Face down the blank page with these easy tips.
Writers always fear the blank page. After all, writing is work, and the blank page is just the start of the climb. Perhaps dealing with the same writer’s block himself, famous Irish novelist and poet Oscar Wilde famously reflected on a particularly productive day: “I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.” 1
Unfortunately for most of us, copywriters can’t spare this same inefficiency. We have clients to wow, edits to synthesize, and designers who need a shortened headline. But what do you do when a brand new brief hits your inbox, and you’re stuck staring at that blinking cursor?
The following tips are designed to help jog writers out of their starting rut so they can create technical work efficiently and effectively. I say “writer,” but really these tips will help anyone who works with technical information for a living. Whether you’re a designer, salesperson, or business executive, these steps will help you make it across the word-count finish line.
1) Start with the research
Behind understanding a client’s ask, the most important step of the copywriting process is research. After reading an assignment brief or speaking directly with a client, the first thing a great copywriter does is hit the books.
Proper research will teach you everything you need to know about the client, product, or service. With just a few easy Google searches and an hour of free time, you can analyze the kind of information the client is expecting you to internalize: audience, product specs, unique selling points (USP), product weaknesses, and even competitor perspectives. When you start with research, you move beyond a superficial regurgitation of the product information. Rather, you jump straight into teaching yourself the content, lingo, and rhetoric of the people who live and work in the space that you’re ultimately trying to reach.
How to put it into practice
Try and limit distractions so you can simply read about your given topic for an hour. Let your curiosity guide you down the research rabbit hole. As long as you’re consuming different sources and perspectives, there’s no such thing as “bad research”. Refrain from deleting any tabs, as even silly information can include key details you may want to return to later.
2) Create and follow an outline.
Now that you have an introductory cloud of research in front of you, you can begin to imagine how all of these pieces will form the cohesive puzzle that is your eventual, written piece. Since we’re working with technical information—anything from heavy machinery to pharmaceuticals—our vision will likely fall apart if we try to go straight from research to writing. That’s where the outline comes in: it’s the bridge between the messy research phase and the organized first draft.
Creating an outline may sound like extra work, but it’s really just a function of the writing process, but with less typing than actual writing. A strong outline combines all of your arguments, proof points, and sources into a logical flow, like a bullet-point version of your soon-to-be final product. The bullet-point style of your outline makes it flexible and modular, so you can easily add and delete arguments or proof points as you complete research.
How to put it into practice
Using your resources from Step 1, begin to drag and drop arguments or narrative elements into numbered bullets. For flexible word hierarchies, I like to use the “Roman numeral” outline structure that comes pre-built into word processors like Word and Google Docs. Remember, any proof point you find that isn’t general knowledge needs to be sourced; I like to add the hyperlink of my source to the bottom-most line in an argument’s given hierarchy.
As you work, it’ll become clear where you have information gaps, or where the story doesn’t quite follow the right structure. The outline stage is the perfect time to add, delete, or restructure arguments, so you can save yourself length re-typing during the next stage.
3) Write your outline, but allow yourself the freedom to invent.
The human mind is a strange thing, and you may find yourself putting together new arguments for your piece during the writing process. This is even true in technical copywriting: the details of the product might not have changed, but the way you want to format the story and make your arguments shift.
Rather than ignore these lightbulb moments because they don’t fit your rigid outline, embrace them. Add these new ideas to your outline, or simply include them in the written document wholesale. If you allow yourself a little creativity and flexibility while drafting, you’ll likely be more engaged while writing, and your passion will come through in the final product.
How to put it into practice
While writing, pay attention to changes in your argument’s structure, new knowledge gaps, or even budding areas of interest. Follow the thread for a few sentences, even if you’re off brief. If the thread leads you to a stronger or more succinct argument, use it; if the thread feels like a wild goose chase that dilutes or distracts from your argument, cut it.
4) Write a second draft
My high school English teacher used to make his students submit every paper twice. The first submission allowed us, in his words, “to see how badly we did.”
This might sound cruel, but it’s sound advice. Half of the work of writing is the ground-up creation from the blank page, while the other half is the slow re-reading and editing of the work you’ve already typed out. Stephen King put it best in his “how-to” book On Writing: “When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”2
How to put it into practice
When you’re done writing your first draft—and this is true for PPC ads, blog posts, eBooks, and any other copy—take a quick break. Listen to a song, make a coffee, and come back to your work. Then, spend time making the piece as intelligible to your audience as possible.
After a quick spelling and grammar check, it’s time to check in with your editor.
Whether you’re a professional wordsmith or a professional just trying to smith together the right words, you can tackle even the most technical of projects with the right process. As they say, strong writing is evidence of strong thinking. So: do your research, organize your ideas, do a little improv, and take a second look at your first draft. Just like that, and you’ve turned those thoughts into a powerful, lasting work.
- GoodReads, Oscar Wilde > Quotes > Quotable Quote, 2024
- Kevan Lee, How to Write a Book in Three Months
