Yes, writers, the order of your words does matter.
Shakespeare had the choice of several ways in which to announce the demise of mad Lady MacB, all using the same six words. He chose this one:
The queen, my lord, is dead.
Roy Peter Clark, in this quick video from Poyntor, explains why.
From the first season of the British television program, A Bit of Fry & Laurie, starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie -- and every bit as funny as it was in 1989:
In Don't Mind Your Language..., published at www.stephenfry.com "years and years" later (in 2008), Fry referred to this television sketch:
...and if you know it, you’ll have to forgive the similarities between what I found to be a source of humour and what I am now apparently taking seriously. Actually the one doesn’t cancel out or refute the other. We can make fun of this kind of language about language and we can value it too. So bearing in mind that I am fully aware that I sound like the worst kind of pseudo-intellectual twazzock, let’s look at that distinction. There is language, the thing itself, the idea of language. And then there is this or that example of language in praxis, in use. There is Chess and there is this or that game of chess. The Game of Chess and that game of chess going on over there. There is language, the human capacity – ‘competence’ as Chomsky calls it, The Game of Language – and there is utterance, the actual instance of its use – this sentence for example. ...
Do read the whole thing.
Slowly, and with a box of expensive chocolates at your elbow.
Clichés get a bad rap. They are judged to be common, valueless, and uninspired. What you don’t usually hear is that clichés also convey meaning rapidly.
People know clichés, and don’t have to spend time interpreting them. They can take your message from zero to understood in an instant.
The problem with clichés is that clichés are, well, cliché....
The trick to using a cliché well is to use it in a way that hasn’t been done before in your niche.
Let me just list out the frame:
- Great Title
- Related Graphic
- Strong+Story First Paragraph
- First Example
- Second and/or Third Example
- Action Items
- Call to Action
That’s roughly what I do for every blog post. This would change slightly if you’re sending out an email, or a sales letter, so you can change it as you see fit.
This is a pretty reasonable outline/template for copywriters and bloggers who have not yet firmed up their own approach. Give it a shot!
...newbie online entrepreneurs often want to “make money blogging,” and seasoned writers often come to the internet to expand their freelance businesses by doing online what they do offline: selling words for dollars. Both of those approaches assume a straight line between composing paragraphs and getting a check, but that straight line hasn’t reflected my experience in the blogosphere (and I’m in good company).
To put it succinctly, I don’t make money writing. I make money through a business, and that business does its marketing almost exclusively through writing.
I'd really like to make this "required reading" for all the get-rich-quick spammers - the well-meaning naive ones, as well as the more cynical but equally misguided types - who continually spam the social network streams, blog comments, and forums. Or whack them over the head with a Nerf bat a few dozen times until they grok it.
You can trick a horse (once or twice) into going to water, but you'll never get him to drink more than once if you've poisoned your trough.
End rant.
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