Copywriting or Lying for Beginners

Copywriting or Lying for Beginners ©

By

Michael Casey

Salman Rushdie is famous for writing “Fresh Cream Cakes Naughty But  Nice” what he did after that peak you’ll have to Google. Me I’m a writer and I try and give a humorous slant on everything I do, though sometimes I’m serious, almost.

Words have meaning, words have power, words lie, words tell the truth, those are some words from a poem of mine long ago, you can find it amongst my books on Amazon Kindle. Who knows you may even find Salman Rushdie hiding amongst Amazon Kindle.

Copywriting is about telling a story with selling in your heart, as opposed to just plain old storytelling. My daughter has restarted reading the Brothers Grimm, now they knew how to tell a story, blood and guts and princesses too. Something for everybody in their tales.

I had to write a one page pitch document for a script of mine, 4 months later I’m still waiting to see if my pitch worked. Pitch writing is hard, what do you say, what do you leave out, what do you leave in?

It’s like doing a photo shop on yourself, is my hair right, should I comb it this way or that way. Should I pluck my eyebrows, should I do a stupid writer’s pose, why are writers’ fists glued under their chins? Technology can come to the rescue.

As for your words, those you have to do for yourself, pick out your best bits and hope people like the way you’ve put it on the page. 50 Shades of Grey puts things a different way, many a different way, but that appeals to a different audience than mine.

So what do you highlight as you try to sell your book with your blurb? The comedy, the pathos, the stupidity, your writing style? Who do you compare yourself to, in the vain hope that audience will then buy your book? I like the Brothers Grimm and I also like Don Camillo. But that’s from 60 to 160years ago, so am I losing my potential audience already? Only immortals will read me.

What I’m trying to say is that if you like them, then you must like The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker. If only I could get David Mellor to entice the audience for me, or Andrew Graham Dixon, get the two of them drunk on Stella Artois and get them to talk learnedly about my words. A Sunday afternoon full of praise for me, or rather my words.

We all hope our words are funny, and perhaps our prose is poetic, as one NY Poet did once say, as did one of our Pakistani Esol students  say too. It’s getting folks to read the blurb in the first place, that is the trick. So is it sex or violence or laughter that hooks the casual reader, what should you highlight?

I have recorded  100 of my shorts from my other books, I’ve even put them online at www.michaelgcasey.typepad.com so there in cyberspace are 100 examples of my words so people can judge me from afar, they can mock or laugh with me from the comfort of their own home.

Then you agonise over, is my voice too high, or is my voice too deep? To my own ear I sound like a lad, an ignorant lad. See I’m being honest, but immediately people will pick this admission up and use it as a stick to beat me with. However my poet friend in NY, she said I had a good tone, she liked my voice. My daughters say I sound like a news reader. The only way to find out is to listen. Somebody else said I sounded like Terry Wogan. So God Help Me, I’m ruined.