7 Writing Tips from Sam Parr

written by JOSH GESSNER | The Curious Competitor

I just completed the CopyThat challenge by Sam Parr.

Here's 7 things that'll make you a better writer.

Let's start with the most non-obvious tip:

#1 Make your writing sing.

Use short sentences. Or, you can use medium length sentences like this one. Sometimes when you feel like it, you can use really long sentences to build up to something.

I don't know if I did that right.

Anyway - vary your sentence length.

#2 AIDA

(Attention, Interest, Desire, Action)

Gary Halbert sent dollar bills and bags of sand to catch attention.

You gotta capture attention somehow.

Hooks, Storytelling and most importantly:

Punch the reader in the face with your first sentence.

#3 This is a hard one.

I only learned it a couple days ago.

But I'm gonna try to explain it by example - even though the 𝕏 word count is killing me.

Use a 'slippery slope': The goal of line 1 is to get to line 2, and so on.

#4 Which one's easier to read?

• Enhance your lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, cohesive devices to improve your writing proficiency.

• 7 things to improve your writing.

There's no need for jargon - write at a 4th grade level.

#5 An amazing way to capture attention?

Tell stories.

Stories create a slippery slope, and get the reader interested.

Next time you land on a sales page, see how many start with a story.

#6 You be the judge.

Does it feel like I'm speaking to you when you read this?

I'm hoping it does...

Because that's what I'm going for.

Write how you'd speak.

#7 Write for EMOTION.

The secret to getting your reader to like, buy, share is to make them FEEL.

LOL, WTF, OMG, AWW