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Writers Don’t Need Special Fancy Writing Apps

I’m a bit jealous of all the cool apps that other creative professionals get to use to do their job. Graphic designers get Photoshop and InDesign, or they can go low budget and use GIMP and Sketch.

Photographers get to use all this cool technology to take great pictures. Even podcasters and music producers can have these great big studios, digital recorders, soundboards, and editing software.

All I get is a word processor program on my laptop.

To be fair, all those other pieces of technology that the designers, photographers, and producers use are pretty expensive.

My photographer friends need a pricey camera, expensive lenses, and all kinds of lighting. My graphic designer friends need a beefed-up computer and a monthly software subscription. Meanwhile, I can do my job with a golf pencil and the back of an envelope.

But at the same time, all I get is a lousy word processor? Why don’t I get any cool tools?

It’s not like I can upgrade as I get better, switching to a better word processor. A beginning writer can sit down with a copy of Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, or OpenOffice, or they can even go online and use Google Docs. And the pros use the exact same programs.

I started writing with Apple’s MacWrite program, sticking with it as it spun off to ClarisWorks, and stayed with it when it became AppleWorks. Then Apple switched to Pages, and I went right along with it. So I’m vastly familiar with Apple’s offerings for word processing. I can tell you that not much has changed over the years. There are new functions and capabilities, but at its heart, it’s still just a writing program — the new functions don’t help people write better.

I sometimes wish we had cool writing apps that made the same technological leaps and bounds as Photoshop and Illustrator, but the ability to create written words hasn’t really progressed much beyond a keyboard and a screen. That’s a major change from a typewriter and paper, but other than that, we don’t get the cool tools.

Of course, we don’t need them. I see plenty of “distraction-free writing apps” that promise to elevate our writing and help us create a better writing environment. Except we don’t need it.

Yes, a simplified word processor would be nice, but if that’s all you really needed, just use the Text program that came free with your Mac or Windows’ free Notepad program.

You don’t need some fancy app that makes writing sound like a mysterious, mystical process that can only be improved with the right kind of technology.

That’s like saying I’ll be a better writer if I just switched pens. Or that Agatha Christie could have been a better writer if she had switched from her Remington Home Portable No. 2 typewriter.

Writing apps do not improve writing skills.

Writing tools do not improve writing skills.

There are only two things that improve writing: Reading and writing.

If you want to be a better writer, then write. Practice your writing skills every day, even when you’re just writing an email. Work to make it the best email you can. Don’t just poke around and half-ass that email — that’s your practice right there, and if you don’t practice like you want to perform, you won’t be able to perform when it counts.

And when you’re not writing, you should be reading books. But don’t read blog articles and don’t read business books. Read widely and from a variety of authors and a variety of subjects.

An app won’t make you better. It may simplify the screen you’re looking at, it may cut out your distractions, but you’re still using the one skill that isn’t affected by the tools.

That’s why writers are different from other creative professionals. If someone wanted to be a professional graphic designer, their tools will make a big difference. A powerful computer makes a bigger difference to a robust graphic design program; a little Chromebook won’t cut it.

But a writer can use a Chromebook and Google Docs and function just fine. They can produce the same quality work as a $7,000 Mac Pro and 4K 40″ curved monitor. It won’t make a difference to your work, not in the same way it will to a graphic designer.

And it won’t be any better than what you can do with a $1.29 Pilot G2 pen and a Moleskine notebook.

So don’t get sucked into the hype of needing special writing apps to improve your work. Just focus on reading and the quality of your writing, even during regular work time.

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Five Grammar Rules You’re Allowed to Break

The English language is filled with all kinds of grammar rules that should never have been grammar rules in the first place. Some were created a few hundred years ago, some were created in the 20th century, but many of them were incorrect and are just parroted out of habit.

In other cases, some of these grammar rules have changed over the years, thanks to common usage. The English language is an ever-changing tapestry of nonsense, and what may have been true once is true no longer. For example, “nice” used to mean “ignorant,” and the word “naughty” used to mean “poor.”

Here are five grammar rules you’re allowed to break, or at least shouldn’t blindly cling to because it’s what you learned in the 7th grade.

Ernest Hemingway sitting at a desk writing on a tablet. This guy knew a few things about writing and breaking grammar rules.

1. You CAN end your sentences with a preposition.

People cling to this rule like it’s carved in stone, but it should never have been a rule in the first place. While there are a few cases where you should not end your sentences with a preposition, there are plenty of cases where you just sound silly trying to meet it.

