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The opening credits play over a long shot of a multi-story apartment complex, a series of rather drab buildings surrounding a courtyard. Set into these buildings we see window after window — some closed with curtains drawn, others giving us glimpses of the various rooms and their occupants.

We get an intriguing look at the odd but endearing collection of everyday folks living out their everyday lives in these buildings, until we finally pull back just enough to realize that we ourselves are gazing out from one of the windows — Jimmy Stewart’s window, to be exact. We then pan downward from Stewart’s face to see that he is in a wheelchair, his leg in a cast.

What is Alfred Hitchcock doing in the opening sequence of his 1954 suspense classic Rear Window? He’s hitting us with a series of revelations. He reveals our environment, then reveals our cast of characters, then reveals our star, then reveals our star’s dilemma. Stewart’s character, L.B. Jeffries, is stuck in his apartment until he heals up, with nothing better to do than observe his wacky neighbors through the window. But he gets more of a show than he’d bargained for when one neighbor’s bedridden wife vanishes from the premises overnight.

Ever seen the same technique used in marketing? You bet you have. It works for a sales letter or web page just as effectively as it does for a film. Hit your reader with a series of colorful, fascinating opening statements while keeping them just off-kilter enough to feel compelled to look further. Stewart’s character feels the same compulsion. Why is Thorwald, the neighbor, coming and going in the middle of the night carrying a suitcase? Wait, are those his wife’s jewels in the suitcase? Where did his wife go? Why is Thorwald washing the bathroom walls? Why is that dog digging so obsessively at the flower bed?…

I won’t reveal the ending, in case you’re one of the three people on the planet who haven’t seen this movie yet. But the way Hitchcock drips information at us one astonishing dollop at a time keeps us on the edge of our set — we have to know what comes next.

You want your marketing content to lead your readers by the hand in exactly the same manner. Dump the whole load of information on them right from the start and it will just land with a thud, like the movie trailer that reduces a two-hour drama to a series of sound bites and car crashes. You have to build your story from one point to the next, giving your reader time to absorb each one.

That’s how you build suspense — in the movies, and in marketing.

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

I recall a client who’d requested and received a 300-word article asking me, “On second thought, a 1,000-word article would fit my format better. Can we just pad this piece out to 1,000 words?”

I also recall my response: “Can we? Yes. Should we? Probably not.”

If brevity is indeed the soul of wit, then you want your marketing content to be the life of the party — not the guy reeling off some rambling epic tale with no apparent beginning or ending as he blocks your way to the bathroom. Effective, powerful, entertaining writing makes its point and then gets out of the way instead of monopolizing the reader’s time and patience.

Brevity doesn’t necessarily mean squishing everything you write down into soundbites, though the runaway success of Twitter has proven that 140 characters can go a long way. But it does mean adopting a “less is more” approach and viewing your writing with a surgeon’s eye. Here are some advantages to concise writing:

It’s easier to process. The eye gets fatigued as it pores over massive blocks of text, and the more of it the page contains, the less of it actually seems to matter. Clear, concise writing is easier for the eye and brain to handle, giving you better odds that your reader will actually want to keep reading.

It packs more of a punch. I find that my writing always turns out better when I’ve overwritten and have to reduce the word count. This kind of forced edit requires me to condense and purify my work, cutting out digressions and extra phrases until the writing becomes airtight. What’s left is all muscle — a lean, mean content machine.

It’s more versatile. A relatively short piece of writing will integrate more easily into a variety of situations, formats and templates. A few short paragraphs of website content, for instance, will leave more room for other page elements than an elephantine chunk of text that has to hog center stage.

If your written content feels flabby, fails to engage the imagination or just makes your eyes hurt, take out your red editing pen (or hire mine) and start trimming away the fat. You may love what you find underneath!

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.