Creative Copywriting? | Creative Writing Articles.

Creative Copywriting?

by:Elaine Currie

There is a difference between creative writing and copywriting. It took me a while to come to terms with this but it s true, there is a difference. When I first started my home based business on the Internet I read a lot of advice about publishing articles and doing copywriting to advertise your website. There was always a distinction drawn between copywriting and creative writing. I did not understand this: surely copywriting is creative? Eventually the logic dawned on me: all copywriting is creative writing but not all creative writers can write decent ad copy. If you have never studied that particular branch of philosophy, it s like all roses are flowers but not all flowers are roses.

When I came to understand this difference, it explained for me the reason why I can write at length on any subject (stopping is the hard part) but tell me I need to write an advertisement and I go all bashful and tongue-tied. Give me a subject or, indeed, no subject at all -- just a blank page is sufficient to set me going and I ll hammer away at the keyboard until... Until when? Actually, I never really stop, just pause from time to time. Advertising copy is a different matter. I can sit for ages resisting the lure of the blank page if I know that what I need to do is copywriting to use for advertising.

This inability to write ad copy caused me problems because I wanted to advertise my home based business and various individual affiliate programmes. Plenty of pre-written ads come with most decent affiliate programmes and it is an easy matter to copy and paste these but I wanted to use fresh material instead of advertisements that everyone had seen a hundred times before. I blame my inability to write advertising copy on my upbringing: modesty and understatement were encouraged and boastfulness was the eleventh deadly sin. It seemed to me that writing advertisements for myself was akin to bragging.

Eventually, I overcame my distaste for self-proclamation and tried my hand at some copywriting. When I compared my efforts with the pre-written ads, it was obvious that something was absent. My advertisements were dull and flat, uninspired and uninspiring. Then I discovered the secret: copywriting is a craft not an art. It is has rules which need to be learnt and practised. A course of online copywriting lessons was not hard to come by. In fact, I ended up reading several such courses on the good old Information Highway.

Rules are fine, I have a good memory. Examples are not hard to come by and it was easy to make a collection of snippets from the copywriting courses. I learnt about the importance of writing an attention grabbing headline. I can manage that, there are plenty of examples to borrow. I got to grips with selecting buzz words such as amazing, customised, effortless, excellent and, the best one of all -- free. So far so good. Use sentence fragments -- not so keen on that idea but, when you think about it, that s how conversation goes in real life, so I ll do it. Sell the sizzle not the steak --yeah, I get it. Offer benefits, not features --yeah, yeah, I can do that.

Things started to look better and better as I became familiar with the rules and I began to daydream about becoming a copywriter (like in the film The Guys with that nice Anthony La Paglia). My daydream ended abruptly when I found there was one rule of English grammar I could not bring myself to break. The very thought made me shudder and give up any idea of a copywriting career. I can cope with all the fragments, buzzes and sizzles. But I could never begin a sentence with and .

About The Author

This is one of a series of articles published by the author, Elaine Currie, BA(Hons)at http://www.huntingvenus.comThe author’s monthly newsletter is available free from mailto:networkerhvm@ReportsNetwork.comYou may republish this article on

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