The “Secret Sauce” of Good Copywriting
Lesson 4 from: From Structure to Style: Master Your CopywritingShani Raja
The “Secret Sauce” of Good Copywriting
Lesson 4 from: From Structure to Style: Master Your CopywritingShani Raja
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
The “Secret Sauce” of Good Copywriting
in this lesson, I'm going to introduce you to the fore ingredients of exceptional writing, which is really the heart of my writing system. By the end of the lesson, you'll have a good idea of what this secret source could do for your copyrighting, whether you mainly write articles, blog posts, e commerce scripts, sales, emails, marketing, copy or business correspondence. Okay, so here are the four ingredients in the secret source, simplicity, clarity, elegance and evocative nous. Now in reality it's hard to separate out the role of each ingredient, but the following breakdown may help you understand better why each one is so important for enhancing the quality of your writing. Simplicity takes all the slowness and heaviness out of your pros and there's this result makes your writing light fast and punchy clarity is the ingredient that makes your writing easy to understand and follow along to elegance is the ingredient that makes your writing flow gracefully and evocative nous is the in...
gredient that makes your writing stimulating. To put it another way, simplicity makes your writing ping clarity. Makes it ring elegance, makes it sing and evocative nous makes it zing. I want to quickly prove the power of this formula to you by showing you how vastly it can improve even a single sentence. Take a look at this passage on screen, which I often get my students to edit before delving into the principles. It was indicated to the president by his chief adviser that it should be attempted to formulate a decision to act at the earliest opportunity in the best interests of circumventing what might otherwise result in the country flowering into embarking on a prolonged extended and exorbitant military conflagration. Now pause the video and take a moment to edit that sentence using just the four ingredients I mentioned in whatever way you understand them at this time. At this stage, I want you to focus on nothing more than making the writing more simple, more clear, more elegant and more evocative. Okay, well, here's what I get after applying the four ingredients to that rather unwieldy and murky sentence, the President's chief adviser urged him to act quickly to avert a long, costly war. I hope you got something similar or hopefully even better. Either way, just note that this new sentence is a great deal more simple, clear, elegant and evocative than the original. Now in the coming chapters and lessons, I'll be showing you the many different ways there are for making your writing more simple, clear, elegant and evocative. But you need to be aware that while it's helpful generally to try and optimize the simplicity, clarity, elegance and evocative nous of your writing. You should always decide how much of each ingredient is suitable for the particular thing that you're writing. Sometimes. For instance, simplicity may matter more than elegance. Say if you're writing a brief summary of daily stock market gains and losses to be read quickly by busy investors. Moreover, there may be times when these four ingredients clash with each other where in fact you're forced to compromise, for instance, some elegance or some evocative nous for the sake of clarity in order to better fulfill your objective and the end result of any piece of writing is in fact usually some kind of artistic balancing of the four ingredients and that's why rather than throwing all the ingredients into the pot and hoping the dish tastes nice, it's better to view yourself more like a chef carefully blending and balancing the ingredients in a way that achieves the best flavor for the dish that you're preparing. So by now you should be fully acquainted with the mindset values and tools of a superior copywriter. And that means we're ready to start digging into the specific tactics for making your writing more simple, clear, elegant and evocative. And in the next chapter we'll start by exploring the powerful ingredient of simplicity. But before we do that, there's a short quiz waiting for you at the end of this video that you should take before continuing, which will help you better absorbed the teachings already given in this chapter