“Do you floss?” he said.
I was at the dentist, in the chair, feet up. His fingers were in my mouth.
“Hum-tymes,” I said.
“Sometimes?”
“Ah-huh,” I blinked.
“You should do it every day, once a day,” he said. “It gets the little bits of leftover food out of your teeth.”
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“Oh,” I blinked again.
“Because you know…” he said in the same breath, “little bits of food are like termites for your teeth.” He took his fingers out.
“Termites for my teeth?” I said.
“Oh ya,” he said. “Big time. They’ll eat right through them.”
In his book…
The Brilliance Breakthrough, master copywriter Eugene Schwartz explains that our brains actually think in images, not words.
So it’s easier for your brain to decode a picture into words than it is to encode words into a picture. Therefore, communicating in images will increase the clarity of your message. It will also make your point more memorable.
For example:
Let’s say my dentist imparted the importance of flossing another way.
Let’s say he said: “You should floss every day, once a day, because food lodged in the spaces between your teeth can cause impaction, which, over time, can lead to tooth decay.”
Accurate statement? Yes.
But does it put a clear image in your mind? No. It’s abstract, ambiguous.
Words like “impaction” and “tooth decay” make the audience do the work of understanding, of imagining. No good. The audience must not work to understand.
The word “termite,” on the other hand, is concrete, clear. When you hear it, you see the thing, the bug, its legs, its pincers, the mouth, eating your teeth like moist wood rotting in a crawl space.
You see the damn thing.
When you write in images…
You’re helping the reader skip the encoding step (i.e., turning the words into pictures). This makes reading easier (i.e., less thinking) and more clear (i.e., less room for error).
Create as many images as possible throughout your copy to ensure your message is understood faster — and remembered longer.
P.S.
For more image-based writing examples, watch The Informant! with Matt Damon.
Throughout the movie, Damon’s character delivers masterfully written, image-rich voiceovers you can’t help but visualize.
I transcribed a few below. (No spoilers.)
What images does this paragraph put in your brain:
“You know that orange juice you have every morning? You know what’s in that? Corn. And you know what’s in the maple syrup you put on your pancakes? You know what makes it taste so good? Corn. And when you’re good and help with the trash… you know what makes the big, green bags biodegradable?”And this one:
“I’ve been to Tokyo. They sell little-girl underwear in the vending machines right on the main drag, the Ginza, or whatever. Guys in suits buying used girl panties. How is that OK? That’s not OK.”And this one:
“There are these butterflies in Central America. They’re blue and orange and yellow and have poison in their wings. Just enough poison to stop a bird heart. But the birds know this somehow, so they don’t eat them. But there are other ones, butterflies... they’re orange, blue and yellow, too, but no poison wings. They’re just flying around, looking dangerous, getting by on their looks.The images you see almost certainly look like the images I see.
And that’s what makes the writing so good.
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