The key to writing persuasively and compellingly is emotion. That much Jon Morrow makes clear in his incredible blog post, 317 Power Words That’ll Instantly Make You a Better Writer. To make this comprehensive resource even more accessible, I have converted it into a mind map.
To often, our writing fails to capture attention because it lacks emotion. As human beings, we all have “hot buttons” we respond instantly to, such as fear, anger, greed and lust. These emotions are hard-wired into our brains, and play a bigger role in helping us make decisions to a far greater degree than we realize. Injecting emotion into your presentation, blog post or proposal, when done right, resonates with the reader at a deep level. It’s the foundation of all modern persuasion and successful marketing: Customers buy a product to fill an emotional need, then justify it with logic.
To help you be a more powerful and persuasive writer, Morrow recommends that you use his list of words as a catalyst to jump-start your thinking. Unfortunately, these words are spread out in a rather lengthy blog post. What I did is capture these power words in a simple mind map. Here’s how to use it:
- With all seven branches closed, all you see are the primal human emotions. Pick the one you want to use in your next writing or sales assignment, and then open the corresponding map branch.
- A set of words and phrases will now be visible. Pick one you want to use in your writing.
If you want to read more about Morrow’s power word technique, simply click on the link in the mind map instructions (which is in a branch that’s part of the floating topic below the main mind map) or click here.
To see a larger version of the mind map, click on the image above right.
To download this mind map in the MindManager .mmap format, please click here.
NEW: Interactive Flash version (expand and contract map branches, clickable links)
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