The rule was basically started by a guy named John Dryden, who, by all accounts, was a not-well-liked fusspot of a writer in the late 17th century. He abhorred the use of prepositions at the end of sentences, so he declared this should be the case.

Robert Lowth thought this was a smashing idea, so he included it in his A Short Introduction to English Grammar, which he published in 1762. It was the first book on English grammar, and its effects are still being felt.

it didn’t help that both men were Latin scholars who wanted English to bend to the same rules as Latin. In the Latin sentence structure, it’s not possible to have a sentence end with a preposition. Ergo, said the pedants, English shouldn’t either.

But it’s wrong. There are times you have to end your sentences in a preposition. For example, let’s say you stepped in something that stinks, and your friend says to you, “In what did you step?”

Wouldn’t you look at her like she lost her mind?

In that instance, it’s perfectly okay to say “what did you step in?” It’s proper English, it’s grammatically correct, and it doesn’t sound completely idiotic.

On the other hand, “where’s it at?” is wrong.

The basic rule is: if you can remove a preposition and the sentence still works, you shouldn’t use the preposition. But if you remove it, and the sentence changes, you should leave the preposition at the end.

Okay: What did you step in?
Not Okay: Where is it at?

2. You CAN start a sentence with And, But, or Or.

This may have been a real grammar rule at one point, but it is no longer. Common usage has rendered it obsolete. It may not be completely acceptable in business writing, but I can foresee that rule breaking down in the next ten years as more business people speak that way.

Besides, it looks pretty cool. And dramatic. And punchy. And intense.

And it turns out the practice has been around since the 10th century. It’s just some arbitrary rule our English teachers liked to enforce without ever knowing why.

3. You don’t have to start with the dependent clause first

A dependent clause is a sentence clause that can’t exist on its own. “Before the trial even ended” is a dependent clause (it’s also called a subordinate clause). And we were told that you needed to start sentences with a dependent clause. (Ooh, look, I just did rule #2!)

“Before the trial even ended, the real killer had been arrested and the defendant was set free.” not “The real killer had been arrested and the defendant was set free, before the trial even ended.” Even though you might want the important information at the front of the sentence, our teachers told us to put the dependent clause first.

You don’t have to do that anymore. For one thing, it sounds clunky. For another, there are times where the dependent clause will get in the way. Third, there are times a dependent clause needs to be set apart in a different way.

“The real killer was arrested — before the trial even ended — and the defendant was freed.”

It doesn’t always fit at the end, but it doesn’t always have to go first either.

Your better bet? Eliminate the dependent clause completely, or make it a standalone sentence. Which brings me to my next point.

4. You CAN use incomplete sentences.

This was a very minor point of contention while I was writing Branding Yourself (affiliate link). One of my editors would tell me not to use incomplete sentences.

Like this.

“But it’s a style choice,” I would say. “Not a grammar issue.”

And while you don’t want to make that a regular habit, stylistically, it doesn’t hurt to do it once in a while. It’s another common usage issue, where enough people have begun doing this that the grammar sticklers have to bow to majority rules and allow the change in the accepted use. (They don’t have to like it, and they’ll talk about it at dinner parties, but they’ll generally leave you alone about it.)

They also add some punch and drama to your writing, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. Pepper them occasionally throughout your writing and see what it does for you.

5. A sentence does not always contain a subject, a verb, and an object. A paragraph does not always contain 3 – 5 sentences.

Journalists violate this rule all the time.

Because it’s a dumb rule. And untrue.

For one thing, people read differently than they did 30 years ago. We’re so impatient that we don’t want to read a lot of text. We need white space to break up the monotony of the Tolstoy-esque blocks of text we find in some books, tech manuals, and magazines. If you’ve ever looked at a page with a lot of tiny text and no breaks at all, you know what I’m talking about.

Newspaper publishers learned a long time ago that people won’t read long paragraphs and über-long sentences. So they encouraged writers to use short punchy words, short sentences, and short paragraphs.

Even one-sentence paragraphs.

My daughter has been told her paragraphs all need to be 3 – 5 sentences long, and I keep telling her it’s not only unnecessary, but it leads to bad writing. If you try to fill up every paragraph with 3 – 5 sentences, you start writing filler just to get there.

But if you keep some extra white space in your writing — by using short paragraphs — people are more likely to continue reading long beyond when they thought they would quit.

How about you? What grammar rules do you gladly (or unwittingly) violate? Are there rules you wish you could break? Leave a comment and let me know.

