Not everything is successful first time
Charlotte Booth • 8 June 2022
Reframe it and try again
And this is OK.
However, I know how frustrating it can be when you have put your heart and soul into a piece, and it doesn't quite work. The tone is wrong, the message doesn't sound right, or you find yourself going off on a tangent which isn't relevant to the intended message.
There's a lot that can go wrong in a piece of writing.
But there are also ways of pulling it back from the brink and breathing new life into it.
- Get over the block - When you have been struggling with a piece of writing, the thought of having to go back into it, and edit and rewrite can be off-putting, pretty much guaranteeing its place in the well of abandonment. But after stepping back for a while go back in with fresh eyes and a positive attitude.
- Plan - Even if you have nearly finished the piece of writing, if it isn't working then you need to go back to the beginning. Who is the audience? What is the point of the piece? What are your sub-headings? How long should it be? What is the take away for the reader? Sometimes replanning from scratch can help you find what's missing.
- Change the angle - Perhaps the angle of the message is wrong and that's why it isn't working. Could a how-to guide be changed into a case study? Could a company anniversary be changed into a celebration of the staff? Coming at it from another angle could make all the difference to the finished piece.
- Give it to someone else - Sometimes you are simply too close to the work to be able to write objectively about it. Giving your piece to an editor/copywriter like Popple Services can provide the fresh pair of eyes you need. I have worked on a few of these unfinished, 'unworkable' projects and often I can see what is wrong straight away. One blog I was given was written in such a cynical, negative way that it wasn't having the intended impact, another was using so many clichés and business jargon as to make the post unreadable.
Sometimes there is nothing wrong with the content you have written, other than the timing is wrong - perhaps it doesn't align with public feeling, or would be inappropriate in light of a recent news story. In cases like this the item can be put on a back burner and reworked at a later date.
Whilst it is frustrating not to be able to work with something you have written the material may not be wasted. Perhaps the blog could be used instead as social media posts, or as background work for a later project. But always remember, that it's OK to bin something that isn't working. Every writer out there has dozens of unfinished articles, stories, blogs and even books (I have three unfinished books not including the one I am currently under contract for).
Just chalk it up to experience.
If you do have a blog or project that you can't seem to get right and you're not quite ready to spike just yet, drop me an email
and we can see how it can be resuscitated.
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There is nothing more amusing than checking out mediaeval artistic renditions of lions and other heraldic creatures. These beasts, grimacing and gurning are a strange juxtaposition of human, animal and demon and as far from the cute image of Alex from the Madagascar franchise or in fact a real lion as you could possibly get. There are three main reasons mediaeval lions are so ‘bad’ and un-representational; The artists were following a very tight brief. Some of the artists may never have seen a lion, and were following the descriptions they were given. These lions were representing heraldic principals of bravery, nobility and authority; all very human characteristics. When viewed through this lens it becomes more understandable why they look the way they do, but they are still ‘not right’ and not a great tool for learning about lions. Generative AI is very similar to an uninformed but talented mediaeval artist. There is a element of intelligence but at the end of the day it is following a brief, with no actual ‘knowledge’ of the thing it is producing. As an example, if you prompt your generative AI (ChatGPT and the like) to produce a blog for your new product or service, aimed at your ideal customer avatar you will in all likelihood get a mediaeval lion out the other end. Sort of recognisable, and sort of not. This is because AI doesn’t know what a customer is (ideal or otherwise), has no idea what your product or service is and does, and has no true understanding of how this service or product will serve your ideal customer and their needs. Of course, AI is pulling all the information available from the internet to help with its answer but there is no understanding there. There is no determining fact from falsehoods or even which websites are trustworthy and which are not. So, it skims the internet and puts together content which suits the brief as it understands it. This is then when the actual work should start as this content shouldn’t be used in the raw. It should be edited and tweaked by a human who DOES understand the brief, has been a customer (ideal or otherwise) and can imagine what your ideal customer will feel when using your product or services. We are in a world now, where we have generative AI promoting products and services to humans, when it has no concept of what a human is and how it thinks, meaning the marketing department are in fact more important than ever for ensuring content and copy is aimed at humans and human emotions. You could argue that the world would be a more entertaining place if there were more mediaeval lions in it, but it wouldn’t be a great environment for learning, or for basing purchasing decisions on. If you want to maintain the human element in your content, then I would love to help . Explain the brief, your CTA and your ideal client and I will know what I need to ask to get a clear idea before writing. Then you can rest assured your content was written by a human for a human and we can leave the mediaeval lions to the museums.
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