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Secret 6: Watch Your Windups. Most sales letters are improved by deleting the first sentence. We
call this sentence a windup because it lets the writer "get into" his subject. But if you don't immediately
arrest the reader's interest, he will not get into the subject, and into the wastebasket go you
and your message. That is why your very first word — your "opening" — must be compelling.
Powerful openings grab the reader in an iron grip.
Secret 7: Write in Three Phases. It's a common misconception that "real" writers do it all effortlessly,
without fumbling. Writing is tentative — a little here, a little there, rather than a master
stroke, complete in an instant. More like sculpting than taking a snapshot. Your first attempts will
never be more than an approximation of what you want. They must be incomplete and clumsy to
some degree. It isn't easy to accept that. But try.
Those who have studied the creative process seem to agree that it is broken into three distinct
phases. In the first phase, you round up facts, absorb ideas, explore approaches. This is a period
of taking in. In the second phase, you put down ideas, make notes, outlines, doodles. You try to get
things out. But there is a third phase: the editorial, critical phase. Here you kill inappropriate
words and ideas. Just as the first two phases were marked by openness, this phase is highly discriminating
and selective. Here you filter, prohibit, weigh and balance subtleties.
When the writer tries to be open to new ideas and at the same time exercise his critical judgment
and filter ideas, he gets into trouble. You cannot do both at the same time.
Secret 8: Put in People. You'd never guess from most sales letters — indeed most business writing
— that there are people on this planet. Is anybody living and breathing out there? Or hoping,
fearing, planning? You'd never think so from a peek at the files. But they are. So the vigorous
writer brings people — himself and the reader — into the action.
When you introduce people into your writing, you help create a word picture of someone doing
something. And a word picture is a lot easier to grasp than an abstract concept, which then must be
translated into specifics in the reader's mind. Put in people.
Secret 9: Mimic the Movies. Good filmmakers keep their cameras moving. If we are watching a
cowboy ride across the prairie, the camera might start with a long shot, zoom in slowly, circle the
man, shoot from ground level, with the sun silhouetting the lonely rider, then rise and shoot down
from a boom or helicopter Just a man and his horse plodding across an open plain. But the agile
camera works its alchemy — and light, shadow, angles, and accents cast their spell.
There's a lesson here for the writer: If you vary the pace, tempo, shading, and beat of your prose,
the reader will find it more interesting.
Secret 10: Keep It Active. Perhaps you've noticed a certain overlapping: If you select selling ideas,
you are inclined to be specific. Something specific is likely to be from the reader's side of the fence,
hence believable. And so it goes: One rule helps another. And if you cast your ideas in active rather
than passive form, your sentences tend to be shorter. They tend to move.
RAY W. JUTKINS' EIGHT GOLDEN GUIDELINES
One of the most entertaining speakers on the subject of direct mail is "Rocket" Ray Jutkins. His
presentations are filled with a lot of down-to-earth ideas, including his "Eight Golden
Guidelines" for writing the perfect sales letter.
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