This post has been refreshed and updated from its original June 2011 publication.

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Who Should Make the Final Editorial Decisions About Writing?

When you’re a writer, everyone thinks they can do what you do. They think they’re good at writing and, well, it’s painful to watch.

They send a few emails and write a report so convoluted that it would choke a hippo, and suddenly they’re Pulitzer-winning writers and editors.

Now they want to dip their dirty fingers into your writing to “make it better.” So they root around in there like the bartender just put out a bowl of complimentary peanuts and they haven’t eaten in days. Only their idea of making it better is going to make things worse.

The copy that you spent hours on — the thing you’re educated and trained to do! — is made worse than when it was still just scribbled notes on a lunch napkin.

So, content marketers, who should be the final say in the actual language of your writing?

Ultimately, the person who pays you, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say something when you’re the expert. And unless the person who pays you is a “my way or the highway” type, you should get the final say.

Years ago, when I was the crisis communications director at the Indiana State Department of Health, I was in a meeting with one of the Assistant Commissioners — my boss’ boss’ boss — and the head of our legal department phoned in with some “helpful notes” for a press release I had written.

When we hung up, I told the AC, “Yeah, I’m not doing any of that.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. Because he recognized that writers write and that lawyers are not good copywriters.

Even my own boss recognized the importance of what I did. Gary was a retired U.S. Army colonel (who commanded his own tank brigade) and was now in charge of the Emergency Response division. He won my eternal admiration when he told someone else with helpful notes, “Erik knows what he’s doing. Leave him alone.”

When you’re a content marketer, specifically when you’re a writer, you should be the final arbiter of the best way to say something. Not your boss, not your client, not the graphic artist who took three English classes.

You’re the wordsmith. You’re the ink slinger. You’re the word nerd. You’re the one who studies language and pays attention to how authors structure sentences. You’re the one who reads David Ogilvy essays because the guy can outwrite most authors.

You’re the one who laughs at Oxford comma jokes (An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television getting drunk and smoking cigars).

You’re the one who has actually read books on writing. You listen to the Grammar Girl and A Way With Words podcasts because you like them. (Disclosure: I write for Grammar Girl once in a while.)

So why are you letting other people root around in your writing? Stand up for it and don’t let people muck around in what you’re trained to do and they’re not.

Now, this does not mean you’re the subject matter expert. Your SMEs should have veto power on their specialized subject.

You’re not a legal expert. Your corporate attorney should have veto power over the things that will put your CEO in jail.

And you’re not a design expert. Your graphic designer should tell you that your 1,000-word manifesto won’t fit on a 4×6 printed postcard.

But when it comes to putting the best words in the best order to tell the best stories? That’s all you.

So you’d better know your stuff.

It really does mean reading books on writing. And listening to Grammar Girl and A Way With Words. And reading David Ogilvy. And stealing from your favorite authors.

Because when the time comes, you’re going to need to defend your work and show that you know your shit.

One time, a client pointed out an error in one of my articles I had written for him.

“You can’t end your sentences with a preposition,” he said.

Robert Lowth. He was actually a fascinating person if you’re a word nerd.

“Actually, that’s not true,” I said, and I explained to him how that should have never been a rule in the first place. I recited the history of Robert Lowth and how he created this rule in his 1762 book, A Short Introduction to English Grammar. (Read about Robert Lowth here.)

“Oh,” he said. “You clearly know more about this than I do.” And when it came to language and word choice, he let me do my thing from then on. But it did take me speaking up and showing that I knew my shit.

As a writer, you need to study language, grammar, and punctuation. You at least need to know the rules (and the non-rules) of writing so you know when you can break them. You want to be able to tell people why their 4th-grade grammar lessons are incorrect and explain how common usage says we can now do things like start sentences with “Hopefully” now.

So be a student of language and the mechanics of writing. Because when it comes to defending your work and your choices, you need to be able to stand your ground and show why people need to just let you do your work.

Because the next lawyer who tries to tell me how to “fix” my writing is going to hear my equally valid opinions on how they should practice law.

Photo credit: Erik Deckers (Me. I took that photo.)
Photo credit: Oil painting by Robert Edge Pine ((1730-1788))

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What’s the Difference Between Satire and Parody?

Although the two words are used interchangeably, there’s a difference between satire and parody.

For one thing, parody is considered an element of satire. Both use exaggeration humor, and irony. But HG.org considers parody to fit within satire.

