copywriting

name	copywriting
description	Use when writing persuasive copy - emails, ads, sales pages, hooks, video scripts, or any text meant to move a reader toward one action. Covers foundation research, hooks, body writing, and CTAs.

Copy exists to move one reader toward one action. Every lever below serves that: the spine is the single belief the copy pushes, the bait is what earns the next line, the shift is how the reader's old belief becomes the new one, and grade-3 is the language bar that keeps all of it working.

0. Compile, then write

Don't draft cold. First compile: pull the audience's own words, hooks, and stories from their existing content (their emails, videos, posts) so the copy is built from their real language, not invented from scratch. Then ideate a few angles from what you compiled. Only then structure and write the draft, and polish it last. Compiling and ideating are one-time costs per audience - once done, later pieces for the same audience skip straight to structure and write.

Completion criterion: you can point to at least one real phrase, pain, or story pulled from the audience's own words before the first line of the draft is written.

1. Build the spine

Before writing a single line, write down, in one sentence: "This copy exists to make [audience] believe [one belief], so they [one action]." That sentence is the spine - the whole piece bends toward it, and nothing in the draft may argue a second belief.

Alongside the spine, get down on paper:

• Who exactly you're writing to (age, situation, psychographics - specific enough that a stranger reading it would say "that's not me" if they aren't the target)
• Their pain, and the consequence of leaving it unsolved
• Their desire, and what's blocked them from it so far
• The objection they're already forming as they read
• The USP - why this offer, not another

Completion criterion: the spine sentence is written, and every one of the five bullets above has a specific answer, not a placeholder. If any answer is vague, the research isn't done - go find the specific version before writing the hook.

2. Write the bait

The opening lines are the bait: their only job is to earn the next line, not to sell. A reader decides in seconds whether this is for them, so the bait must put them inside a scene, a question, or a gap they need closed.

Reach for one of these openings (full mechanics and more examples in PHRASES.md):

• Drop them into a moment ("Imagine...")
• Put them in a feeling before the logic ("How would it feel if...")
• Open a curiosity gap ("What if I told you...")
• Ask a real question that stops the scroll

Completion criterion: read the bait alone, with nothing after it. If it doesn't make you want the next line, it isn't done - rewrite it before touching the body.

3. Shift the belief

The reader doesn't lack information, they hold a belief that's blocking the spine. Telling them they're wrong causes friction; showing them why you're convinced doesn't. Move the belief in this order:

1. Understand it - state their current belief accurately enough that they'd say "yes, that's exactly it."
2. Sympathize - show you once held it too, or that it's a reasonable thing to believe.
3. Prove it wrong - not by arguing, but with a story, a stat, or a result that makes the old belief visibly fail.
4. Prove the new belief - show the replacement belief working, ideally through what happened to you or someone else, not a claim about what will happen to them.
5. Sell off the new belief - the CTA follows naturally once the new belief is in place, because now it's their idea.

Reach for a proof-showing device rather than a bare assertion: an analogy, a stat, a quote, a cost ("I spent 6 years and $10,000 finding this out"), a hypothetical, or someone else's authority. One ounce of proof outweighs a hundred pounds of promise - so show results happened to someone, don't promise they'll happen to the reader.

When the belief shift needs a story rather than a single proof point, see STORIES.md for how to tell one instead of just reporting one.

Completion criterion: the belief shift has a proof device attached, not just a claim, and if it uses a story, the story ends on a stated lesson rather than trailing off.

4. Draft the body

The body carries the spine to the reader in grade-3 language - short, plain, one clause at a time, the way you'd explain it out loud to a friend. Concretely:

• One sentence per line where the idea shifts. A wall of text is multiple ideas hiding as one.
• Cut any word a twelve-year-old wouldn't use unprompted. If a simpler word says the same thing, use it.
• Every paragraph still traces back to the spine - if a line argues something the spine didn't promise, cut the line, not the spine.
• Weave in a persuasive phrase from PHRASES.md only where the moment actually calls for it - agitating pain, painting the future, handling an objection, or re-engaging attention.
• Shape the sequence with a framework from FRAMEWORKS.md so the reader is always led to the next line, never dropped.
• Pace it like a rollercoaster, not a flat road: slow down with a longer sentence to explain the one thing that needs explaining, then speed back up with short punchy lines to keep momentum. All-short is choppy and boring; all-long is a wall nobody enters.

Completion criterion: every line traces to the spine, no paragraph runs more than two sentences before a break, the draft alternates slow explaining lines with fast punchy ones rather than running one pace throughout, and reading it aloud sounds like talk, not a memo.

5. Write the CTA

State the one action from the spine, and only that one. Make the next physical step unmistakable - what to click, reply, or do, and what they get for doing it.

Completion criterion: a reader who has only read the CTA (not the rest of the copy) could still say exactly what to do next.

6. Edit pass

Before calling it done, reread the whole draft hunting only for these three things, in order:

1. Any paragraph that reads as a chunk - break it.
2. Any word that isn't grade-3 - simplify it.
3. Any line that isn't in service of the spine - cut it.

Completion criterion: all three passes are done and the draft is shorter than it was going in.