Most of writing is editing

Copywriting seems like a straightforward business: find out the benefits of a product or service and tell the customer. Job done, right? Well not quite. Fact is, most of writing is editing.

Like any form of writing it can be done well, or not so well. Done quickly or with more care. Perfected or simply dashed off.

The world of marketing is full of the less good sort. How many times do you read a message that either washes over you, patronises you, or makes you groan?

Who cares?

Maybe it doesn’t matter? At least that’s one prevalent point of view. A lot of people are playing the numbers game, and seeing marketing as a kind of nagging, pestering creature. No one needs to like it, but if one in a few thousand engage it doesn’t matter.

That’s very much the lowest common denominator and – we would suggest – no way to build brand loyalty and affinity. Sure, you can get AI to crack out all your copy, and maybe no one will notice. But that itself is a red flag. If no one notices your marketing, isn’t it missing the point entirely?

We (naturally) will always wave the flag for conscious, thoughtful, professional copywriting. It isn’t the cheapest sort but it’s where the real value is added.

The halo effect

Good copywriting is about the hard and the soft measures. Yes, the clicks, the open rates, the likes, the sales, the sales, the sales. But also the engagement, the likeability, the halo effect.

When you consider that companies spend an average 9.1% of revenue on marketing such as TV ads, sponsorship deals, etc. (Gartner), writing has to be one the most cost effective ways to build a brand day-to-day. Word by word, sentence by sentence. Every touchpoint is an opportunity to make a connection, and to express your brand personality and attitude.

Cutting remarks

Which is where we come back to editing. Because the longer we spend on the words, the better they will be. And possibly the shorter too. 

As Mark Twain said, “I apologise for such a long letter – I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

Our method is to start with the raw material and whittle it down into the snappiest, most grabby version we can. It requires an open mind and, in the early stages, an ability to free oneself from self-critique.

Ernest Hemingway (allegedly) advised, “Write drunk, edit sober”. Without something to edit, there can’t be any editing. So the trick is to get beyond the fear of the blank page. Which means that the best way to write is simply to begin.

Find your elephant

It reminds me of the old joke, “Have you heard how to make a statue of an elephant? It’s actually pretty simple. You start with a block of marble and carve away everything that’s not an elephant.”

In the same way, good writing is knowing how to shape your ‘elephant’ of readable and engaging content out of a formless block of text.

At Craft, we’re lucky that as a company full of talented and experienced writers, we always have someone to turn to for editing advice and a second pair of eyes. (Like, does that last sentence actually need three commas?*)

It’s because we believe our clients deserve the highest standard of writing at every customer touchpoint. Which all depends on the highest standard of editing.

 

*Yes. It does.