Nailing Down Your Ideas - How to Fix Fuzzy Ideas In Your Copy
Lesson 12 from: From Structure to Style: Master Your CopywritingShani Raja
Nailing Down Your Ideas - How to Fix Fuzzy Ideas In Your Copy
Lesson 12 from: From Structure to Style: Master Your CopywritingShani Raja
Lesson Info
12. Nailing Down Your Ideas - How to Fix Fuzzy Ideas In Your Copy
Lessons
Chapter 1: Copywriting Fundamentals
1Class Introduction - Overview of the Course Content
03:50 2The Five Aspirations of a Superior Copywriter
05:28 3The Importance of Defining Your Intention & Audience
06:02 4The “Secret Sauce” of Good Copywriting
04:29 5Quiz - Chapter 1
Chapter 2: Simplicity
6Introduction - The Power of Simplicity
02:06Tight Writing - How to Make Your Writing Snappy
05:43 8Tell it Straight - How to Write Plainly & Straightforwardly
03:36 9Don’t Overcomplicate - How to Avoid Unnecessary Complexity
04:59 10Quiz - Chapter 2
Chapter 3: Clarity
11Introduction - The Power of Clarity
01:33 12Nailing Down Your Ideas - How to Fix Fuzzy Ideas In Your Copy
04:07 13Place Words With Care - How to Avoid Misplacing Words
03:49 14Be Specific - How to Avoid Ambiguity, Jargon & Abstract Writing
09:09 15Quiz - Chapter 3
Chapter 4: Elegance
16Introduction - The Power of Elegance
01:57 17Present Elegantly - How to Make Your Writing Look Good
04:10 18Narrative Flow - How to Structure Your Copy Beautifully
04:09 19Musical Writing - How to Give Your Writing Rhythm
05:31 20Quiz - Chapter 4
Chapter 5: Evocativeness
21Introduction - The Power of Evocativeness
02:28 22Add Variety - How to Reduce Monotony in Your Writing
03:10 23Be Bold - How to Steer Clear of Weak Words
03:34 24Create Pictures - How to Make Your Writing Jump Out
06:23 25Quiz - Chapter 5
Chapter 6: Editing With Style
26Introduction - Get Ready to Edit
01:31 27The Quick-Smart Editing System
16:11 28Quiz - Chapter 6
Chapter 7: The Road Ahead: What’s Next?
29How to Nurture Your New Skills
03:06Final Quiz
30Final Quiz
Lesson Info
Nailing Down Your Ideas - How to Fix Fuzzy Ideas In Your Copy
in this lesson, you're going to learn how to sharpen your writing by pinning down or nailing down your meaning really well, by the end you'll know how to avoid leaving readers confused by sentences that may be too fuzzy to immediately click. Let's start by looking at an example of a really unclear sentence from a made up blog post. World renewed author, Jake Bliss said Today Nine Days is a new book that was mostly written in the basement during a book signing, although with the rest of the chapters that would have been written in a nearby park. Now, this has just got so much wrong with it in terms of clarity. Right? Pause the video and see if you can spot. First of all, how many things in terms of clarity are wrong with it. Okay, well, first off, there's an actual mistaken word there. It should be world renowned, not world renewed. Right? So that gets us off to a bad start. Second, there's a lack of clarity about whether it is in fact Jake talking about his own book or perhaps Jake tal...
king about someone else's book, I assume it's his own book. Thirdly, there is some doubt as to what the actual book title is, right As the writer hasn't used any clear indicators such as bold or italics or even appropriate capital letters. It's impossible to know where the book title begins and where it ends. It could be today. nine days or it might simply be nine days where the word today refers to when Jake Bliss actually said this. Now look at where during a book signing is placed within the sentence. It makes the sentence really fuzzy, doesn't it? Because it's hard to pin it down properly to the rest of the sentence. The tensors are also all messed up, various different tenses are used, such as was would have been and is making the sentence really hard to navigate for a reader and finally the phrase would have been written in a nearby park, makes it difficult to determine whether those chapters had been written in a nearby park or whether they may have been written in a nearby park, but actually we're not. Now you may have noticed even more problems, but let me ask you now to try to rewrite the sentence after thinking about what the writer might have been trying to say here. Note that some guess work may be required and maybe try also making use of some of the simplicity tactics that I shared with you earlier to help make the writing as tight as possible to Okay, well, how about if we rewrote it like this at a book signing today, world renowned author Jake Bliss said most chapters in his new book, Nine Days were written in his basement and the rest in a nearby park. Now there are other, possibly even better ways of doing it, but I just wanted to show you how to make a really foggy sentence much clearer for your readers. Now, here's another type of out of focus sentence that I often see. A Microsoft press release said it plans to open several new high street stores. What's wrong with that? Well, it sounds as if the press release rather than the company itself is planning to open the stores, doesn't it, the way it's written. So how would you fix it to nail down the meaning more precisely? Well, here's one way Microsoft said in a press release that it plans to open several new high street stores, and that gives us just that much more clarity and focus, doesn't it? So just make sure you're never being half asked with your writing or editing always aimed to make sure that every point is abundantly and unambiguously clear to as many of your readers as possible. Now, next, we're going to look at how writing can lose clarity to when we don't take enough care with where we place words within a sentence.