Last autumn was the first time it happened.
Stinkbugs, invading my apartment. Flying around aimlessly. Bumping into lamps and walls.
Fortunately, stinkbugs are easy to scoop up and dispose of. As a girl I used to know would say, “They have no instinct for life.”
As stinkbugs kept appearing in my living room, I started to wonder, how can such a stupid creature be taking over the world?
It turns out stinkbugs are not always this slow and useless.
They only come inside homes when the weather turns cold. They then enter a state known as diapause, a kind of insect hibernation.
I found out about this from an article titled “Home Invasion,” written by Katharine Schulz, a Pulitzer-prize winning author.
But don’t worry. I’m not here to talk about stinkbugs. Instead, I want to talk about an interesting writing technique that Schulz used in her article.
While talking about the diapause, Schulz writes:
“It is also thanks to diapause that stinkbugs, indoors, seem inordinately graceless and impossibly dumb. But, as we all know, being graceless and dumb is no obstacle to being powerful and horrifying.”
Did you catch it?
There in the second sentence. That unresolved allusion to something “graceless and dumb.”
For reference, this article is from 2018 and was published in the New Yorker, a left-leaning magazine.
When I read the above passage, a wave of pleasant surprise passed over me.
Not because I am outraged over “graceless and dumb” creatures being horrifyingly powerful.
Instead, I was just satisfied at having solved a little puzzle. After all, Schulz didn’t spell it out who or what she was talking about.
This little puzzle spiced up the article for me. It certainly seems to be a good tactic for Pulitzer-winning New Yorker writers.
But should you ever use unresolved verbal puzzles in sales copy?
It seems crazy.
After all, you want sales copy to be as transparent and easy-to-read as possible. As copywriting coach David Garfinkel likes to say, “Either you work and get paid, or your reader works and gets paid” (ie. he keeps his money and doesn’t buy what you’re selling).
And yet, there might be occasions when posing a little intellectual challenge for your readers can work in copy.
Here’s what Joe Sugarman, who ran and wrote copy for a 9-figure mail-order business, has to say on the topic:
“If you make your copy too obvious, the reader feels either looked down on or bored. Provide a little suspense so that the reader has to come to a conclusion on her own using intuition, thought, sensation, and emotion, and you’ve got a very good force working for you.”
And sure enough, old Joe used to pepper in such bits of “mental engagement” in many of his wildly successful ads.
Something for you too to consider.
Of course, there are places in copy where you never want to leave the reader thinking or scratching his head. Such as, for example, that call to action.
That’s why, in case you are looking to make your sales emails stink less, here’s exactly what todo:
Head on down to the page below. And then make a decision whether you want to opt in with your email. If you do opt in, I’ll send you a free copy of my upcoming book on email marketing — once I finish it in the next couple of months. Here’s the link: