Advice from Stephen King to improve your newsletter

👉 but you need to apply it correctly

Today’s advice on writing great newsletters comes from Stephen King.

In this clip from a PBS interview from 2016, King says that:

…the best writers are voracious readers who pick up the cadences and the feel of narration from a number of different books.

You begin by maybe copying the style of writers that really knock you out…but little by little you devlop your own style.

It’s common advice to would-be emailers to read great writing. King himself is often listed, along with Lee Child, John Grisham, Robert Ludlum, all the way back to Ernest Hemingway. (You can tell it’s usually men giving this advice).

But I’m going to suggest that rather than reading a lot of fiction or indeed non-fiction books or blog posts or articles or sales letters and adverts, you read a lot of newsletters instead.

Actually, read that other stuff too. But make sure you’re reading a lot of newsletters.

That’s because a newsletter is not a work of fiction, though you can learn a lot from the way great fiction writers tell stories and engage their readers.

A newsletter is not an advert or sales letter, though you can learn a lot from the copywriting techniques they use.

A newsletter is its own thing. Its goal is not just to entertain. Nor is it to sell immediately. It’s to sell over the long term.

That needs a slightly different type of writing.

One that persuades, but does it while delivering valuable information and insights and keeping your readers entertained. If it doesn’t, they won’t hang around long enough to be ready to buy.

The best newsletter writers - to my mind - use story like great fiction writers, but sparingly. They hook you with the story but get to the valuable insights quickly. They’re often funny or quirky or opinionated too.

But that’s just my view.

You’ve got to find newsletter writers who, as King says, knock you out.

You.

Not the writers other people say are great.

Find the ones you enjoy. Who you tune in to read more from. Who build credibility and trust with you.

So subscribe to a lot of newsletters in fields you’re interested in, or might like to find out more about.

Lots of them.

Use a new email address to stop them clogging up your inbox, of course.

Then study them.

Don’t fall into the trap I often do of getting engrossed in the content rather than stepping back and looking at how they’re written.

It’s great to get engrossed - it means it’s a good email.

But make sure you then step back and ask yourself why you got engrossed. Make notes. Look for common patterns.

Unsubscribe from the ones you don’t click with. Read more of those you do.

You’ll soon start to pick up ideas and tips. To mirror some of the narrative style and cadence. Then to meld different ones together into your own style. You can’t help it - it just happens.

The books and articles you read will influence you too - but pay special attention to the newsletters.

That melding is what makes you unique. And because it’s a meld of great writing it stands a good chance of being pretty decent too.

Looking back I realise it’s how I developed my own style (though rather less systematically).

And it can work for you. Much faster than it did for me if you do it more mindfully.

- Ian

PS You’ll notice I used some “literary” techniques in this email. For example, the repetition of “a newsletter is not…, though you can learn a lot…” followed by “a newsletter is…”. The use of very short paragraphs including a one-word one for emphasis.

How did I learn those techniques? By reading others who used them often enough that they just felt like a natural way for me to write those sentences.