by Roger McDonald | Oct 9, 2015 | Creative Writing
Have you stopped to reflect on the phenomenon of language? Every species on earth has one. If you’ve ever been woken before dawn by a yowling cat, a yodelling rooster or a monotonous dog, you’ll agree that some languages lack tone, cadence and variety. Whales for instance, have a limited vocal scale but enormous sonic range—hundreds of kilometres at speeds of up to an estimated 1.6km a second underwater. Emotion and delight On the human scale, an opera aria, your favourite rock, rap or pop song, or even the lyrics of your sports team’s anthem can transport you to ecstasies of emotion and delight. According to the authoritative Summer Institute of Languages, we speak 7,105 languages across the globe. The ranking site, ListVerse, says Mandarin is the world’s most spoken language, with more than one billion users. While double that of second placed English with 508 million speakers, our British mother tongue has official language status in nearly twice as many countries as any other lingo. 1.75 billion speak ‘useful English’ And the influential Harvard Business Review says 1.75 billion people around the world ‘speak English at a useful level.’ It’s also the lingua franca of global business and of key economic and civil activities such as aviation, finance and international law. As a native English speaker, I count myself lucky to have been born into a linguistic culture that gives me a language advantage almost everywhere on Earth. Why does English—a notoriously irregular and difficult to learn language for non-English speakers—enjoy such a substantial and ever-widening lead in the language stakes? For a start, it cares little about...
by Roger McDonald | Sep 9, 2015 | Creative Writing
In my last post I talked about how the Rule of Threes can make a dramatic difference to your creative copywriting. Now you’re only a step away from improving your speech writing and speech making. ‘I want to introduce you tonight to a person of wit, charm, and intelligence. Unfortunately, they couldn’t be here, so you’re stuck with me.’ Heard it before? So give us a tired smile. Or is it new to you? Did it break the ice? Speechwriting isn’t just writing Don’t let anyone tell you that speechwriting is just writing by another name. True, it shares some characteristics of writing: ideas words communication (the art of getting people to act on your words ideas and words). But it has a power that the written word doesn’t. And you don’t have to be Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King to learn how to write, and deliver, great speeches. Write to be read, speak to be heard Start with the basics—no-one writes like they speak, or speaks like they write. Even hard-to-fathom teenagers know that a text message needs a different structure to a phone call or a face-to-face. (And if you’re in your 30s or beyond, be grateful!) What makes writing and delivering a speech the second most feared thing next to death? It’s fear itself. Would you believe though, that most of the fears that haunt speaking and speakers are just not true? These are the big myths about speaking in public: • it’s stressful • you have to be smart and talented • you won’t be able to say everything you need to • you’ll...
by Roger McDonald | Mar 9, 2015 | Creative Writing
Creative copywriting isn’t always about best-selling books or award-winning advertising. I took this picture in mid-April 2010. These children were asleep on a scrap of discarded linoleum on the red mud of a squatter camp creche in Soweto, South Africa. They were part of Africa’s wealthiest nation. But they scarcely belonged. There were 32 of them. They clung to life in a humpy the size of a couple of Australian cubby houses. They varied in age from three months to four years. Two of the three-month-olds were already ill with AIDS. The woman in charge—let’s call her Mvusi—was an illegal refugee from the wreckage of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. She thought the two little ones might last another week, maybe two. Without money, medicine and little food, they would slip away, unknown, unnoticed, unmarked. Others showed HIV symptoms but had not been diagnosed. Some were already orphans. My family and I went there to learn at first hand about the plight of more than 1.4 million AIDS orphans and abandoned children in the rainbow nation. Hundreds of thousands live in families headed by children as young as 10 and 12. They are the unluckiest children on earth. Yet they floored us with smiles as wide as Africa when we gave them each a blanket and some food. Their anthem, Nkosi Sikelele Africa, never sounded more wrenching. I’m a professional journalist, creative director and copywriter. I’ve worked as a writer in marketing, advertising and PR for more than thirty years, most of it in Australia, but some of it in Africa. The poverty I left behind in Africa in the 1980s...
by Roger McDonald | Mar 9, 2015 | Creative Writing
Do you want to learn a simple trick to boosting the appeal and the impact of your creative copywriting? The truth is, you already do it, though you may not know it. Work to a routine As a dedicated writer, you make sure you work to a routine, rain, hail or shine. You always have an objective look at your first draft, taking in the good, the bad and the ugly. And when citing facts, you’re careful to avoid lies, damned lies and statistics. Have you caught on yet? By now, you’ll have caught on. We’re talking about the Rule of Threes, and its power in language. Linguists and psychologists agree that three is a potent number. And its power can make a big difference to the way you communicate. The power of the rule of threes We learn the rule of threes, or triads, in everyday language from an early age. In language, it helps to establish a pattern and an expectation. The listener or the reader unconsciously accepts the formation of a sequence of ideas, events or situations (see, I’ve just done it again.) Ready . . . set . . . When we warn our children with ‘I’m counting up to three’ they know consequences will follow. Or if we say Ready. Set. . . everyone knows that Go will kick off some action. But the rule’s just as useful to create surprises and contradictions that lend a counter-weight to the predictable. An example: Ready . . . aim . . . ‘Ready, aim, fire’ is a perfect example of a standard use of the rule...
by Roger McDonald | Mar 9, 2015 | Creative Writing
For more than 30 years, I’ve crafted news stories, reports, research findings, white papers, policies, text books and more. As a journalist, I’ve written them and edited them, and re-written and re-edited them. I’ve breathed life into their corpses. Sometimes, I’ve dispatched them to an author’s grave and started again. Often, they’ve involved major conflict and minor triumph. Along the way, I’ve dealt with a cocktail of ego, arrogance, paranoia, and cynicism. And those were the successful projects. Over decades, I’ve identified the following mock/serious examples. I present these observations as a gentle prod at writers and would-be writers, me included. They offer us an insight into one of the blights on the writing landscape—torturing readers with capital letters. Hands up who likes speed bumps? Or corrugated roads? Or traffic lights? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t suggest we do away with rules and checks to make our roads and lives safer. Far from it. Addicted to the upper case Here’s the other half of the analogy. Modern writing—legal, government, corporate, academic, financial, business—has a capital problem. It’s the capital itself. We’re addicted to the upper case. Like most addictions, it’s crept up on us, and we’re in denial. Like most habits, the greater the need, the greater the use, and therefore the greater the denial. A highway with speed bumps every hundred yards Look at any major report or document. Reading them is like a thousand mile journey on a highway with speed bumps every hundred yards. Who’s who on Capital Hill? Grammar, syntax, capitalisation and good old fashioned style are vexing components of any writing. Everyone knows...
