Copywriting: Word Count Wizardry

The following is from exclusive educational materials found inside of Leadership Laboratory. The Leadership Laboratory is a private group of 100 leaders from around the world who are poised for development. 

Each week laboratory participants receive educational concepts and drills to evolve their leadership practice. The following example is a small element. These smaller concepts surround larger, more impactful concepts. 

The group is still accepting applications here. 

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We’re all benefiting from or suffering from our level of writing skill. Poor writers share a common bad habit with poor public speakers. Both just won’t.. stop.. talking. 

Today’s bonus is a quick and dirty way to bring value to your copywriting, albeit in marketing copy or a text to a person you care about.

The lesson is all about word count. 

Take any piece of your writing and count the words in every sentence. You’ll be shocked. Your writing likely suffers from sentences that are 1) generally all the same length, and 2) generally too long. 

We’re not in grade school anymore where hitting your teacher’s word count is more important than effective writing. Most people won’t read this entire text, so if your writing sounds like this keep reading.

Here’s an excerpt from Stephen King’s The Stand:

“Now, listening to Hap and Vic Palfrey argue on about money and the mysterious way it had of drying up, he thought about the way his hands had bled at first from pulling the endless handtrucks of hides and guts (39). He had tried to keep that from his mother, but she had seen, less than a week after he started (20). She wept over them a little, and she hadn’t been a woman who wept easily (15). But she hadn’t asked him to quit the job (9). She knew what the situation was (6). She was a realist (4).”  

Most people don’t have the courage to write three and four word sentences. This excerpt, picked at random, shows remarkable word count diversity. Imagine reading an entire book of 20+ word sentences. It’s exhausting. 

If you can break up monotony and build an exciting rhyme in your writing with word count diversity, you’ll bring more value with your writing. Period. 

TAKE ACTION: 

 

1. AUDIT. Take a piece of copywriting you’ve done and label the word count of each sentence. What do you notice?

2. PRACTICE. Re-write the piece to include more word count diversity. Most will need to add diversity via shorter sentences.