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093 A Creative Email Trick for Becoming a Plain Spoken Writer

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Previous Episode:092 Let This Stupid Machine Read Your Copy Out Loud More Episodes Next Episode:094 How to Avoid Obscurity by Misusing Language

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095 Freaking Out Over the Thought of Writing a First Draft? Try Scaffolding

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094 How to Avoid Obscurity by Misusing Language

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093 A Creative Email Trick for Becoming a Plain Spoken Writer

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092 Let This Stupid Machine Read Your Copy Out Loud

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091 This Free App Will Help You Write Bold and Clear Copy

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090 Four Writing Lessons I Learned from This Depressing Music Project

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089 The Clear-Copy Rule of Writing for the Web

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088 Three Ways Writers Must Adjust in a World Dominated by Social Media

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087 How This Social Media Thing Kicked Web Writing Right in the Feels

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086 An Elegant Story on Outsmarting Career Obsolescence

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084 The Two Things That Make a Dull Product Irresistible

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083 Proof That Stories Can Increase the Value of Even ‘Worthless’ Items

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082 Could Podcasting Make You a Better Writer?

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081 When Do You Abandon the Editing Process?

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080 Four Ways to Get Attention by Rocking the Boat

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079 A Brief Introduction to the Art of Catching Hell

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078 Six Storytelling Lessons from a Famous Urban Legend

July 22, 2015

077 Vexed by Your Bankrupt Vocabulary? Listen to This

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076 Why Writers Need to Develop a Sense of Humor

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075 Listener Challenge: Could You Read 100 Books in a Year?

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074 How to Get Massive Attention with a ‘High-Concept Pitch’

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073 A Lesson in Swagger from a Wooden-Legged Civil War Soldier

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072 Six Ways to Becoming a Completely Original Writer

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071 The Oldest Writing Trick in The Book

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070 Eight Things Every Writer Should Know about Landing Pages

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069 The Fascinating Truth about Boring Topics

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068 How to Craft an About Page That People Actually Read and Share

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067 The Psychology Behind Winning Email Subject Lines

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066 All Great Writing Boils Down to These Four Emotional Appeals

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065 A Mildly Spooky Illustration of “Reason Why” Copy

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064 A Mild Warning for All Headline Writers

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063 How Every Creative Must Think about Marketing and Advertising

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062 Do Millennials (Really) Hate Long Copy?

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061 These 4 Sales Principles Can Improve Anyone’s Writing

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060 How to Use the 5 Stages of Audience Awareness to Dominate Online

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059 Why The Most Hated Headline Structures Work So Well

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058 This is the Most Fun You’ll Ever Have “Explaining the Mechanism” …

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057 The Doomsday Cult School of Specificity

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056 How to Sweep Away Skepticism with a Dramatic Demonstration

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055 Meet the Tragic Poster Boy for the Emotional Brain

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054 A Straightforward Research Method for Finding a Potent Hook

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053 What You Don’t Know about Your Product Can Kill Your Copy

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052 Three New Ways to Write a Headline (and When to Use Each)

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051 Want Copy That Actually Works? Start with Mass Desire

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050 The Curious Secret to Building Trust and Credibility

June 3, 2015

049 My Second Most Favorite Copywriting Formula in the World!

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048 How to Get Lazy People to Care about Your Ideas

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047 My Favorite Copywriting Formula … Ever!

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046 How to (Rapidly) Build an Audience with Content Syndication

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045 Solve Your Online Proofreading Problems With This Simple Trick

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044 The Profanity Princess on Finding Your Voice

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043 The Oddest Story About Overcoming Obscurity You’ll Ever Hear

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042 10 Odd Books That Will Improve Your Writing

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041 How to Read a Book in 2 Hours

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040 The Shocking Way to Master Any Book

May 18, 2015

039 Nine Copywriting Books for Web Writers

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038 The 8 Rules of Ruthless Editing from David Mamet

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037 Revealed: The Perfect Blog Post Length

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036 The Aggressive Work Ethic of Highly Creative People

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035 The 10 Rules of Rough Drafts

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034 5 Ways to Create the Perfect Ending that Your Content Deserves

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033 6 Simple Rules For Writing Effective Dialogue

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032 Use Internal Cliffhangers So People Never Stop Reading

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031 226 Transitional Words and Phrases Every Writer Should Know

April 30, 2015

030 The Great Paragraph Hoax

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029 5 Ways to Write a Seductive Sentence

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028 How to Be Smart in a World of Dumb Verbs

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027 How the Perfect Article Is Framed by White Space

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026 The Best Articles Always Have This (and a Great Headline)

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025 The Anatomy of a Hyperlink That Woos Readers

April 21, 2015

024 The Beginner’s Guide to Writing Bullet Points That Work

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023 How to Create Exquisite Subheadlines

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022 Four Safe Ways to Find Your Writing Voice (and One Dangerous One)

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021 The Two Kinds of Knowledge Every Writer Needs

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020 The Crazy Thing Writers Do to Become Exceptional

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019 How to Answer the Most Important Question About Becoming an Exceptional Writer

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018 Four Things That Can Make Writers Famous

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017 A Small Gift for Your Dark Days as an Obscure Writer

April 7, 2015

016 Steal This Episode

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015 David Sedaris’ Guide to Writing Brilliant First Sentences

