How Rote Learning Can Help You Become A Better Writer

I was recently reading The Art of the Click by Glenn Fisher. He introduces the idea of rote learning and urges you to write out one of his sales letters by hand. It’s printed right there in the book to make it easy for you — all 22 pages of it. (And yes, I did it.)

It was a long, slow, monotonous process, and I occasionally caught my mind drifting as my pen scribbled across the page. But I persevered. And as the minutes and hours rolled by, I started to notice a few things.

I became more aware of nuances in the language and structure — things that weren’t quite as vivid when I read it:

• Using “you’ll” helped me visualise the benefits and how they relate to me…
• Starting sentences with “In fact” helped to keep things flowing and made it feel like the next point would be especially interesting…
• Bold, italics and CAPITALS were used surprisingly often to land key messages and add visual interest to the copy…
• Bullet lists also helped to break up the structure (even when the points were quite long) and each one ended with an ellipses to encourage you to keep reading, like this…
• And every paragraph was less than five lines and a maximum of two sentences, helping to keep the tempo up…

And sure enough, when I sat down to start writing my own copy, I found myself adopting a few of these traits. I wasn’t trying to force it, it was just happening.

This wasn’t the first time I’d come across rote learning either…

A few years ago, in the midst of a mild Stephen King obsession, I picked up his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. And he, too, talks about rote learning and the benefits of copying out other people’s work by hand.

He explains that he used to do it, and so did Ernest Hemingway.

But wait…

What’s rote learning?

Rote learning is, quite simply, learning by repetition. It’s doing something over and over again until you’ve memorised it.

You’ve used it before, I’m sure, like when you learned your ABCs or times tables at school. Or you may have used it later to practise algebra, memorise quotes for an English exam or learn a new language.

But as we get older, rote learning is gradually replaced with something called meaningful learning.

What’s meaningful learning?

Meaningful learning is the process of understanding how all the pieces of a concept fit together. It’s more active and long-lasting than rote learning, and it encourages you to think for yourself.

This is the type of learning you would’ve experienced through secondary school and higher education. It’s favoured over rote learning because, once you deeply understand every part of a concept, you can start applying it to other things.

And this method of learning stays with you for life.

But what’s all this got to do with writing?

Find the sweet spot

If you want to be a great writer, you need to find the sweet spot between rote learning and meaningful learning. They both have an important part to play.

Take a look at other art forms:

• If you want to be a great guitarist, you start by playing riffs written by other great guitarists (rote learning) — then you put those chords and notes together to come up with your own riffs (meaningful learning)…
• If you want to be a great dancer, you start by learning the moves from your favourite music videos (rote learning) — then you use them to choreograph something that feels right for you (meaningful learning)…
• If you want to be a great chef, you start by following the recipes of other great chefs (rote learning) — then you take that knowledge and use it to invent your own unique dishes (meaningful learning)…

And the important thing here is that you aren’t just listening to great guitarists, watching great dancers and eating food cooked by great chefs — you’re copying their work.

That’s why reading great writing isn’t enough. You need to copy it if you really want to learn from it.

How to make rote learning part of your routine

Start by deciding which part of your writing you want to improve. Then you can collect up references that inspire you and copy them out by hand.

And remember, the point of copying them out is to get a deeper understanding of what’s working and what’s not. Then you can start applying those things to your own writing.

Here are a few examples:

• If you’re a direct-response copywriter and want to get better at writing high-performance landing pages, bookmark any pages you like or know perform well — then you can copy one out each day and study the elements that make them so successful…
• If you’re a copywriter in an agency who needs to switch tone of voice every day, collect tone references for each brand and copy them out in separate notebooks — you could even use their live campaigns if you’re new to the client…
• If you’re a product designer and you want to get better at writing product flows and UX copy, save anything that you think offers a great customer experience — then you can copy it out to understand the nuances that make it work for you…
• And if you’re an operations or sales executive who wants to write less formal emails to customers, keep a record of any emails or messages that feel particularly friendly — then you can copy them out and work on making your own writing warmer…

And by putting in just 15 minutes each morning, you should see your writing get a little bit better every day.