Remember your Audience

When creating a commercial of any kind, it is crucial to know who you are addressing. Demographics become your best friend - Age, Race, Income, Sex, Economic Level. Depending on who are talking to you will need to change the way you seduce your audience. What may grab the attention of a 67 year old retired gentleman will obviously not interest a teenage girl.

They will sign for the MONEY

When asking a company or individual

to finance a project of yours it is important

to emphasize what kind of return they

will receive from the deal. The profit

they can look forward to is the only real

reason they will sign with you.

CALL OUTS!

There are many tools available to a writer when he is trying to keep his reader's attention. One such tool is a call-out. They are most popular in magazines but newspapers use them as well.

Matti Mattila wrote a blog post titled Simple call-out box.
Here is his explanation for what a call-out box does and why it is important:

"When writing a very long article with lots of text and only few or no pictures to enlighten the story, the reader’s interest must be captured somehow to read the whole text. Sometimes the caption itself does not lure enough, so there must be something else to draw the reader’s attention. Placing a call-out box in the middle of the text, like the one below, usually captures the reader to find out the rest of the story. Creating such a call-out box with markup language is relatively easy and there are many techniques to get the desired effect. Some people use tables and others use background images."

Abstract

So if something is not concrete, what does that make it? And should we throw out all non-concrete language?

This web site

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/abstract.htm

offers a good explanation for the difference and value of abstract language.

"We must understand how imprecise their meanings are, how easily they can be differently understood, and how tiring and boring long chains of abstract terms can be. Abstract terms are useful and necessary when we want to name ideas (as we do in thesis statements and some paragraph topic sentences), but they're not likely to make points clear or interesting by themselves."

Concrete

It is important to pour a solid foundation for every story you write. Using concrete language is one way to guarantee clear communication.

Here is a good definition found at: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/abstract.htm

Concrete terms refer to objects or events that are available to the senses. [This is directly opposite to abstract terms, which name things that are not available to the senses.] Examples of concrete terms include spoon, table, velvet eye patch, nose ring, sinus mask, green, hot, walking. Because these terms refer to objects or events we can see or hear or feel or taste or smell, their meanings are pretty stable. If you ask me what I mean by the word spoon, I can pick up a spoon and show it to you. [I can't pick up a freedom and show it to you, or point to a small democracy crawling along a window sill. I can measure sand and oxygen by weight and volume, but I can't collect a pound of responsibility or a liter of moral outrage.]

Cliche

Often times we write the way we speak with friends, and the normal American uses many different cliches. Using cliches is a great way to ruin a story. After writing your rough draft go back through your story with a fine tooth comb and see how many you have used.

It's a zoo out there!

Rising tide

The calm before the storm

A cheshire-cat smile

A good Lead

In news journalism or in a press release the Who What When Where Why and How should all be in the lead. The first line of the lead should be a catcher; it should grab the reader's attention and make them want to continue reading the article or story.