Sharpen Your Copy with White Space
What you don’t say can be just as important as what you do say.
From a design standpoint, I’ve always loved white space. The way it focuses your eyes and allows your imagination to work with the visual. How the simplicity draws your attention to a point of view or message.
Overcrowded often equals overwhelming.
White space is a familiar and powerful tool for artists and designers, but what about writers?
Focusing the topical lens
Writing requires significant cognitive demand. It’s more than putting words to paper.
Behind the scenes, you’re applying composition, planning, and strategy. You don’t simply choose words. You string sentences that serve as building blocks.
The words expand.
Their organization and collective placement matter as much as their singular meanings.
Because of this, it’s easy to get lost, to go down tangents, or to end up in a different place than you intended.
Maybe this sounds familiar—
You sit at a desk and get up again five minutes later. You open a new tab to research and read others’ writing instead of writing your own. You stare at the page and daydream.
For copywriters, a focused message is everything. Your reader must be able to follow along.
But the organization, the deliberate focusing of language, requires so much of your brain power.
How do you focus your content?
One way is to eliminate conflicts of attention.
Decide what not to write if you can’t decide what to write.
Before committing to this series, I had countless articles burst into life in my head. I had gripping hooks and brilliant angles on subjects I found interesting.
But many of them had nothing to do with my business.
I found it helpful to write my ideas down to track patterns, assess relevance, and ultimately determine if something will fit and where. Not every idea is going to land here, but some might meet their perfect platform elsewhere.
As I construct this blog and work my way through topics I’ve jotted down, it will be helpful for me to employ the white space method metaphorically.
Many things will be left unsaid. And that’s ok.
It’s what I call focusing the topical lens.
Linguistic rhythm: the pause
Similar to spoken language, writing can harness rhythm.
(At the end of this post I’ve linked articles for anyone interested in a scientific linguistic perspective. For our purposes, I am referring to rhythm as the use of duration, stress, and pause.)
The pause is an expression of white space in written form.
Consider how this article is broken up into sections with headers.
Those are forms of breaks. Readers won’t physically pause to rest before continuing to read (if they are, I probably haven’t done my job), but they will likely be less tired.
How?
Section breaks signal variety and recapture attention after the monotony of seeing the same thing repeat itself.
Visually, it’s obvious. It’s literally white space.
But more than that, even a slight change in topic excites the reader’s mind, and the unknown of what they’re going to find next is enticing.
White space for the reader’s relief
Rather than write in traditional 3-5 sentence paragraphs, you can write one-sentence, or one-word paragraphs.
Don’t worry.
Your teacher isn’t grading this.
The quick paragraph turnover is effective. Your attention is drawn to each word or sentence, and superfluous information is eliminated.
It’s also effective for ruthlessly drawing the writer’s attention to their subject. What do I mean?
While writing, it’s common to lose track of your point. You scurry down rabbit holes of thought without even realizing it.
But when breaking up paragraphs, or pausing with a section before it becomes too long, you redirect your own attention and check that you haven’t deviated from the plan.
Of course, that can always be fixed during the editing phase. But let’s not waste time if we don’t have to, right?
Breathing room
Ultimately, we enjoy wonderful creative freedom as writers. And it’s fun to stretch norms or break the rules.
But if you’re struggling to find grounding and focus, give white space a try.
Decide what to eliminate, if you can’t decide where to begin.
Employ section breaks or other forms of rhythmic pausing and rest.
Break up paragraphs before they get too long.
Happy writing,
Kate
Links for learning more: