SummitMedia's The Write Stuff

  Writing Realistic Dialogue.   Creating realistic dialogue can be challenging. But it can also be a lot of fun.    We get to break a lot of rules. Think of it as getting revenge on your high school English teacher who gave you a D in composition. All those red inked circles, notes, and arrows made your term paper look like a Mississippi road map. There were dangling participles. Your sentences ended in prepositions. And there were those darned comma splices. So many rules to a language that can’t keep its vowel sounds consistent. Yes, I know I just wrote a sentence fragment. I did it on purpose. Effective dialogue is based on how people talk, not how we write. Our thoughts are grammatically incorrect. The same goes for our conversations – even with ourselves . In real life, people often speak in sentence fragments. DRIVER -“Which house we looking for?” PASSENGER -“The blue one with the red door.”   Depending on the scenario and the character, it’s even ok to us...

                        Captivating Listeners in Just Six Words. According to legend, it started as a ten-dollar bet between a group of writers. One of those was Ernest Hemmingway. The challenge was to write the world’s shortest complete story. Hemmingway penned his in six words. “For Sale: Baby Shoes Never Worn.” It was published in a 1954 issue of The Sun in New York. Ernest got his ten bucks. Academics and critics agree. It’s ingenious. It has a strong opening, compelling characters, an absorbing story, and is told in a unique style. I bring all this up due to results from a recent survey by Nielsen. The research was in response to advertisers’ concerns that the average consumer’s attention span is getting shorter. Thanks to social media, it appears that it has. Until 15 years ago, you and I had 5 seconds to grab the attention of our target. Now, it’s 2.5 seconds. However, the Nielsen study did conclude that with engaging co...

                    The Biggest Attention Driver is Creative.                         And The Best Creative is Intimate. The Oxford Dictionary defines intimacy as  close familiarity or friendship; closeness . Any brand wants (or should want) an intimate relationship with its users. They want to be liked –even loved. It’s been proven that emotions and instinct are most often the driving forces behind consumer behavior and purchasing decisions, rather than rational thought.   According to Harvard Business Review, emotionally connected customers have about  twice the value to brands  compared to customers who are simply satisfied with their purchase. And here’s the real kicker. The same survey showed that emotional connection outweighs customer experience. Brand intimacy is different from brand loyalty, which may be driven by loyalty programs, rewards, or s...

             There’s Nothing Logical About Elections.   It’s an election year. In many states, Super Tuesday primaries are March 5th. Others are a few months away. If your market is anything like Birmingham, the ballot will contain more than the race for parties’ nomination for president. It will also hold several state and local offices. You can count on some of those races going to a run-off. And, chances are good, several of your local candidates will record their radio ad campaigns (if they haven’t already) in your production studios. Almost all have script in hand. It was either written by themselves or a campaign advisor. After all, the candidate is responsible for the ad’s content. Here in Birmingham, there have been occasions when a candidate for a local office, (city council, county commission, tax accessor, etc.) has been self-funded and did not have a campaign advisor. They asked for my input. My observation always begins with these que...

                                         The Value of Daily Journaling. We All know from experience that creativity isn’t a constant. There are days it flows like a raging river. And then there’s those periods of drought. When we’re low on fresh ideas, we have Chat GPT, AI Script Assist, and other tools. There are times even those don’t seem helpful. I’ve found this is where my daily journaling can help. Outside of my work here at Summit, I try and make it a point to write something every day. If I don’t write something down, I record notes into my handheld device. I have a file on my laptop entitled “Well of Relatables.” These are notes, quirky observations, memories, and odd thoughts. Some are just one or two sentences. Then, there are those that are almost a short story. Their primary purpose is for color and imagery and not strategy. I try to keep them not too personal, but in a ...

                                       The Magic of What If. The godfather of copywriting, Roy H. Williams once wrote: “ The mind cannot believe in both fear and possibility at the same time .” Fear  –is this good enough? Fear – will this get the listeners attention? Fear – I’m out of ideas. We all have fear. We all have that inner circle of critics that tell us  this won’t work, it’s mundane, it sounds no different from anything else , etc. Because I’m an avid reader and I journal, I answer my inner critics back by bringing up the name Douglas Adams. His most known work is “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy.” It’s not that it’s a work of comedic science fiction that makes it so good. It’s the fact that the premise itself seems impossible. The world is destroyed by a celestial construction company. Earth was slated for demolition to make way for a new intergalactic highway. Tur...

  Don’t Forget the Setting. In our attempts to make our messages more relatable, thus successful, we find that a lot of the rules for writing good stories apply to good copywriting. One of the elementary basics to writing a story is  the setting. The setting is the time, the place -whether real or fictional, present, past, or future. This came to my mind while creating a campaign for a new client  Counsel Hound dot com . Counsel Hound is an attorney referral service. The user visits the web site, fills out the questionnaire about what their needs are. They are matched with an attorney who has been personally vetted by a panel of established trial attorneys. To qualify as a Counsel Hound attorney, one must have a record and excellent reputation for zealous trial advocacy. These are attorneys who have a track record of trying more cases than just settling out of court. This service is unique in this market. Therefore, it shouldn’t be hard to position. However, there are key...