3 Steps to Creative Writing for the Web – recaps from my Boot Camp presentation

My company, Solid Cactus, hosts a semi-annual event: eCommerce Boot Camp. It’s tons of fun and this spring’s line-up of educational sessions included several newcomers, including Creative Content Kingdom which I co-presented with my friend and Solid Cactus SEO specialist, Cory Brin.

Cory and I attended a creative writing MFA program together and we both have backgrounds writing outside the Internet realm (he writes stage plays; I write memoir and fiction). For this presentation, we wanted to borrow our techniques from this ‘other life” and really show eCommerce store owners how writing for the web can be fun!

Donna and Cory Creative Writing Session Solid Cactus

Cory and I after our session, 'Creative Content Kingdom' at Solid Cactus Boot Camp

1. Don’t be afraid to break the rules. Don’t be afraid, period!

Cory and I started our session by asking who in the audience considered themselves a writer. Not many hands. When we asked who feared the pen, many more hands shot in the air. We polled our audience for reasons why they did not write. Here’s are some reasons we collected on our whiteboard:

  • Bad speller
  • Grammar
  • No ideas
  • No time
  • Not creative enough

I have a firm belief that many people become scared of writing at a young age when grammar rules are drilled into our still-forming brains — and that fear lasts a lifetime. (It’s worse if you go to parochial school, or so I hear.) With so many things to learn and memorize and then still remember decades later, it is no wonder so many people fear the blank page and stare endlessly at a screen, hypnotized by the blinking cursor.

If that’s you, stop it!

Don’t let the rules inhibit your creativity.

Let it flow. Don’t let a questionable comma bust your mojo. Write! Write! Write! Get your ideas on paper and do not even think about stopping to look up a spelling or check a grammar rule. Do not interrupt your writing – whether it be a product description or a blog post – to check a fact. Leave a placeholder text. Edit later.  Write NOW.

Oh. And #1 is also about breaking the rules. Once you understand grammar rules, you can break them. We’re humans and we like to be deviant. Remember when our parent rules cramped our style? Grammar police rules can cramp your personal writing style, too.  Create a voice and style guide that speaks to your audience. Sure, in an academic paper or uber-professional document you may need to go more formal. But, this is an eCommerce website. Write as if you are conversing. However, if you break a rule, keep it consistent.

My favorite grammar rule to break? Ending sentences with prepositions. For example, if I were courting a fine young gentleman, I would sound pretentious and snobby if I said, “At which bars do you hang?” It’s more my style to engage a handsome fellow with, “So, where do you hang out?”

2. Lean Forward! (Or, Why they Stuff the Instruction Book in the Box)

Cory shared with the audience a lesson he had learned from a writing professor. When you are watching an enticing theater production, listening to an dynamic presenter or enjoying a nail-biting season finale of your favorite reality show, chances are, you are leaning forward. As in, paying attention. You want to know what is coming next.

To keep people leaning forward with your website content, you have to keep them engaged. Make them want to read on. The key here is being creative. What will set your content apart from your competitor? Being unique will. Not only will every SEO expert at Solid Cactus and on the planet tell you that search engines love unique and fresh content, but I will tell you right now that people also love unique and fresh content.

Case in point. We asked the Boot Camp audience to raise their hand if they liked to read instruction manuals. Not many hands. But, who likes trashy beach reading? Okay. I didn’t ask that. But the point is, the majority of people don’t like to read that stuff. 1) It’s boring. 2) We like the challenge of putting it together based on our own logic. But seriously, technical writers are awesome. They convey the most intricate details into layman’s terms.

But… there is a reason the instructions are INSIDE the box and the sizzling sales copy is on the outside. And in the ads. And all over every other promotional channel known and within reach of the retailer or manufacturer. Make sense? Of course it does. Your audience wants to read something more entertaining. Otherwise, they don’t lean forward. They lean… toward somewhere or something else…

3. Mommy? Where Do Ideas Come From?

In our creative writing for the web presentation at Boot Camp, much of our session was geared around writing creatively using literary devices. I’ll put that on a future blog post. Here, we’ll share a few tips on places to get ideas when your brainstorm well has run dry. The first thing we did was ask a few store owners to shout out an item they sold. When we collected six on our whiteboard, we then informed the crowd that we were stranded on a desert island. We then brainstormed survival uses for each of these items. It was fun and showed that there are new angles to take, all the time.

Some other idea sources:

  • Brainstorm using lists and word association. Markers are fun. Use a whiteboard.
  • Watch out for local, regional, national and global trends that affect your audience. When you find out what may be interesting to them, tie it into your writing.
  • Read! Read! Read! Reading always helps make better writers. But, to really help liven up your writing, read the blurbs in hip magazines to see clever writing, read cartoons and anything else that is a little on the fun side.
  • Watch! Watch! Watch! Creativity and humor are contagious. The more movies and shows you watch with smart writing and clever (and natural) dialogue you watch, the more that will come through in your writing.

These are just three creative content writing tips for writing for the Internet. Truth be told, my headline was first ‘6 Tips…’ and started as a post for my company blog – but thought it’d drag on. So, I posted a condensed version there. But, as this post quickly expanded, I realized this recap of our Boot Camp presentation would be need a three part series. Because, creative content writing is just that much fun and I have that much to share. And yep, I just (and just did it again) broke a rule. I started a sentence with ‘Because’ and another with ‘And’ — it was for emphasis and it’s my style.

See how easy that is?!

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