Written by Olga Procevska, co-founder of Writitude

Many people will think of “creative writing” and writing for brands as two wholly different departments.

Still, as customers we can all appreciate creative copy — the kind that gives a brand its own voice. The voice that reaches out to us, moves or entertains us — even if it’s only an ad.

As marketers, we constantly have to look for new solutions for our communication — we know that brands thrive on creativity, while bland, uninventive style will make them as good as invisible.

Still, is it possible to stay creative on the daily basis, especially when it’s part of your job? We at Writitude surely hope so.

In this blog we will talk about unlocking creativity — what you can do to keep writing outside the box and how Writitude can help you with this.

Don’t be afraid of your choices

What often paralyses us from being creative is the power of our own imagination. We get overwhelmed by the multitude of possibilities lying ahead.

You may also think of creativity as a succession of choices: to begin a sentence, you have to pick one, only one, sequence of words — and it has to work.

Then you have to think what words and ideas will work with the ones you have already selected, and so on.

Making choices can be daunting — but Writitude is here to support you. We know that taking the first step is hard, no matter how many texts you have begun (and completed!) in your career.

This was one of the reasons why we created Writitude. It is trained to help you define what tone of voice you need for your brand communication and make sure that your content 100% answers your criteria.

Unlike most AI-based writing aids, Writitude wasn’t trained on user-generated content alone. Employing knowledge from corpus linguistics and cognitive science, it will calibrate your style like no other solution.

So don’t be afraid. Write down the first thing that pops into your mind. Writitude will take it from there and polish your phrasing to perfection.

Still afraid of chat GPT? Make it work for you.

Since artificial intelligence became widely available, many creatives have learnt to apply it in their daily jobs. Although Chat GPT will never have your vivid imagination, it is quick and knowledgeable.

Outline the assignment, use additional prompts and questions for efficiency, and the bot will prepare a draft for you in a couple of minutes.

You’ll have a starting platform to work on — and save your time and effort for more exciting tasks.

"ChatGPT has cut down my initial organization, research and outlining phases substantially, and it helps fill in gaps when I hit a road block" — writes a redditor in a discussion about using Chat GPT as a copywriter.

If you are interested in how to use chat GPT more efficiently in your brand writing — this blog is full of practical tips. Follow the link to learn how Chat GPT and Writitude can combine their efforts to help you create spot-on copy.

Writing for the Trash

The term “writing for the trash” means exactly what it says. To liberate yourself from the fear of not getting your wording right, try writing like there is no such thing as a bad decision.

Your drafts are for your eyes only — so why not be bad? Allow yourself not to check on your style and grammar, save time on deleting and correcting — just write. The result may be horrifying — but it was meant to be trash, so why get upset over it?

You may ask why bother at all, if you probably won’t be able to use your trashy writing in your actual work. The answer is simple — improvisation is a great way to warm up your creative muscles. Surgeon (and musician) Charles Limb stresses the importance of improvisation.

In the early 2000s, he conducted a study where the brain activity of improvising musicians was monitored through neuroimaging.

The results of the study suggest that improvisation reduces activity in those regions of the brain which support self-monitoring and focused attention, thus activating defocused, free-flowing attention that permits spontaneous unplanned associations and insights.

There are many articles on the internet speaking for the beneficial effects of “writing for the trash”. However, if we had to pick one source on the subject, we recommend this inspiring blog by the novelist Joe Milan Jr.

Visual Connection: “How can an image of a person skiing be relevant to an accounting app?”

When you feel like you are out of ideas for your writing, it may be helpful to look to images instead of texts for inspiration.

In this podcast on brainstorming, the award-winning copywriter Schlomo Genchin shares his creative process.

Schlomo says that he sometimes finds inspiration looking at random visuals on the Internet (for example, at unsplash.com).

Schlomo says that “something magic happens” when you try to connect two completely unrelated things. “How can an image of a person skiing be relevant to an accounting app?”, he asks as an example.

We won’t pretend that we can pinpoint how this works from the scientific point of view, but it sounds relatable.

Many of us, if not everyone, can remember how great ideas that they later used in their work came to them unexpectedly. Also, do you know how you sometimes forget a word or a name and it comes back to you only after you give up trying to remember it?

Our mind tends to get tired when we make it use the same pattern over and over. However, a distraction, or, in this case, switching the media, can unblock our thinking.

We at Writitude don’t know what works best for you and your team. Maybe you will get fresh ideas from “writing for the trash”, joining efforts with Chat GPT or observing images.

Whatever you do to keep ideas and words flowing, Writitude is there to direct them with effortless precision. You can manually select from over 100 parameters to fine-tune your brand’s tone, or work in broader strokes using our tone-of-voice templates.

Register your free Writitude account — and stay creative!