Choosing the Right Words

As a copywriter I spend a large part of my day thinking about words.

As a human I spend a large part of my day using words.

The difference between the two situations is that in the first I analyse each individual word that I use over and over again whereas in the second I usually use the first word or collection of words that come into my head.

But in advertising we would like to think that our copy sounds more like the second scenario than the first.

We want to write stuff that sounds natural and real, speak to people as we speak to each other.

But it doesn’t always work out that way.

I mean when was the last time you heard an ad on the radio that made you want to punch walls it sounded so ludicrous? Or saw a TV ad with such moronic dialogue that you ended up wanting to throw the remote at the telly, only stopping yourself because it's a fancy new 48inch widescreen HDTV?

I'll take a wild guess and say that it was the last time you listened to the radio or watched TV. Am I right?

As advertising copywriters we spend hours poring over each and every word in a radio commercial or outdoor poster. We let so many people have their say in what word should be used here or how this sentence should be phrased that we often end up removing any hint of naturalness that was there in the first place.

Natural sounding copy should be just that - natural. Dissecting each individual word under a microscope is not conducive to natural sounding writing.

That’s not to say that analysis, editing and revision of what you’re writing is a waste of time. I'm not that brainless.

At the end of the day we’re not writing for the sake of writing, we have a job to do. We have to sell stuff.

So it’s no good writing the most natural sounding copy if people aren’t going to pay a blind bit of attention to it or be motivated to take action.

But it’s also no good editing and overthinking copy to within an inch of its life in the pursuit of natural sounding copy.

People very quickly see through contrived ‘natural’ writing.

And they’re very quick to shut it out and ignore it as well.

The secret to good advertising (he says as if he has decades of experience and it were the easiest thing in the world) is having something good and worthwhile to say. If you have that as your starting point then natural copy should, well, naturally follow.

But just because the writing should be natural doesn’t mean the situations always need to be completely natural.

The latest John Lewis Christmas ad (which I think is great) has been criticised by a lot of people who say that you’d never see a real kid acting like that.

And they’re not wrong.

But when has anything creative been bound to rely on real characters?

Engaging, well developed characters, yes, but real?

Have the characters in every good movie, play or music video you’ve seen acted exactly the way people in the real world do?

No, of course they haven’t.

But if the characters are written well they can still draw you in and feel real and believable in the context in which they appear.

Whether it's in advertising or another creative discipline choosing the right words to put in the mouths of your characters can make you. But trying too hard to choose the right words will definitely break you.