What To Do If You’re Fresh Out Of Copywriting Ideas
Sometimes you’ll have a project to create and you won’t be able to think of anything that’ll hook a reader and help you sell a product.
Sometimes you’ll be working for a client and everything you think of will be rubbish. Often, you’ll get more stressed out as the deadline approaches and that stress means even less ideas will come to you.
Sometimes your ideas will just be terrible and you’ll be starting at the eleventh hour without a game plan in mind.
What do you do when this happens?
Don’t Do What Every Creative Does
You’ve probably all heard about the stages of grief. You’ll know that one of them is denial.
We’ve all been trained through media, teachers at schools and general culture that creative people – especially writers – have this weird gift or muse which appears and moves the pen in their hand until the work gets done.
Generally, when that muse doesn’t come, the first thing a writer does is hit that denial stage. I’ve had clients come to me because the writers they were hiring just disappeared. A lot of writers skip out on deadlines. They fumble and tell their customers that they’re having “personal issues” or they try and bargain for more time, money or help.
This is what most writers do, and if you want to stand out, the first thing you need to do is not fall into this trap.
Don’t allow yourself to negotiate a deadline. The deadline is the deadline.
Don’t allow yourself to negotiate those hours you sit at your desk working. Work time is work time.
Don’t allow yourself to negotiate your mental strength – if you can’t think of an idea today then maybe you won’t think of an idea tomorrow.
Once you’ve agreed that you’re not going to be in any denial or do any bargaining, you’re left with a problem. You’re still sat with an impending deadline and no ideas.
Luckily, I’ve got you covered.
It Only Takes One Idea To Make A Project
If there’s one massive thing I learned from Ogilvy On Advertising, it’s that you only need one idea to pull you through any copywriting project. Hopefully, it’s a big idea that nobody as thought of before.
The way you get that one idea is by doing the things listed in this article.
This article is not about how you get the idea though. This section is about coming to the realisation that you’re not that far off creating a finished project, even when you start.
The hardest part of any project is getting the idea. Your job is only loosely related to writing words. Your job is really the task of expressing an idea. That’s what you’re paid for if you’re a copywriter.
You only need one idea, and everything else comes from that.
‘If in Doubt’ Idea Generating
The above article on how to have big ideas does a good job of breaking down some of the ways to get your idea. But let’s assume you’ve got an idea. What happens next?
Well, it might be that you’ve got a great idea. Maybe your natural health product has one ingredient that’s from a rare plant, or your e-book is filled with knowledge that was gained through communion with a Himalayan wise man. What next?
Next, you have to build your project from that idea.
The idea will have a built in benefit. You then need to take that one benefit and apply it in all the ways that’ll actually connect with customers.
If in doubt, the features and benefits you generate should look something like this triangle.
Every person has a specific set of needs, but every person also shares most of their needs with every other person.
Whatever your major idea – be it a new solution or a better product – it needs to grip people according to the things they want.
Money. Health. Relationship success. Survival. Adventure.
You get the idea.
By now, you have one major idea, and countless mini ideas to run with.
Now comes the slog.
Writing Your Project
I have a set schedule. I write several chapters and several articles a day. This means my “muse” is a pretty solid habit. I’d recommend everyone else who writes for a living does the same.
When it comes to rapid deadlines, I’m a big proponent of sitting and writing until a project is done.
At this point in the article, we’ve gone from having no idea and a looming deadline of death, to having a looming deadline, but with a big idea and a natural structure of avenues to go with it. Now it’s time to plot a course.
This is where everything depends on your project, but there are a few guidelines I can give you:
- The hardest half is the first half. If you have a target of say, 10,000 words, you’ll find the second 5,000 infinitely easier to complete than the first 5,000. Bear this in mind and race to the 5,000 word mark.
- Not doing any work doesn’t decrease the size of your workload.
- If you can’t start with the first paragraph, start with the second. Get the ball rolling.
- Arrange your materials so that writing is as obstacle-free as possible. Post-it notes are great. Structuring is great. Whatever helps you get to the point where you know what you’re writing will make the task go faster.
- Once you’ve got everything set up, your deadline is your friend. Say you have three days to finish a piece of work. You calculate that you have to write 3,300 words a day to hit your target. If you hit 5,000 words on Day One, you’ll realise that the deadline is your friend. It’ll help you stay ahead.
- The more your writing was a struggle to start with, the better it feels when you finish.
Other than that… just sit and write.
The Final Scramble
Some people find that after they’ve done their work, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s is very stressful. I’ve personally never found this, so I’m not sure what advice there is to give.
I’ve found that when it comes to formatting and delivering work, the best bet is to put a system in place beforehand so that you don’t have to worry about this whilst you’re creating the work.
Final Thoughts
If you’re stuck on a project, you only need to do the slightest thing to turn yourself from stuck writer into productive powerhouse.
Creating work is a logical process. Have the idea, generate material from that idea, plan out the material for the medium, create the work, and finish the job.
If your creative brain is rebelling, follow the steps from this article, and you’ll find yourself unstuck a lot quicker than if you wait for your muse to come and pull you out of the mud.