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One of the most visually stunning films you’re ever likely to see is director/cinematographer Ron Fricke’s “spiritual travelogue” Baraka. This quasi-documentary, filmed in multiple countries over the course of a year, depicts Man’s relationship to nature and his attempt to communicate with the infinite. The glorious 70-millimeter widescreen photography depicts various human activities, from religious ceremonies and dances to the hectic flow of modern industrial life, comparing and contrasting these experiences with the titanic forces of the natural world. It is a powerful, enlightening, occasionally profound experience.

And there’s not a word of dialogue or narration in it.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so they say, and Fricke’s work certainly demonstrates that. But what do we do when we’re stuck with mere words to convey our corporate mission? Words can have impact when strung together just so, but ultimately we’re still just saying it, right? How do we show it instead?

We use the words to paint pictures.

I did this with a travel agent’s print marketing. I could’ve talked about the great discounts she offered, the special rates you could get if you subscribed to her annual service, and so on. I could have tried to appeal to the rational, thinking brain all day — and the rational, thinking brain, unemotional spoilsport that it is, would have devised rebuttal after rebuttal to thwart my efforts.

So instead of appealing to rationality, I went for the primitive lizard brain, that ancient hunk of cortex way deep down, the brain that WANTS things. The lizard brain doesn’t respond to reason, but it loves sensations. So I evoked images of white sands, crystalline waters, white gulls floating in a deep blue sky. I forced the readers to place themselves in this idyllic dream. And then I said, “Yes, you CAN have this,” and gave them the number to call. And call they did.

Images evoke emotions. You don’t have to be a brilliant painter or photographer to paint compelling pictures. You don’t need a 70-millimeter camera. You don’t even need a paintbrush. All you need is the infinite canvas of your reader’s imagination.

Once upon a time, I worked the night shift as a temp for the Teacher Retirement System, helping to check thousands on thousands of scanned benefits documents for readability and re-scanning them if any important bits were obscured. During the nine months or so that I worked there (time kind of loses its meaning when you’re driving to work in the dark and driving home at sunrise), I shared the scanning equipment with maybe a half dozen coworkers who tended to come and go — the turnover rate was fairly high, partly from people just getting sick of the job, and partly from firings.

The job was incredibly simple and repetitive, but it carried a daily quota of however-many images per shift. The sheer ease of the job led the supervisors to expect certain levels of speed and accuracy, and if you couldn’t cut it you were let go. It didn’t seem like a terribly high standard to me, but I’ll admit that some nights felt harder than others, and new recruits were usually flailing helplessly for at least a week before they got the hang of the job.

I remember one older lady coming to me during her first week, saying, “I need to ask you how you guys keep your numbers up. I can’t make my quota.”

Since I had no way of knowing what precisely she was having trouble with, I asked, “Are you starting and finishing the shift on time?”

“Sure,” she said. “I just can’t make my numbers.”

“Are you making mistakes and then having to go back and correct them?”

“Nope. I just can’t go fast enough.”

“Are you familiar with the computer program?”

“Yeah, I know what I’m supposed to do. I just can’t make my numbers.”

This game of 20 Questions went on, with the old lady supplying a continuous refrain of “I just can’t,” until I couldn’t think of anything else to ask or suggest. Ultimately, I couldn’t help her because I didn’t know what to tell her. Looking back it now, though, with several years’ business experience under my belt, I know exactly what I should have recommended:

“Stop saying ‘I can’t!’”

I’ve talked before about my preference for positive reinforcement over negative reinforcement in copywriting; I’ll never use a stick when a carrot will do. But if it’s true for marketing, maybe it’s just as true in everyday life.

Every time we say “I can’t,” our ears hear it, they send it to our brain, our brain records it, and we believe it. And we act on our beliefs. That’s how hypnotism works, for example, to disrupt bad habits, change attitudes, remove phobias, or help control pain. The brain decides to accept the suggestions given to it by the hypnotist, and it acts on those suggestions as part of a new belief system. This is also how self-esteem works. You don’t believe you are charming and confident because you are; you’re charming and confident because you believe you are.

Unfortunately, negative suggestions can work just as effectively as positive ones, often on a subliminal level. We might be feeding ourselves on a constant stream of negative reinforcement without ever realizing it. And it can be as innocuous as a simple “I can’t.”

We small business owners must avoid “I can’t” at all costs. “I can’t” will eat your business alive, and possibly you with it. Try “I choose to” instead. You’ll feel better. You might even find that you can.

