Kill your darlings: self-discipline in copywriting
Left to my own (deeply irresponsible) devices, I would cheerfully fill each submission for this column with an almost belligerent degree of whimsy. Perhaps some kind of opening that aimlessly ponders whether it would be better to exchange my human hands for bear fists or the massive faces of some furious bees.
Truthfully, such is my casual regard for disciplined writing, I pretty much do this sort of nonsense for most of my Drum columns. All of them, in fact.
Which is why when I’m at the day job, nudging the alphabet around the page for marketing purposes, I find myself mumbling a very useful mantra – ‘kill your darlings’.
Attributed to everyone from Faulkner and Chekov to Jeff from Byker Grove, it’s a piece of literary advice that essentially means to recognise in your writing the things you love to write and ruthlessly strip them away.
As advice goes it isn’t especially fun. Writing, both artistic and commercial, is often a profession sought out by those with a very particular sense of prose.
But, if this is a helpful suggestion in the creation of a novel, for a copywriter it is nothing less than an unbreakable covenant. Copywriting isn’t just a question of killing your darlings, it’s a matter of their brutal and very permanent extinction.
So rare is it that a brief permits a copywriter to write precisely as they please, that many of us could count such jobs on the fingers of one bear fist. More often what is demanded is the ability to write, in both tone and structure, in a way that is entirely unnatural to our own instincts or idea of what compelling writing should be. Sadly though, that’s the job.
Or perhaps we should we just take away the ‘sadly’. The flexibility of style nurtured by copywriting is not only vitally useful to the day job, but also adds depth and variety to what our personal notion of good writing is.
Finding a charming way to talk about lawnmower oil, amongst all the limitations and constraints that represents, develops the kind of potent economy of phrasing that really gets to the heart of what great copywriting is all about. Take away the rules and boundaries and write the same lawnmower oil piece in your own way and you may find that what you produce is something not quite as engaging and far less effective.
Discipline in copywriting is as tedious a subject as it is in graphic design, dentistry and zoo keeping. It is, however, utterly indispensible.
So, if you haven’t already, kill your darlings. Punch them in the throat with the massive bee face that you chose to substitute for your puny human fists. Kill your darlings friend. Just like I have.
Kindly follow either @Boultini or Jeff from Byker Grove on Twitter