What is persuasive writing?
Persuasive Writing
Persuasive writing is what makes a block of text easy to consume.
Ever read a 300-page book in a single sitting?
Have you ever said, “I couldn’t put the book down,”?
You’re reading persuasive writing.
Persuasive writing is good writing.
Joshua Lisec, more on him in a moment, calls it an auto-read. As in the text flows. You read the text easy—no complex sentences.
Kieran, do you mean persuasive wring is dumbed down writing?
You may call it dumbed down. Let me ask you. What’s wrong with making reading and writing accessible to more people?
Persuasive writing is on it’s way to becoming the norm.
Never mind the Kardashians, have you been keeping up with Kanye West on twitter? He is leading a crusade at the moment.
Kanye wants to make music artist contracts readable.
You call it dumbing down. I call it making accessible.
This is where Joshua Lisec comes in.
Who is Joshua Lisec, and what makes him one of the top authorities on persuasive writing?
Who Joshua Lisec is and why you can trust him
Look at what he says about himself, this is from his website:
Joshua Lisec is the founder of The Entrepreneur’s Wordsmith LLC, Ohio’s first Certified Professional Ghostwriter, a multiple time #1 International Bestselling Ghostwriter, a Forbes Contributor ghostwriter, a TEDx speaker, a leading authority on author voice authenticity, and a two-time published novelist. Since 2011, he has ghostwritten fifty+ books.
As you have read Joshua is a ghostwriter.
What is a ghostwriter?
Let me put it this way, ever wonder how certain authors can put out a novel every year? Authors like John Grisham, Lee Child, James Paterson?
Chances are they work with someone like Joshua, a ghostwriter.
A ghostwriter is someone who takes your idea, develops it and brings it to fruition. They’re like a combination of editor and co-writer.
Ghostwriter feels like it struggles to fully define what it is.
A Ghostwriter is more like a silent partner
The ghostwriter assists the writer. Working away in the background doing 50% of the work, maybe even more. Meanwhile, the ghostwriter’s client gets to slap their name on the finished product.
Never mind the devil. The greatest trick a ghostwriter ever pulled was convincing the world they didn’t exist.
You might feel like it is a bit unfair for a ghostwriter to miss out on their share of the credit.
I used to think that too.
I’ve realised since following Joshua on twitter; ghostwriting is the norm in the writing world.
This feels like a breath of fresh air. Especially if you’re hoping to make your living as a writer. Like I am.
My view was that as a writer, you had to toil away for years, working on your manuscript. After that, you had to send your work away perfect and pristine.
Joshua has nuked this myth from orbit.
Now I feel more confident when I reach out to people and ask them to give my work a read. Hey, if it’s what the professionals do I should be following suit.
Right?
This is all a long way to say “Joshua knows what he’s talking about”.
Over 50 books?
Harper Lee only wrote one.
Just saying.
If these books were for himself, it would be one thing; however, these are books for clients.
Paying clients.
Clients who enable Joshua to live the dream life with his family.
Joshua has to keep his client list to himself because that’s one of the trade-offs when it comes to ghostwriting. However one of his clients is public about working with Joshua. Read below;
A client’s book just won a bigly award, beating 1,000s of other books across dozens of categories.
Look at that review 👀
This is one of the few clients whom I don’t have a confidentiality agreement with — thankfully 😅 pic.twitter.com/TLVr91zjJw
— Joshua Lisec | Ghostwriter (@JoshuaLisec) September 3, 2020
Also, Joshua Lisec has been praised by my hero Scott Adams on several occasions. Here’s one time.
Remember that one time Scott Adams told y’all to get my expert advice on writing and publishing your book and half of Twitter hired me and I bought my family our dream home. Yeah. That was epic.
If you ain’t following @ScottAdamsSays … dafook?https://t.co/GMuiZXGNmf
— Joshua Lisec | Ghostwriter (@JoshuaLisec) August 1, 2020
I was intrigued to learn more about Joshua’s writing system and his ghostwriting career.
In short, I’m a fan.
Then Joshua released The Best Way To Say It.
