Published by Neil ThompsonEver find yourself staring at a promotional document or post that you can’t quite seem to make flow right?
Creative writing can be one of the more intricate challenges of running a business. With its endless possibilities making for endless missed attention-grabbing opportunities, but we’re here this week instead not to focus on what you might miss, but what chances we can take in our writing to engage a reader to the fullest.
1. Ask yourself: “Would I read this?”
When writing anything, the first question should always be if you would read it yourself. If not then you might want to go back to the drawing board. Each piece of writing for your business, whether for a blog, social media post, or for marketing should fill you with a sense of pride, planning a piece of writing with bullet points first can help you produce a more streamlined view of what you want to write.
2. Use captivating titles
Titling a piece of writing for your business is something that can be done in one of two ways, depending on your target audience. Firstly is the ‘straight to the point’ method, one that we’ve used so far with Check This Out. This isn’t a method for targeting new consumers, rather instead, to provide information to a core audience who wants it.
The other is the ‘interrogative’ title, asking your audience “Bad clothes? Try our 8 Fashion Forward tips” titles like this can be better for that attention-grabbing, we spoke about in the introduction, but will often attract readers with a shorter attention span.
3. See every line as an opportunity
This one is plain and simple, regardless of the goal of your article, you should never want to be repeating yourself for the sake of keywords, or even worse, for no reason at all. Each paragraph should be as useful as possible to the reader. After finishing a paragraph, asking yourself: “What valuable information does this sentence/paragraph provide?”
4. Consistent engagement
In long-form content, keeping a reader engaged the whole way through can be an uphill battle, and the hill keeps getting steeper the longer the article goes on. One of the most effective ways to use your creative writing skills is a rhetorical question. As Courtroom Logic found in 2019, audiences are more invested in an outcome when they reach the conclusion on their own. A rhetorical question helps to allow the reader to feel although the suggestions given are their own ideas and conclusions, and therefore making more valuable connections with your article/brand/product or advertisement.
5. Keep sentences short and snappy
Short sentences can be a great way to keep the subject interesting and flowing throughout your writing. It not only helps to break up long chunks and walls of text but also suits readers who want to skim read your piece - allowing them to easily dip into key sentences.
You can also break up a paragraph or sentences often, like above, but be careful not to overuse this and break up a well-flowing piece.
6. Sprinkle in atypical adjectives and metaphors
Adding some flair to writing is always welcome. Base adjectives such as “quick” or “great” don’t stand out from the crowd and especially not from your competitors. Instead, use valuable online resources like thesaurus.com to find synonyms to take your creative writing to the next level. For example, great might turn into ‘exceptional’ and quick may become “instantaneous” Don’t be afraid to use a metaphor too to heighten the value you provide!
7. Spellcheck!
Lastly, but most definitely not least, Spellchecking! It’s imperative to always make sure to check for mistakes at the end of your work, we’re all prone to them, there was more than enough in the first draft of this article! To take your spellchecking the extra level, use Grammarly, an online extension to Word and Google Docs, which will even help you tailor the tone of your writing to whatever you may desire.
We hope you've enjoyed this article, we'll keep checking everything out and bring another one to you soon
Alexander Thompson
DW Staff Writer
Read our previous 'Check This Out' article on time management here
