One of the biggest problems with a lot of copy I see written for businesses is that it’s so damn boring. The layout and graphics and images might be really well done, but the actual words, the things that people will read, are ineffective and uninteresting.
Why? Because writing it is treated as something unimportant. They don’t matter, right?
But playwrights know a truth that copywriters may not: all you have are the words.
As a playwright I do my work and then I hand it off to a director, actors, scene designers, and the other production trades. They make something of it. All I have are the words. I can suggest stage directions, but they’re sometimes ignored. I can describe how the stage will look, but I don’t do that work. I can suggest where the actors should give emphasis, but they’ll discover what works on their own (and, alas, sometimes not).
As a playwright I know that all of those things, from the direction and performances to the design and execution, are there only to get the words from the page to the audience. The words are what have meaning.
So I make sure that the words are exactly right. I work on the dialogue so it is refined and perfected to the best of my abilities.
And I write my business copy this way, too.
Yes, your readers are attracted to images. To pictures. To clever displays. But it’s the words that stay with them. It’s the words that motivate, challenge, and convince.
And the big payoff: your words are the only thing that Google pays attention to. Your copy is the only SEO that matters.
Choose your words carefully. They’re all that you have.
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Randy MurrayCopywriting Secrets Learned From Playwrighting: All You Have Is Words by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