“Spectacular!” Does that word get the blood pumping a little? It should, because that’s how we’re conditioned to react to the next term in my examination of Aristotle’s Six Elements of Drama: Spectacle.

Our generation certainly gets its share of spectacle, in the form of zillion-dollar summer blockbusters on the IMAX super-mega screen (“Now with BrainBuster GoogolPhonic Sound!”), extravagant corporate presentations employing all the latest multimedia technology, and amusement parks the size of cities. In fact, as we grow increasingly jaded to the bombardment, the bombardiers have to scale up their ammo, producing an endless upward spiral of bigger and shinier and louder. (Well, endless until we all go blind and deaf, anyway.)

But Aristotle defines “spectacle” much more broadly than in our normal use of the word. In the classical theatre, spectacle refers to all the visual elements of a drama — costumes, sets, makeup (or masks), lighting, and special effects. I would argue that it also includes sound effects, from the venerable thunder sheet and trumpets of Shakespeare’s day to the surround-sound capabilities of modern stagings. Even the ancient Greeks used a form of amplification by sculpting the mouths of their masks into a kind of megaphone.

At first glance, it would seem that writing can’t hold a candle to other media for spectacle. In fact, the opposite is true. Good writing can tap directly into the reader’s mind to summon any sounds, any images, no matter how spectacular. Our imaginations can paint more vivid pictures and sounds than the most extravagant motion picture could ever hope to do. And when you write your marketing copy, you’ve got to paint those pictures for your reader.

Say you’re a travel agent trying to get people interested in booking a flight to Hawaii. You could talk about great low fares or great customer service at the hotels, and those features might score points, sure. But how much more powerful is it to evoke a sunrise on the beach, the swaying of palm trees, the sparkling waves?

By setting the scene just an author does in a novel, the reader is actually pulled into that ideal dream-moment, giving him such a strong taste of the final benefit of your product that he MUST buy, or call for more info, or send off that application, or whatever you want him to do. Make your readers see, hear, and feel the ideal state your product or service promises, and you’ve bypassed the rational “Yes, but” part of the brain and gone straight for the imagination, where all bets are off and anything is possible. Your reader’s mind is the ultimate billboard, just waiting to be tickled with stirring, comforting, or jaw-dropping images.

So get to writing, and make a spectacle of yourself!

Our look at Aristotle’s Six Elements of Copywriting — I mean, Drama — continues with Diction.

That’s the term as it’s normally translated, but Aristotle is referring, not to beauty of enunciation, but to the characters’ choice of words in their dialogue. Diction and Character overlap somewhat, naturally, since the former is a tool used to help communicate the latter. And this element is particularly important in the theatre. Movies have an unlimited range of visual imagery to help reveal characterization through actions, but on the stage, you are what you say. Even when you’re lying, the fact that you’re lying tells us something important about who you are and how you feel. Speeches are dramatic actions, onstage or in real life. Every statement we make, every question we ask, carries an intention — we’re trying to make a particular impact for a particular reason.

That’s what copywriting is about, too.

When you write marketing copy, you must always be aware of what your word choices make you sound like to your reader. Are you comforting? Admonishing? Cultured? Folksy? Your word choices not only paint a picture of your character, they also set the tone for the entire marketing experience. (We’ll be tackling Tone soon, when we examine the element of “Music.”) Are you using a tone your target market will automatically agree with, is it more likely to turn your readers off? You must have a clear idea of your audience’s values, background, field of endeavor, et cetera, before you can have any clue which word choices will ring out loud and clear instead of screeching like nails on a blackboard. Politicians tend to master this early in their careers, enabling them to come across as “just plain folks” at a local carnival, then adapt a high-level of techno-speak for an address to the information technology community.

Unless you’re running for office, you don’t necessarily have to appeal to a broad spectrum of readers. You just have to aim the right words at your little sliver of the pie. But what if your target market encompasses people from many different walks of life, backgrounds, or corporate cultures? Here are a couple of all-weather tips that should help:

1. Find the need and feed it. Figure out what all these widely divergent people NEED and WANT to hear. If they’re all in your target market, then there’s something underneath they all share, some emotional bottom line that needs to be fulfilled. Make sure your word choices are consistent with that underlying need, and your broad base of clientele will all stay tuned to what you have to say.

2. Be clear. Clarity of language is the great “One Size Fits All” solution to making sure your audience gets what you mean, even if you’re not mimicking their precise linguistic or emotional comfort zone. Understanding is the road to empathy, so make sure you’re understood. Use short words. Use precise words. Use active words. Make it easier for your reader to climb on board, and he’ll read all the way to the end.

And then he’ll buy something.