Insights archive
Red Pony is a team of writers, editors, Microsoft Office template developers and communications trainers. We have been writing about our areas of expertise for over a decade in our Red Pony Express newsletter.
This collection features the best articles from the last 10 years.
Four tips for writing an effective sales letter
Red Pony recently developed a simple sales letter for a small local company. We went with a direct approach that has been delivering excellent results to date. I thought I’d share some of the secrets to success.
The music of words
Most business writing is read silently by individuals. Spoken texts delivered to groups of listeners, such as speeches and conference papers, form only a fraction of the millions of sentences produced in workplaces every day. Nevertheless, the way a text ‘sounds’, even in the reader’s head, can help or hinder delivery of the intended message.
Five words you can bet the house on
What do real estate ads really tell you about a property? According to Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, authors of the bestselling book, Freakonomics, the choice of wording might in fact indicate whether the agent is holding out for a high price or subtly encouraging would-be buyers to bid low.
Three tricks to writing sticky web copy
When someone visits your website, opens your newsletter or looks at your latest social media post, you want to engage their attention so that they’ll read on. ‘Sticky’ web copy keeps your audience reading and encourages further interaction: clicking a link, adding a product to a shopping cart, joining a mailing list. So how do we make our web copy sticky?
Spam, spam, spam, spam
The curse of spam is one with which every reader will be familiar. It’s now just one more daily task to eradicate the emails that slip past the spam filter of our email programs, usually playing on one or the other of the top two human desires: sex and money.
Learning from a master
With most things in life, the best way to develop your own skills is to learn from the experts. Writing is no different.
A treasure store of language
A thesaurus is a reference book that helps you find le mot juste—the exact word you need. (Obviously I need one to avoid the pretentiousness of using a French phrase to get my message across.) A thesaurus also helps you add variety and interest to your writing by broadening your vocabulary. But most importantly, a thesaurus is enormously useful for solving crossword puzzles.
These are a few of my least favourite words
Meal. Decent. Bowl. What do these seemingly inoffensive words have in common?
Clichés in the news media
While the cliché can be a warm bath of convenience into which the lazy writer is often tempted to sink, a fresh, arresting image is more likely to call the inattentive reader to attention. Remember that it is far more memorable to be slapped with a fish than with the bog-standard open palm to the face.
And so it begins
‘They threw me off the hay truck about noon.’ Author Stephen King cites this opening line from James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice as a great example of how to begin a book.
Indiana Jones and the creative process
Reading how Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan evolved their plot, trying different ideas in the process (at first the vital clue is in the form of a map, at one stage Marion is a Nazi sympathiser, and another suggestion has Indy trying to steal the headpiece from her) makes you realise just how complex the creative process can be, and how many ideas must be discarded or edited out along the way.
The war against cliché
If there’s one helpful thing to be said about making your writing clearer, it’s this: If you see a phrase you’ve heard a million times before (such as this one), replace it.
What the hell am I talking about?
A common piece of advice is to write the way you speak, the idea being that you will then be ‘freed up’ to express yourself without worrying about that intimidating blank page (or screen) before you. This may be useful to get you started, but if you send whatever you’ve written in the same spirit, look out.
The power of metaphor
But often your goal is to persuade as much as it is to inform. And that’s where metaphor is your friend. Metaphors are so prevalent they often pass unnoticed, but that doesn’t mean they don’t leave a powerful impression in the mind of your audience.
Creeps from the deeps
Perhaps you are familiar with a common horror movie device – it’s the opposite of the ‘sudden surprise’ that startles the audience and the protagonist at the same time. This is the one where the monster/tidal wave/giant squid looms up behind the protagonist to reveal its vast immensity to the audience before the protagonist turns around to be devoured/drowned/ingested.
To correct or not to correct
Tricky situations arise when someone uses a word in the wrong context or when it is pronounced incorrectly. We have all experienced that moment when our great story has been interrupted by someone saying something like, ‘You mean dock the boat, not park the boat, because you park cars, not boats – don’t you?’
Think before you write
Next time you are about to launch into writing something important, metaphorically bite your tongue and consider your reader before you start writing or your message may not be read the way you intended.
Pronouns: A matter of life and death
In his recent book, The Secret Life of Pronouns, psychology professor James Pennebaker writes about how our use of pronouns reveals much about our social status, health, honesty … even our propensity to commit suicide!
Who am I writing for?
It can be a fraught matter, trying to ‘set the tone’ of a piece of writing. And when you’re trying to sell or promote something, your ear needs to be well calibrated to what your audience likes to hear.
The value of handwriting
It wasn’t so long ago that every writing task started with a pen and paper, and possibly a snifter of port in front of a warm fire. That’s a much more welcoming creative environment, isn’t it? And while the most agreeable parts of that environment can’t be replicated in most offices, you can at least turn off the disapproving Cyclops on your desk and pick up a pen … or pencil, or crayon. Don’t laugh. Any strategy that connects you with the neglected part of your brain that flourished in infancy can produce terrific creative advantages.