April 2, 2015

014 Six Proven Ways to Open an Article With a Bang

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013 How I’ll Make You Read Every Single Line of This Article

March 31, 2015

012 The Ugly Truth About How People Read Online

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011 The 3 Pillars of Great Web Writing

March 26, 2015

010 How to Use RSS to Write Better Headlines

March 25, 2015

009 How to Write Headlines that Get Results

March 24, 2015

008 Where Headlines Have Gone Horribly Wrong

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007 A 12-Minute Crash Course on Link Building (Ugh)

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006 An Idiot-Proof Guide to Writing Blog Posts That Google Loves

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005 Keywords: Your Love Affair With the Language Your Audience Uses

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004 How Search Engines Work, Part Two

March 16, 2015

003 How Search Engines Work, Part One

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002 The Unbreakable Law of the Web

March 2, 2015

001 Two Challenges All Digital Content Must Conquer

August 19, 2015

093 A Creative Email Trick for Becoming a Plain Spoken Writer

Writing is weird. Unlike speaking, it’s not something we do naturally. And unless we train ourselves out of it, that weirdness renders some creative, but wooden and dense prose.

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Speaking is a natural act. Every single human being has the ability to do it. And at a very young age. The reason why, says cognitive scientist and linguist Stephen Pinker, is because we have a language instinct.

We master this instinct as we imitate sounds made by mom and dad, brother and sister, nana and popo.

Soon we are forming one word sentences, then two and three words sentences, and, at around age two, we are demanding to put our seat belts on ourselves while “you worry about yourself.”

Writing, however, is another story.

In this 7-minute episode you’ll discover:

  • How Pulitzer-prize winning journalist David Leonhardt kicked the wordslaw habit
  • Voice-to-text tools that can help you write like you speak
  • Quaint quote by Charles Darwin about our lack of instinct to write
  • The age of writing
  • And more!

Listen to Rough Draft below ...

093 A Creative Email Trick for Becoming a Plain Spoken WriterDemian Farnworth
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The Transcript

A Creative Email Trick for Becoming a Plain Spoken Writer

Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Demian Farnworth: Howdy, and you are listening to Rough Draft, your daily dose of essential web writing advice. I am Demian Farnworth. Your host, your muse, your digital recluse, and the Chief Content Writer for Copyblogger Media.

And thank you for sharing the next few minutes of your life with me.

Speaking is a natural act. Every single human being has the ability to do it. And at a very young age. The reason why, says cognitive scientist and linguist Stephen Pinker is because we have a language instinct.

We master this instinct as we imitate sounds made by mom and dad, brother and sister, nana and popo. Soon we are forming one-word sentences, then two and three words sentences, and, at around age two, we are demanding to put our seat belts on ourselves while “you worry about yourself.”

Writing, however, is another story.

The Age of Writing

Man has an indistinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children, whereas no child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew or write. – Charles Darwin

Because writing is a recent invention (roughly 5,200 years old), it’s not instinctual and has to be encouraged and taught. And for anyone who has learned to write — or teaches young writers — we all know that’s not easy. Writing is hard because it is not natural. And this unnaturalness usually shows up in wobbly, demented prose.

This can be overcome, however, by writing with a conversational tone. In other words, writing like you speak. But the funny thing is … when we sit down to type out a post or book or sales letter … we tighten up, balk, and blame the weather-breakfast-horoscope.

There are several reasons for this.

One, who wouldn’t stall when faced with the reality that, unlike spoken words, written words become permanent public fixtures once we publish them? From that moment onward we face criticism and ridicule.

Not so with speech. It’s transitory nature makes it pretty tempting to pop off whatever is on our mind with little fear for fall out. How often have you, six months or six years down the road, said, “Dang, I wish I’d never said that”?

The other reason we get stiff when we think about writing is that it really is not a natural act. Unlike the act of speaking, where you are face-to-face with another person, when you sit down (or stand up if that’s your thing) to write, you’ve entered the land of make believe: you have to pretend like you are talking to someone when you’re not. We call people who do that, lunatics (eccentric if they have a lot of money in the bank).

And that weirdness renders some creative, but wooden and dense prose. “I have an indispensable attraction with the fabric enveloping your hip region.” You mean you like her skirt?

How Pulitzer-Prize Winning Journalist David Leonhardt Kicked the Wordslaw Habit

Pulitzer-prize winning journalist David Leonhardt (now editor of NY Times’ The Upshot) was no stranger to wordslaw when he began his career. So for several months he wrote all of his rough drafts in Yahoo Mail instead of Microsoft Word and trained himself to be a plain-spoken writer. And it’s probably safe to say he imagined he was in a conversation when he wrote those rough drafts.

Voice-to-Text Tools that Can Help You Write Like You Speak

Of course, instead of writing a rough draft, you could use your phone’s voice memo or software like Dragon Naturally Speaking that turns voice into text. And again, I think the upgraded version of Evernote does this too. You record your voice and it sends it to text.

Again, just pretend you are talking to someone else. That’s really the goal you are after. You don’t have to use email but if it helps, use your email account. Think conversational. Think like you are talking to one person.

By the way, there’s a nice side benefit to this approach. You’ll naturally work in your own voice and style into your prose. When you are not worried about this going public. When it seems this is just a private email that you are going to share between two good friends, your voice and your style will emerge.

And don’t forget to read what you wrote out loud, and maybe even think about running it through the Hemingway App.

Until next time.

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