Or as, British writer Luke Edley said, “parody is a brick, and satire is the wall.”

So what’s the difference?

In essence, parody makes fun of an original work. The Copyright Alliance says it’s a comedic commentary about a work, that requires an imitation of the work. On the other hand, satire makes fun of an aspect of the world but doesn’t rely on a previous work to do it.

So parody uses (usually) copyrighted work for its commentary, while satire doesn’t.

A Mind Map of Satire & Parody by Austin Kleon
It’s the difference between Harvard Lampoon’s Bored Of The Rings or Barry Trotter and The Unauthorized Parody and my own book, Mackinac Island Nation

Bored Of The Rings is a rip-roaring retelling of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings and Barry Trotter rips off the more popular Harry Potter series. Meanwhile, Mackinac Island Nation is an original work that does not draw on any previously copyrighted work at all. (And it sold a lot less than either of the books. Shut up.)

Mackinac Island Nation makes fun of, and draw attention to, the attitude of a certain segment of American society, while Bored Of The Rings and Barry Trotter just make fun of popular fantasy/urban fantasy novels.

(Also, both parodies rely on the cardinal sin of using joke names, which, to my mind, is the lowest form of humor. Lower than puns even! I can deal with puns, but Frito Bugger and Spam Gangree, or Barry Trotter and Lon Measley of Hogwash School of Witchcrap? BLEAH! Joke names are never funny and the authors should be ashamed.)

Parody can also make fun of public figures, such as politicians and celebrities, in order to make its (satirical) point. Saturday Night Live is an example of parody and satire coming together, and it will sometimes parody characters, TV shows, and popular movies.

On the other hand, South Park is usually satire without being parody. They don’t borrow from original source material, but they do make fun of public figures and current events.

Are parody and satire considered protected speech?

Satire and parody are used primarily, says the Freedom Forum Institute, “to attack and ridicule individuals’ moral and character flaws, such as vice, unfairness, stupidity or vanity.”

According to the website HG.org, satire is certainly protected by the First Amendment:

This makes both satire and parody powerful tools when making fun of, and pointing out the foibles of, politicians, celebrities, athletes, and other public figures, as well as certain political attitudes and beliefs.

From Wikimedia Commons: This would be the evolution of violence: starting from a raving primate, we develop into a nose-detecting homo habilis, then a greek hoplite looking at the next man, a roman legionary, who sits weeping because of the mockeries of a satiric poet.

Just remember that the First Amendment only applies to the government and government agencies limiting your freedom of expression. Private entities, like a social media site, retail store, or even an individual, can make rules about what you can and can’t say when you’re on their website, in their store, or in their home.

Even if you wrote a great parody about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg (and called him — God help me — Fart Zucker-booger), Facebook would be allowed to delete your otherwise brilliant parody from their website. Even though Mark Zuckerberg is a public figure, and you’re allowed to parody him in a story, Facebook is a private entity and they can remove your content.

But if you hosted it on your own website, then there’s nothing Facebook could do about it.

What’s the difference between pastiche and parody?

A pastiche is like a parody, only there’s no intent to ridicule or attack. The whole point is to recreate and replicate the original work, and to recreate the original experience.

For example, there are hundreds of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Bill Peschel (who said the above line) over at Peschel Press has published a couple hundred of them, while Otto Penzler of Mysterious Press published The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories.

There is even a database of over 9,000 entries of different Sherlock Holmes pastiches, as maintained by Philip K. Jones (link downloads an Excel [.xls] file).

The whole point of reading most of these pastiches is to make you think there are some additional Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. You’re meant to experience those same feelings that you had when you read the original 60 stories in the Sherlockian canon.

A parody is not meant to create that feeling, it’s meant to (usually) get a laugh by using the original source material.

In other words, a parody could be considered a pastiche, but not all pastiches are parodies, simply because they’re trying to replicate the original work and recreate the original experience.

Photo credit: Austin Kleon (Flickr, Creative Commons)
Photo credit: Utente:M1ka1L (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons 3.0)

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Content Marketers Need to Study Sportswriters

Sportswriters are some of the best writers around.

Period, end of sentence.

Especially the sports columnists.

Go into any newsroom anywhere, and read samples of the best work from each writer, and the sports columnists will have some of the best writing in the entire room.

That’s because they’re some of the best storytellers around. They can tell a story about any person, pulling on a tiny thread in a person’s life, and discover some of the most interesting, little-known revelations about a person that lives such a public-but-unknown life.

