Ask and Ye Shall Receive

 

Questions are one of the most valuable weapons in a marketing writer’s toolbox.

They’re the crowbar that pops open the stuck door. The flashlight in the basement.
The quiet little key that unlocks the “Ohhh … that’s what we should be saying” moment.

Without the right questions, you don’t get answers (duh). But more importantly, you don’t get insight. And without insight, your writing becomes nothing but decorative noise.

Ask the wrong questions, and you’ll fill your pages with fluff. Ask no questions, and you’ll fill them with guesses. But ask the right questions -- questions that dig, that press, that annoy just a tiny bit -- and suddenly you’re not writing anymore.

You’re uncovering. You’re discovering. You’re revealing the truth your audience actually cares about.

Behind every strong headline, every landing page that converts, every sales deck that doesn’t put the room to sleep is a writer who refused to write until they had asked enough questions to see the whole landscape clearly.

So before you write your next sentence, pause and channel your inner detective. Ask boldly. Ask relentlessly. Because the writers who win aren’t the ones with all the answers … they’re the ones who won’t stop hunting for them.

_________________________

Some examples of questions to ask clients:

• If your competitor said this exact same thing, would anyone notice?
• What are you not saying because you're worried it's too honest?
• Who is this definitely NOT for?
• What's the story you tell yourself about why this hasn't worked before?
• What do your best customers know about you that your marketing doesn't say?.
• What would you do if you weren't afraid of what your industry thinks?
• When was the last time a customer surprised you — good or bad?
• What objection do you dread most, and what do you usually say to dodge it? 

Some examples of "taking it to the next level" questions:

• Why does that matter?  
• Who says so? 
• What happens if we flip this entirely? 
• Have you considered that the thing you think is your weakness might actually be your most interesting story?

Dumpster Fire

People online confuse shamelessness with strength and authenticity. And the internet rewards it with increased exposure. 

Every week someone proudly broadcasts behavior that should've inspiresd a quiet moment of self-reflection and maybe a long walk. Now it gets posted ... and monetized.

Cruelty gets rebranded as “telling it like it is.” Refusing nuance becomes “standing your ground.” Public humiliation passes for entertainment. Meanwhile, basic self-awareness is treated like weakness ... which is unsettling considering civilization more or less depends on people occasionally feeling embarrassed by and stifling their worst impulses.

I’m not supporting toxic shame or repression. I’m just suggesting that more attention be paid to the small internal voice that says, “Maybe don’t turn every selfish thought into content.” That voice used to help people coexist. Now we train ourselves to ignore it because algorithms prefer confidence over reflection.

Everything now is performance. Outrage is content. Ignorance has a Patreon tier. People treat accountability like it’s an attack on creativity instead of the bare minimum requirement for living among other humans without turning every interaction into a public crisis.

But the algorithms love it because frictionless vanity scales beautifully. Thoughtfulness does not. Reflection doesn’t trend. Nobody goes viral for quietly reconsidering their opinion after reading a book and taking a walk.

We’ve built machines that reward visibility over wisdom, then act surprised when culture turns into a nonstop competition to say the most emotionally charged thing with the least amount of thought behind it.

I still think people are capable of better. I’m just no longer convinced the internet is particularly interested in helping.

Messiah or Villain

The reaction of writers to AI is interesting. One crowd treats it like a messiah. Another treats it like a villain.

For me it boils down to that, for effective writing, the fundamentals still matter. Probably more than ever. Good ideas are still rare. Taste still matters. Judgment still matters. 

A machine can produce a thousand sentences before breakfast ... but most of them still need someone who knows the difference between finished and merely generated. Because AI doesn't magically make a mediocre writer brilliant. It just lets a good writer spend less time pushing the wheelbarrow and more time deciding where the bricks belong.

Most technologies are far less dramatic than the people arguing about them. In my experience, technologies tend to be multipliers: They make good habits more productive and bad habits more obvious. So, when I think about AI, I keep coming back to the same conclusion I reached with other transformative technologies: 

Learn to think. Learn to write. Then learn the tools.

Not because the algorithm demands it. Because your time is worth more than pretending the clock stopped in 2018.

Overthinking

 

Along with checking for proper spelling, my editing process includes double-checking words to make sure they mean what I think they mean.

Recent examples: 

Panacea. I used it to mean "cure-all." I was right, but I felt compelled to double-check.

Same thing with proscribe. It looked wrong. Did I mean to use the word prescribe? 

And the same overthinking had me arguing with myself about infer. Was I confusing it with imply?

 

NOTE:

Proscribe means to forbid or outlaw while prescribe means to recommend.

The writer implies (hints), and the listener or reader infers (draws a conclusion).