From Fiction to Content, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Marketing
I’ll start by saying that I’m a creative at heart. By the time I graduated college I’d written my first novel and co-created the first issue of a graphic novel, as well as co-writing two fully-funded grant proposals for personal projects. I’ve read my work at large events like The Boulder Body Slam and the multi-genre showcase In the Bleak Midwinter. In 2014 I won the Jovanovich Award for Imaginative Fiction. I’ve released two EP’s of original music as part of an indie rock trio, and have a hybridized electronic-spoken-word album coming out later this spring.
I’m also a marketer. I’ve written for both for-profit and nonprofit organizations, including a local indie music label. I found the field when, like many millennials, I was graduating into a job market that cared little for my liberal arts degree. I fell in love with the blend of creative and analytical thinking, and, most importantly, the ability to hone my craft as a writer in a job setting.
The most exciting part of this journey, for me, has been exploring the ways that my passions inform my work. I want to dig into some of the ways that writing creatively enriches the writing that I do for my living, and how other writers can apply their unique skill set to the job market.
Read.
Before sitting down to write, regardless of form, I try to spend a little time reading. It’s a way of immersing myself in words, finding my footing before I start to work. This is true whether I’m starting on a creative project or honing a marketing piece, but content writing requires a uniquely focused eye.
Poetry is a fantastic tool for content writing because it’s all about compressing meaning into a small space. I love to dig into Poetry Foundation as a way of exploring different poets. Minimalist, stripped back prose like you find in Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and Bonnie Jo Carter’s work is the equivalent for fiction writing. It’s saying a lot with a little, and using every trick in the literary handbook to get your point across.
Apply the same critical eye that you bring to reading literature to the advertising and content you interact with in your day-to-day life. It’s a huge step in writing great content yourself. It’s looking behind the veil to get a sense of the different rhetorical tools and literary devices that are being used to catch and hold your attention. So check out the competition, and the competing brand voices out there. What you find might surprise you.
When starting a new piece of content, I try to get a sense of other articles in that niche or articles competing for the same keyword. It’s partly for research purposes, getting to know the conventional wisdom around the topic. It also helps in avoiding repetition. On top of that, reading existing content is a great way to figure out a tone for your own work. Are most people researching in this area trying to get a basic grasp of a concept, or looking to gain a more advanced understanding? Tailor your tone to their needs. Most importantly, I like to get a sense of what doesn’t work for me and gaps in the existing content so I can do it better.
From here, I always try to spend a little time freewriting. It’s about getting everything on the page. Even if 80% of what I write in this stage is awkward and has the scattered feeling of adolescent poetry, it helps me to see my ideas, find the key points of meaning, and start constructing from the fragments. In particular, I like to copy and paste phrases and words together to play with the sounds they make. It’s a way of crafting the initial flow of your copy.
Lean into your sense of rhythm.
Any combination of words has a rhythm and a musical flow. Language builds on parallel structures. It crescendos and dips, and a simple sentence hits like the crack of a snare beat. Full stop.
What can I say? I’m a drummer.
Chances are you’re already doing this in your creative work, but improving the rhythm of your prose can absolutely change your world as a content writer. Varied sentence structure, subtle assonance and consonance, and tightly constructed language are all phenomenal tools for crafting vibrant, attention-grabbing copy.
So often, the trick isn’t putting more words on the page- it’s cutting back harder. Sentences have overgrowth, the literary equivalent of acne. Words like of, the, and and can build up and turn simple phrasings into complex sentences. Your readers catch on them, whether they realize it or not, and their reading pace becomes sluggish. Reading my work out loud is my favorite technique for dealing with this. When I stumble in my reading, the root is almost always an issue in the prose.
Particularly when you’re writing for a digital audience, you have limited space to get the message across. Don’t waste your reader’s time. Recognize that your first draft will likely have overly complex phrasings and moments of rambling and that’s okay. Chances are, you’ll have to write beyond your required word count and then cut back accordingly. Passive voice is the first hurdle, but from there, see if you can get the same meaning across in as few words as possible.
The same toolset you use when writing creatively applies surprisingly well to content. I try to alternate between compound, complex, and simple sentences as I write, because I find that blending the three creates a more natural reading pace and gives your reader rest points without feeling choppy. It sounds better that way.
I keep an eye out for sentence constructions that I lean too heavily on and space them out within my prose. Using a hyphen mid-sentence to connect two thoughts, for example, is one that I personally tend to overuse, and I have to work hard to avoid spamming it.
Reading on the internet means that your reader can click away any time they feel like they can find the same information more quickly elsewhere. Rhythm, in my mind, is the writing trick that keeps your reader going all the way to the end. It’s the natural flow of information that keeps each sentence moving smoothly into the next so they’re invested before they realize it.
Structure matters.
A piece of writing can use all the tricks of the trade masterfully, but it will still fall apart if it isn’t structured logically. It’s often subtle, but a poorly organized piece of writing is most recognizable in its repetitions. It will return to familiar topics and subjects in a range of locations, which scatters the reader’s flow and makes it difficult to follow.
One upside of writing content is the popularity of the listicle. This is in part because the format makes it much easier for readers to skim and find the elements that meet their needs, but it’s also a fantastic tool for organizing your thoughts as a writer. The consistent issue with the listicle format, though, is that the different sections feel unlinked and lack meaningful transitions.
The trick here is to consistently suggest causality in your writing. The conjunctions and so and but are a great framework to have in mind because they move a thought from point A to point B. For example: “There are a ton of solutions out there for automating your workflow, but with a differences in pricing and subtly different feature sets, it can be overwhelming looking for the best option. So, as you start your search, look for X, Y, and Z.”
Remember: you want to get your readers to the final paragraph, the finish line. The most powerful calls-to-action in a piece of writing generally come at the end, when you’ve hit already them with all your tools of persuasion. Structuring an internal logic within paragraphs and sections of your content builds a path for your readers to follow so they arrive at this point with you.
It’s important to nail your structure down early on, as once you’ve finished a first draft, it’s really tough to move pieces around and come out with a coherent piece of writing. Practically speaking, you can often start by suggesting a problem (or a benefit that they hope to gain), put forward the journey they need to take, and conclude with a solution. It’s essentially a three-act structure in miniature form.
Tell a story.
Think about the recent advertisement that starts: “The power of the stock market in the palm of your hand- and you notice the details.” The character (the consumer) wants something. They need to take steps to get it, though. They should try out X product.
In marketing, you’re usually stepping into the persona of your buyer and building a narrative that connects your product to their ideal vision of themselves. When starting a piece of content, I like to think of it in terms of two thematic lines. One focuses on the customer gaining the time to focus on things that they care about. The other helps them to dig into their passions more deeply.
Understanding the customer journey in terms of these basic motivations is a great way to establish a solid audience for your work right from the start. It’s the foundation upon which you build your argument. Remember: you’re taking the chaotic, disordered thoughts of a potential customer and building a framework for them to see a product, company, or idea in a new light.
The framework of customer-as-character lets you focus on the change in the character, a fiction-writer’s lens, to see if a story works. Say I’m writing about a product. As I write I’m not just listing the features of a product- I’m putting forward a series of propositions about the ways that product can improve the consumer’s life.
There’s an alternate method for telling a story in your content: focusing on your brand narrative. For example: “We founded our company because we believed that starting in ________ shouldn’t be a hassle. That basic principle has led us to consistently streamline our processes and focus on an intuitive, customer-oriented toolset. In 2019, that same idea continues to define every decision we make.”
Essentially, this small piece of copy follows the same three-act structure and uses narrative to put forward a convincing argument. The first-person nature of this kind of writing also adds an element of humanity to the overall tone of the piece, giving potential customers a sense of familiarity with a company that could otherwise feel faceless and intimidating.
Coming back to the listicle (and the structure of your writing), think in terms of the journey your reader is taking. The first point that you make is the starting line, the next few steps guide them as they move forward, and the conclusion wraps the different pieces together into a broader solution. Following this structure means that your article gives them the change that they are looking for.
Stick the landing.
Writing a meaningful, powerful conclusion is one of the trickiest elements of putting together good content. Doing it well often runs counter to the laws of expository writing that many of us grew with.
The five paragraph essay format we learned in school generally follows this structure:
- Tell them what you’re going to tell them
- Tell them
- Tell them what you just told them
In theory, the basic format is similar when you’re writing for the web. Problem is, readers online have no reason to stick with you until the conclusion, since you’re essentially summarizing what they’ve already read. You could be writing valuable content that will be essentially ignored.
Instead, it’s often helpful to integrate your conclusion into the last point you make. Summarize, yes, but think bigger picture. What other resources can you connect to that will help move your reader forward in their journey? In this piece, for example, I could link to a blog post I wrote about writing product descriptions that sell. The beauty of the internet is the ease with which we can find, connect, and explore information, so think of your conclusion as a jumping off point, rather than simply wrapping up.
Walk your reader through the key ways that their understanding of the subject has changed, and find new ways to phrase those takeaway points. It’s not a bad idea to pick out a couple of points you want to make early on and save them for the ending- bigger picture stuff that adds another layer of meaning to the piece.
Remember: your toolset as a writer doesn’t need to be limited to a single genre, medium, or style. The same techniques that create beautiful poetry make compelling ad copy. The narrative arc you build for your characters can be applied to your buyers. You can dance to a good sentence as well as a good beat.
All it takes is focus, passion, and a lot of awkward, pimply first drafts.
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Bryce Patterson is a writer and content marketer at Selz. Outside of giving businesses and non-profits a more human, relatable voice; Bryce has written a novel, worked on a comic book, and played in a handful of bands. He lives in Colorado.