They’re the ones who ask an NFL running back about his mom and write about how she worked three jobs but never missed a game. They write about a pitcher’s relationship with his dad, and how they still talk on the phone after every game. They tell you about how a basketball player missed her senior year of high school with a knee injury and spent nine months in painful rehab just to be able to walk again, let alone get drafted in the first round.

Anyone who’s a fan of sports, a fan of good writing, or both, knows the sports columnists who have a mastery of the language, can tell a great story, and pull something interesting out of tiny details. These are a few of my favorites:

Grantland Rice, considered by many to be the father of long-form journalism.
  • Tom Junod, the guy who wrote the Mr. Rogers story, Can You Say Hero?, that made me cry three times as I read it. (It’s the story that got turned into the Tom Hanks movie.)
  • Tom Verducci, baseball writer extraordinaire. When Hank Aaron died this past January, there was only one person Sports Illustrated could ask to write his obituary. If you only like baseball a little bit, read Tom Verducci; he’ll make you love it.
  • Pat Jordan. I’m reading his Tom Seaver And Me book right now. I picked it up with the intention of reading two pages on a quick break from work today and ended up reading for 30 minutes.
  • Roger Angell, the centenarian baseball writer for the New Yorker, and the guy who made me believe in long sentences again. I have five of Roger’s books and am always on the lookout for more. His story, “Three for the Tigers is my favorite Angell story, and his line “Everything you do in life, you do so that your son will go to ball games with you, and then he doesn’t want to,” broke my heart.
  • Jemele Hill takes shit from no one. She called Donald Trump a white supremacist in 2017 and would not apologize. She even worked here in Orlando as a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel for two years. She writes about social justice issues in sports and makes me understand how the two are related.
  • Sally Jenkins’ stories on the NCAA, tennis, golf, and women’s sports has earned her numerous Sports Columnist of the Year awards. Her February 5th column on Patrick Mahomes made me question whether he could outthink Peyton Manning, and whether I wanted to become a Patrick Mahomes fan.
  • You can hear interviews with many of these writers on Jeff Pearlman’s Two Writers Slinging Yang podcast. If you want to be any kind of writer, every episode of this podcast has a nugget of great writing advice. And his book on the USFL (Football For A Buck is the definitive history on the renegade league of the early 1980s.

There are dozens — hundreds, even — of writers I could name, but I don’t have the room. These are just a few of my favorites, but I’ve got a few dozen sports books from a variety of writers, some on topics I know nothing about. Even if I’m not a fan of the sport or the athlete, I’m a fan of the writer.

(My one non-sportswriter recommendation would be Dave Thompson’s book, Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell: The Dangerous Glitter of David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed.)

Why Should Content Marketers Study Sportswriters?

I’ve often said that content marketers need to read daily

I’ve also said they need to stop reading blogs.

Bad writing breeds bad writing, and reading bad writing will infect you with bad habits and sloppy tendencies. Most blogs tend to be poorly written — read my post “Half of All Written Content Online is Sh*t” — and you’re not going to improve by reading someone worse than you.

Instead, I usually recommend that content marketing writers read fiction books by established writers. Find your favorite writers and genres and devour several of them. Pay attention to their writing style and voice, and figure out how you can steal emulate parts of their style.

But you can also find some of the best creative non-fiction writing among the sportswriters and sports columnists. Pick a few and learn their style, then expand to their colleagues and see what it is that they do so well. Pick up one of The Best American Sportswriting annual books (or get The Best American Sportswriting of the Century) and read what some of the finest sportswriters in the country have done.

Then, once you have your favorites, find out who their idols and favorite writers were, and read their work. And if you can, find out those writers’ idols and inspirations, and read their stuff. I’m now reading works by Ring Lardner from the 1910s and 1920s, and Red Smith from the 1930s – 1970s, as I follow the sportswriting family tree to its roots.

Who are your favorite sportswriters? What’s one sportswriter you want to read more of or learn more about? Do you have a favorite or one you don’t like at all? Share your comments.

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The Secret of B2B and B2C Copywriting

I’m going to tell you a secret about copywriting.

It’s a secret that the copywriters don’t want you to know. It’s a secret the marketers and the people who hire copywriters haven’t figured out. It’s a secret the business owners and managers don’t even know exists. That secret is this:

There is no difference between B2B copywriting and B2C copywriting.

None at all. It’s complete bullshit. They’re exactly the same, because they use the same thing in both camps:

  • Words.
  • Emotions.
  • The ability to use one to tap into the other.

