Just Slightly Contrarian: This Ain't Literature You're Writing

Read commercial mail. Yes, again, out loud. Once you get into all this, you’ll be amazed at how the writers use simple words and homespun, down-to-earth expressions and colloquialisms to build word pictures and tell stories.

Check out the vocabulary. Actually, you should do this on three different levels. Level one is basic usage, which is at an eighth-grade level. Level two is the technical words used to express the particular mission of the organization. For example, a disease-type appeal will have, from necessity, certain medical words. An ecology appeal will have certain words that relate to our environment.