself never see the light of day – it’s almost certainly t

‘First write it straight, then write it great’.