What Becomes a Copywriting Course Most?

What Becomes a Copywriting Course Most? “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” Every great teacher knows this pithy Benjamin Franklin adage. Every one of us can relate to it in the various learning curves we’ve traversed. And every copywriting course I’ve investigated does a lot of […]

Here’s a Christmas story with the happiest ending of them all.

For those of you who read this post last Christmas, you’ll know what’s coming. But like every great story, re-reading it is like catching up with an old friend and being reminded of what inspired the friendship in the first place — a warmth, an understanding, a common ground, an insight, a lesson, or just […]

Five copywriting insights into the ah-haa moment.

The Five Insights of Compelling Copywriting Photography by Lucienne Di Tempora You stare at the blank page, waiting for a good idea to come up. Nothing happens, except the usual stream of cliches, puns and generic expressions. Then you want to give up, or contrive some half-baked thought into something you can get away with. […]

Copywriting is music. And that’s a biological fact.

Can you hear the rhythm in your sentences (like the beats in a song)? Can you hear the tonal attitude that characterizes your expressions (like the spirit of a vocalist or instrumentalist)? Can you hear the rhetorical patterns that shape your clauses and phrases into memorable sound bytes (like the catchy riff of a melody […]

Copywriting and the structuring of narrative logic

Waffle. Ramble. Repetition. Pointlessness. These are clear signs that your structure (narrative logic) needs fixing. When your copywriting is not ordered into sound logic, the text can  disorientate, flounder, and even confuse your reader. Think of it as a spine. This is more obvious in multi-page documents like brochures and white papers, where each section […]

Copywriting Strategies Toward a Strong Conclusion

When it comes to copywriting strong conclusions, my go-to inspiration is the last line of the last song of the last album by The Beatles: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” How it encapsulates the human condition. How it parallel phrases a simple truth. How it […]

CWiA Course Showcase: The Scammer

I don’t care who you are, as long as I know your weakness I will find my way into your hard-drive and your accounts and come away with your identity. And … you’re going to hate this bit … you won’t know a thing about it. Unless, of course, you read this article from start […]

Copywriting first impressions that entice them into the story

“Friends, Romans, Copywriters! Lend me your ears …” Copywriting those opening words is a finely crafted art of the first impression. The reader’s snap decision of that impression —”ho hum” or “oh wow!”— is crucial to the whole story. Writers call it “the opening hook”. To me, a great opening hook is like an elegantly […]

Copywriting and the hypnotics of prose rhythm

Co-py-wri-ting. Rhy-thm-n-beats. Hyp-no-ti-sm. Four syllables = four beats. Say it aloud and you can feel the rhythm. Quite musical really. Probably because it has embedded in it that universally appealing rhythm of four (tetracolon). Composing a sentence is made up of the following three elements: propositional content, word choice and syntax (arrangement of the words). […]

The 6 Genres of Copy Writing for Selling and Telling [Part 2]

Just to recap for those who have yet to read The 6 Genres of Copy Writing for Selling and Telling [Part 1]: To inform, to instruct, to persuade and to entertain: these are the four purposes of copywriting. Any other writing can be one or a combination of those, but in copywriting it’s all four. […]