I'm trying to properly phrase a main sentence on a banner. Imagine that you had a dream to do something but it had to be put aside (let's say into a drawer) to wait for a better times. Now, I want to ask a viewer whether it is a good time now to get back to his dream and make it true. Does the following sentence make sense? Can it be improved?
Good time to get your dream out of the drawer?
Typically for billboards or banners you want to keep your word count at 6 or less. Or syllables under 8. That is what typical people can read in a glance.
You have 10. Some alternatives:
[a bit long] Get your dream out of the drawer!
Time to work on your dream?
Let's pursue your dream.
And so on. As a drive-by thing (either literally or metaphorically for a page flipper in a magazine), your line is a bit too long, people will get "Time to get your dream out of..." and move on.
I've written a lot of ad copy; my professional advice is to shorten it.
Perhaps "mothballs" is better than "the drawer".
Perhaps "revive" is a useful word; e.g. "Revive that old dream".
6 words or 8 syllables is not an ironclad rule, it is just where the statistics point. Longer headlines have worked. But I play the odds, if I can get the thought across in fewer words, I do.
Your suggestion suffers from (at least) the following flaws:
To improve you need to focus on the thought you want to elicit in the reader.
Some examples below.
Note: a question in a banner typically takes more time to process. The reason is that the reader has to use their brain to find an answer unless the answer is obvious.
Asking whether it is a good time to pursue something, the reader has to consider the alternatives, evaluate whether they are more important/urgent than the dream, and decide whether the risk of wasting time on a dream is worth it. All this takes time, and by then they have already passed a few other banners.
A simpler banner like:
Got a dream?
Makes the reader think about the dream, about the fact that they have not pursued, and consider whether it is time to do so.
If you want them to feel the urgency, then add a reference to it:
Time up for your dream!
If instead this is just a ploy to advertise watches then focus on the time element and push the dream out of the picture:
Now is the time.
