Submodalities in copy

I recently replied to a video by Dr Harlen Kilstein over at nlpcopywriting.com in which he stated that if anyone had any ideas about how submodalities might be related to copywriting he’d be interested in learning more.

I wrote a reply to Dr Kilstein and I realised that it could be useful for more people to read what I wrote. After I commented on Dr Kilsteins video article, he later made my comments into a seperate article on his website at nlpcopywriting.com. Here are the comments I made on the topic for your reading pleasure:

Hey Harlan,

Great video on submodalities.

I was just thinking about your comments that submodalities are not really related to copywriting and it got me thinking about how copywriting is ALL about submodalities.

When people read writing on a page, whether it’s a webpage, a page in a book, a PDF or any other type of written content, they understand what’s been written by creating various internal representations about what’s being said (and also what’s not being said but might be implied or presupposed). These internal representations each have submodalities of their own and when people read text they tend to do so using at least 3 modalities.

The strategy most people tend to use for reading is:
Ve(Visual External) – Ad (auditory dialog) – Vi (Visual Internal) – Ki (Kinesthetic Internal).

That is, they read the text that’s on the page and repeat it back to themselves inside their heads (some will note that this step isn’t required and is in someways a left over byproduct of a limited teaching method when it comes to reading), then they visualise what’s being talked about inside of their head and finally have some sort of feeling about what they’ve read.

The fact that people create internal representations that otherwise wouldn’t have been there is an indication that the text they’re reading is the trigger for them creating new things in their minds. The question is, how can you write in such a way that the images they create in their minds follow along with what you’d like them to experience.

One example I really like is as follows:

Two sentences:

“The man followed the woman in the dark”

Think about this for a moment and notice what kinds of pictures you make inside your head. Notice where the picture is, how big it is, how bright or dark it is, how close is the picture and and is it 2D or 3D? Now notice how it makes you feel. Are you excited? scared? intrigued? motivated? desiring more? and notice where the feeling begins, how intense it is, how it moves around your body.

Here’s the second sentence:

“The cloaked bandit skulked in the shadows as he stalked the scarlet woman through the night”

Think about this for a moment and notice what kinds of pictures you make inside your head. Notice where the picture is, how big it is, how bright or dark it is, how close is the picture and and is it 2D or 3D? Now notice how it makes you feel. Are you excited? scared? intrigued? motivated? desiring more? and notice where the feeling begins, how intense it is, how it moves around your body.

Now when you think about the 2 different sentences and compare what’s different, what happens? Were the pictures different? Was one more detailed than the other, was one bigger than the other, was one closer than the other, were they in different locations? and the feelings, was one more intense than the other?, were the levels of intrigue different for each one? did the feelings move in different ways?, and what else?

To me, the question isn’t really whether submodalities are related to copywriting, the question is how does what I write affect the types of things people do in their heads. How do I use adverbs, adjectives, presuppositions, modal operators and how do I link different parts of the text together to create different structures in the minds of my readers.

I remember at a training course when we were first introduced to the idea that by simple body gestures we could change how people represented what we were talking about. We were asked to think of an apple and the trainer held his hands close together showing an average apple sized space between his fingers. Then he said “think of another apple” and as the same time, he moved his hands apart and made a gesture with the space about the size of his head. Guess what? The picture of the apple inside my head grew to be the size he indicated with his hands.

This is simply an indication that everything we do in communication affects how we represent what we’re hearing, seeing and experiencing. Submodalities exist with every internal representation and depending on how we package our communication depends on how those representations are experienced.

Thanks again for creating these fantastic videos Harlan. I like most things that get me thinking and I hope my reply had been of help either to yourself or others reading this.

Take care, Jamie