The literary copywriter’s toolbox. Tactics stolen from novelists, poets & playwrights

If it works on the page, it works in a funnel. But if your words don’t make people feel something, your funnel is just a sequence.

Here’s what marketers can learn from people who make language do unnatural, unforgettable things.

Yes, we’re stealing from the greats

There’s a door hidden in the side of the content calendar. You won’t find it on your Asana board. It doesn’t appear in Notion. But the second you’ve written your fifth “hook – value – CTA” post that feels like burnt porridge, it creaks open.

Slip through, and you’ll find it: The bookshelf. The stage. The manuscript annotated in red ink.

Because the majority of marketers study frameworks, but the most powerful writing tactics don’t come from templates. They come from literature. The great novelists. The obsessive poets. The playwrights who understand silence better than most of us understand headlines.

They’ve been bending language into shape for centuries, and making humans feel things on command. It’s time we took notes. And took what works.

These aren’t metaphors about writing. These are the tools themselves. Use them like you stole them.

Metaphor. Say what you really mean without saying it

Metaphor is compression. A full idea, loaded with emotion, precision, and tension, delivered in a single twist of language. It’s how you say:

You’re not tired. You’re in the cocoon phase.

Or:

Marketing isn’t a funnel. It’s a ritual.

Metaphor sells what it feels like to hold something, not just what that something is. What it’s like to want it. To become it. In brand strategy, extended metaphor is positioning at its most elegant.

You’re not a software tool. You’re a lighthouse.

You’re not a productivity course. You’re a scalpel in a world of blunt knives.

Perfect for: headlines, email intros, CTAs that need to carry weight.
Promise: Let the metaphor do the heavy lifting. Feel, not just function.

Enjambment. Break the line to build tension

Enjambment is the continuation of a sentence across a line break without pause. In copy, it’s the whisper that trails off and makes you lean in. It’s the refusal to finish the thought until you click. Scroll. Breathe.

You thought this funnel was
Just another strategy.

It isn’t.

That pause isn’t passive. It’s a pulse. It forces the eye to fall and the mind to follow.

Perfect for: launch pages, cliffhanger emails, short-form punch.
Promise: Makes rhythm emotional. Makes the reader breathe differently.

The unreliable narrator. Start with a lie, then reveal

The unreliable narrator is a trick of misdirection. You start with what your reader already believes. You nod with them. Then pull the rug, gently, with flair.

You don’t need another storytelling tip.
(But oh, you do. And here’s one that doesn’t taste like the others.)

This isn’t about deceit, but about resonance. Honesty through contradiction. The kind that makes your audience smirk and lean closer.

Perfect for: carousels, launch warm-ups, unexpected openers.
Promise: Builds trust through side-eye. Let’s your reader feel seen.

The beat sheet. Structure like a playwright

Theatre has structure. Not flow, but beats: Scene. Conflict. Reversal. Climax. Resolution.

The same rules (beats!) apply to your sales page:

1. The problem appears.
2. The tension rises.
3. Something shifts.
4. The offer is revealed.
5. The resolution lands.

Instead of writing a drama, you’re mapping emotional logic.

Perfect for: launch campaigns, sales pages, email arcs.
Promise: Transformation becomes believable when it’s paced.

Apostrophe (no, not the punctuation)

In literature, apostrophe is when the speaker addresses someone (or something) who isn’t there. It’s strange. It’s personal. It’s oddly magnetic, and perfect for copy.

Dear founder who’s ready to burn it all down…

Time, I’ve argued with you for years. This quarter, I won.

It turns a broadcast into a whisper. It turns general marketing into an invocation.

Perfect for: newsletters, About pages, unexpected openers.
Promise: Converts general into intimate. Mass into personal.

Rhythm. Cadence is persuasion

You don’t need to be poetic to be musical. You just need to remember this: The sound of your sentence matters more than its syllables.

Great copy moves. With beat, not just with meaning. With rise and fall. With the cadence of someone who means it.

Try this:

Short sentence.
Another.
Then one that stretches itself out until your reader forgets to breathe, and by the time the period comes, they’re already sold.

Use sound as structure. Alliteration, repetition, sentence length all create mood. And mood sells.

Perfect for: anywhere the reader’s attention is fragile.
Promise: If it stumbles, it’s not ready. If it sings, it’s gold.

Pick a tool. Use it like you stole it

No one’s asking you to become Virginia Woolf. Or to rewrite your About page in iambic pentameter. (Although, why not?) But you can reach for the writer’s toolkit the next time your content feels lifeless.

You can switch out the wrench for a metaphor. The wireframe for a beat sheet. The bullet list for a line break.

You don’t have to be a poet. You don’t have to be a playwright. But you can write like someone who knows what language can really do. And when you do, people don’t just read your content. They feel it.

Your assignment: Pick one tool Any one. Use it in your next launch email, landing page, or newsletter. Then listen closely to the feedback you didn’t have to ask for.

That’s the sound of writing that works.