Oh, and a decent grasp of the English language.

If you understand and can use those things, you can write for both B2B and B2C clients. Even on the same day.

Your Target Audiences Are People

One of the irritating things about content marketers, besides their insatiable greed for data and analytics, is that they forget their users/visitors/hits/views are all people.

Their users are people. Their visitors are people. The page views? Made by people.

And people have thoughts, emotions, and complex inner lives. They want things and they’re afraid of other things. And they’re reading your copy because they either want something or they’re afraid of losing something else.

People are stirred by the same emotions whether they’re at work or at home, trying to decide whether to buy your SaaS software or large-screen TV. They’re motivated with the same methods, follow the same sales funnel, and can be persuaded with the same formulas. They respond to good stories, persuasive arguments, and important ideas, whether they’re at work or at home.

No one is a completely different person between work and home. Oh sure, they don’t do the same things. They may have a work personality and a home personality, but fundamentally, they’re the same people. High-energy Type A people are always high-energy Type A people. Laid-back Type B introverts are always laid-back Type B introverts.

And that means a copywriter who is adept at telling stories or is able to simplify complex information can do that for a B2B buyer or a B2C buyer, even when those buyers are the same individual.

Whether your customer is trying to decide whether to buy a gas or charcoal grill or trying to decide which cloud-computing service to use, they’re going to use the same critical thinking and decision-making skills to solve the problem.

That means your copy needs to be concise, coherent, and complete. It needs to be well-written and informative. It needs to fire up their emotions.

Good copywriters can do that for B2B copy, trying to convince a purchasing agent or a department head to make a decision on their particular product or service. They can turn around and do that for B2C copy, trying to convince a consumer to make a decision for that product or service.

To the copywriter, there’s no difference in how they do their job, how the copy is structured, and which kinds of copywriting formulas they use.

Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

There’s Not Much Difference Between Industries Either

Years ago, I used to work in the poultry industry — we sold poultry feeding equipment and watering equipment to farmers and poultry companies.

Over the years, several of the growers told me, “Poultry farmers are like no other consumers. We’re frugal and we do things our own way.”

At the same time, our company sold hog feeding equipment and watering equipment to farmers.

Over those same years, several of those farmers told me, “Pork farmers are like no other consumers. We’re frugal and we do things our own way.”

A few years later, I worked for a software company that sold software to state governments.

The people I called on told me, “Government purchasing agents are like no other consumers. We’re frugal and we do things our own way.”

Over the last 12 years, I’ve written for startups, Fortune 500 companies, and every size of company in between. I’ve written for techies, marketers, fintech developers, small business owners, lawyers, and software companies, and you’ll never guess what they all — ALL! — have said to me:

“__________ are like no other consumers. We’re frugal and do things our own way.”

At no point did anyone ever say to me, “We’re just like everyone else and we’re damn stupid with our money.” If they had, that one would be the different one, the only one not like all the others.

“But every industry is different by its very nature!”

Well, of course, every industry is different, Financial technology is nothing like hog farming. Women’s skincare is nothing like cloud computing. And marketing software is nothing like construction equipment. I know, because I’ve written for all these industries.

(But I was successful in all of them, despite being a newbie at one point.)

Industry knowledge is important to a writer because it makes their job easier. But it does not make them better. I’ve known veteran industry writers who regularly produce some of the most mediocre, boring garbage, and I’ve seen people who just earned their creative writing MFAs writing write circles around the veterans.

I’ve also seen the reverse to be true.

Industry knowledge does not make the writer, writing skills do. The ability to use language to tap into a person’s emotion and compel them to buy? That’s the real skill.

You can teach industry knowledge. The writer can interview a subject matter expert and craft a compelling story in 10 minutes. But the industry expert can’t learn heart and style — at least not in a 10-minute conversation.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for a good copywriter, focus less on their industry expertise. All that means is they know the industry terminology, but anyone can figure that out with a quick Google search.

Instead, hire a copywriter who knows how to write so they can make your blog articles and webpages interesting, compelling, and fun to read. Hire fiction writers, poets, screenwriters, journalists, and storytellers. Get the people who know how to make boring things interesting and how to make complex ideas easy to understand.

If you’re focused on the length of time a person has spent in an industry, you’re looking at the wrong thing.

Because everyone’s industry is just like all the others, and your customers are just like everyone else’s. The good writer knows that, and they know that tapping into a buyer’s buying motivation is the key to success.

Photo credit: Voltamax (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)