The Best Way To Say It
With a $99 price tag, I baulked at first.
At the same time, I had to know.
I had to know The Best Way To Say It.
Let me tell you $99 for The Best Way To Say It is a bargain for what you get in the course.
Now, I hope Joshua is OK with me telling you this.
The course can be summarised into a page.
In fact, Joshua should be more than OK with me telling you this. One of the first things he tells you to do is print out the one-page course summary.
The main teaching section of the course is two videos you can watch in under an hour.
These videos are great and to the point. They cover the following; “Restructure for perfect flow”. and “Refine for Maximal Persuasion”.
In these two videos, Joshua tells you how you can take something from an idea to a fully edited finished piece using his system.
An example of how Joshua helps you craft persuasive writing
Ok, because I’m good, I’ll share one technique to help you make your writing more persuasive.
Here it is; remove all the “don’t, shouldn’t, can’t” from your text.
You may feel like this is obvious.
You know what, you’re probably right.
However, hearing Joshua put it in plain English has been a game-changer for me.
When someone tells me “Don’t think of pink elephants” I know magenta trunky boys go marching before my mind’s eye.
For some reason, I thought the rules were different when it came to writing. I thought you, the reader, would have more time to process sentences.
Turns out no.
I was wrong.
Part of creating persuasive writing is to make it as easy as possible for the ideas to transfer from page to mind.
Let me use an analogy to explain.
If your writing is a freeway, then words like “don’t” are the equivalent of speed bumps. You want the reader to have a smooth ride.
Does that make sense?
You’re still thinking, $99 for one page?
Now you may decide the course is not for you now.
That’s ok, take your time.
In the meantime let’s talk about the real killer part of this course.
Here is where The Best Way To Say It takes on a life of its own.
Big beautiful bonuses
The bonus sections of The Best Way To Say It is where you watch Joshua walk the walk.
How many writing guides have you purchased where someone tells you what is bad writing without telling you where you can improve?
Joshua provides you with examples of his editing process. You can watch in real-time as Joshua cleans up clients work sentence by sentence. He injects the text with his own brand persuasive writing.
The video I found most illuminating is when Joshua edits a chapter for Ed Latimore.
The video is two hours and worth the $99 alone.
But you see him work on different topics.
Seeing him apply his system over and over makes it clear how you can apply it to your own writing. It’s been important for my own writing too.
Seeing Persuasive Writing take shape across multiple disciplines
Joshua edits a science article too.
What stands out is Joshua’s persuasive writing is transferable across multiple disciplines.
I like how I can integrate Joshua’s system with my own writing system.
You may think to yourself you can do without copywriting and persuasive writing for that matter. You think people should be able to read a text? Being easy to read is neither here nor there?
Be honest with yourself.
Making something easy to read? Making something an auto-read? It’s a sign of respect.
People will thank you for respecting their time.
You may think otherwise. For me, it is crucial to see a writing teacher take their principles, their system and apply it to the real world. Joshua does this. Seeing him live by his own system makes me trust him more.
Also, it’s essential for you to know Joshua has been updating the course since release.
Joshua breaks down how he wrote his sales page for The Best Way To Say It. I’m currently working on writing my own sales page for my own ebook: Write Your Screenplay in 12 days. I found this invaluable.
Joshua is charismatic in front of the camera too. Here’s a taster of what he’s like. You’ll remain engaged throughout the videos.
Conclusion
You may think, $99 is too much for 50 minutes of instruction. With all due respect, you are missing the point. Joshua has condensed his know-how into 50 minutes.
He then has shared practical videos of him doing what he said he would. Watching him edit articles across multiple disciplines is where it all comes together.
When you get this course and apply the principles laid out, you will become a better writer.
I’ve been implementing some of the principles; check out my review of Tenet.
If you like how this post has been written, then you can thank The Best Way To Say It.
This course has been a game-changer for me, and it will help you up your persuasive writing game.
Your writing will become more persuasive.
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Did you like that?
If you did would you mind signing up to my email because you’re a legend.
Thank you and have a great day,
Kieran
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