Sticky Messages

Once upon a time

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It was a dark and stormy morning, and the anti-hero of our story, Bond Jebakovic, was sitting in a dimly-lit coffee shop — one of the few dimly-lit coffee shops in this otherwise-sunny Catalan town, for Barcelona is where our story takes place — sipping a latte, his bloodshot eyes glued to the door.

Bond was on a top-secret mission, and he was desperate for intel.

Suddenly, a woman walked in.

​​She was wearing a raincoat and sunglasses, though, as mentioned, it was a dark and stormy morning, and sunglasses were really not required. ​​Maybe it was for effect? Or maybe she had something to hide?

The woman looked around. The coffee shop was empty except for Bond, who was sitting on an uncomfortable bench in the corner.

The stranger walked to the counter and ordered. “Double espresso,” she said, “and one of those little pistachio cookies.”

While the barista busied himself with the order, the woman ambled around the coffee shop. ​​She approached and examined the large monstera plant in the corner. She walked to the large window and looked out to the gray street outside. Finally, she took a few steps towards Bond. ​​Without a sound, she dropped an envelope on the bench next to him.

​​Bond grabbed the envelope. ​On the face of it was a typewrittten title: Monday Morning Memo. Bond tore it open and started to read:

From: Research Dept. Head Roy H. Williams
21 Nov 2022, 7:11AM CET

Bond —

I was most pleased to hear you are still alive. Unfortunately, we can’t allow you any rest. You must deliver the following message immediately to AK. it’s a matter of life and death.

Start of Message:

Most stories should be told as fiction, even when they are true. When confronted with facts we are always on our guard. But the words, “Once Upon a Time” dispel doubt, open the imagination, and create a willing suspension of disbelief.

Case study from Agent William Lederer:

“I was a journalist and none of my books had sold very well, so I showed Jim the manuscript for my newest book. He told me to go back and fictionalize the name of the country, the characters, everything. Jim said to me, ‘The public is more willing to believe fiction than non-fiction.’”

Outcome:

* The resulting book, The Ugly American, stayed on the New York Times list for 78 weeks

* It was directly responsible for the creation of the Peace Corps

* Then-President John F. Kennedy bought a copy of the book for every member of Congress

* Historians speculate The Ugly American did more to change American Foreign Policy than any document since the Declaration of Independence

Bond rushed out of the coffee shop and started running down the street. AK’s apartment was just a block away, but as headquarters wrote, it was a matter of life and death.

Would AK be at home? Would Bond deliver the message in time? And what about those little pistachio cookies — were they any good?

All that, and more, on tomorrow’s installment of Bond Jebakovic Action Adventures. For a free trial subscription to this pulp daily email newsletter, click here and fill out the free trial subscription form.

My recipe for writing a book that influences people and sells itself

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I just spent the morning reading statistics about the best-selling books of the 20th century so I could bring you the following curious anecdote or two:

The year 1936 saw the publication of two all-time bestselling books.

The first of these was Gone With The Wind. That’s a novel that clocked in at 1,037 pages. “People may not like it very much,” said one publishing insider, “but nobody can deny that it gives a lot of reading for your money.”

Gone With The Wind was made into a 1939 movie with Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, which won a bunch of Oscars. Without the monstrous success of the movie, odds are that few people today would know about the book, even though it sold over 30 million copies in its time.

On the other hand, consider the other all-time bestseller published in 1936.

It has sold even better — an estimated 40 million copies as of 2022.

And unlike Gone With The Wind, this second book continues to sell over 250,000 each year, even today, almost a century after its first publication.

What’s more, this book does it all without any advertising, without the Hollywood hype machine, simply based on its own magic alone.

You might know the book I’m talking about. It’s Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People.

One part of this success is clearly down to the promise in the title. As Carnegie wrote back then, nobody teaches you this stuff in school. And yet, it’s really the fundamental work of what it means to be a human being.

But it can’t be just the title. That’s not reason why the book continues to sell year after year, or why millions of readers say the book changed their lives.

This includes me. I read How To Win Friends for the first time when I was around 18. It definitely changed how I behave.

For example, take Carnegie’s dictum that you cannot ever win an argument.

​​I’m argumentative by nature. But just yesterday, I kept myself from arguing — because Carnegie’s ghost appeared from somewhere and reminded me that I make my own life more difficult every time I aim to prove I’m right.

This kind of influence comes down to what’s inside the covers, and not just on them.

So what’s inside? I’ll tell ya.

Each chapter of Carnegie’s book is exactly the same, once you strip away the meat and look at the skeleton underneath. It goes like this:

1. Anecdote
2. The core idea of the chapter, which is illustrated by the anecdote above, and which is further illustrated by…
3. Anecdote
4. Anecdote
5. Anecdote
6. (optional) Anecdote

The valuable ideas in Carnegie’s book can fit on a single page. But it’s the other 290 pages of illustration that have made the book what it is.

In other words, the recipe for mass influence and continued easy sales is being light on how-to and heavy on case studies and stories, including personal stories and experiences.

Maybe you say that’s obvious. And it should be, if you read daily email newsletters like mine. But maybe you don’t read my newsletter yet. In case you’d like to fix that, so you can more ideas and illustrations on how to influence and even sell people, then I suggest you click here and follow the instructions that appear.

A man, a woman, a gun, and some crickets

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Picture the scene:

It’s dark.

Crickets are chirping.

A beautiful school teacher is moving quickly around her empty and isolated prairie house.

She’s undressing after a long day.

She gets down to her white chemise. She turns around from her closet to her bed and— SHRIEK!

She sees there’s a man sitting there in the dark, hands crossed on his chest.

“Keep going teacher lady,” he says with a hint of menace in his voice.

The school teacher stands there, breathing heavily, her hand at her chest, with a look on her face that says, NEVER.

The man slowly reaches over, picks up a gun, and points it at the school teacher.

“Don’t mind me,” he says coldly. “Keep on going.”

The woman looks down at her chemise in shame. She starts to untie the top. Now her face seems to be begging the man to let her stop.

But the man is obviously enjoying the show. He looks the woman up and down while still keeping the gun pointed at her.

The woman continues to undress. She’s now down to just her britches. She holds her chemise against her body to keep some dignity.

The man takes a deep breath.

“Let down your hair,” he says.

She does. The chemise drops to the ground and she’s just left in her one-piece underwear.

“Shake your head,” the man says.

She does. Her hair falls across her face.

The man doesn’t say anything more. Instead, he just gestures with the gun. He wants the woman to do away with the remaining underwear also.

She hesitates. There’s a mixture of fury and resolve on her face. Eventually, with decided movements, she starts to untie and unbutton her underwear.

She stands there, almost naked, with the underwear barely on her shoulders, ready to slip off.

The crickets keep chirping.

The man lowers his gun. Slowly, he takes off his gun belt. He stands up and walks to the woman.

He reaches inside her untied underwear.

The woman can barely control her fury.

“You know what I wish?” she says with her teeth clenched.

“What?”

“That once you’d get here on time!” And she puts her arms around the man and they kiss.

As you might know, that’s a scene from the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

It’s the first time we see the character played by Katharine Ross, the school teacher who was Sundance’s lover and who accompanied Butch and Sundance all the way down to Bolivia.

I’m using this scene to express an idea by Mark Ford, which is itself an expression of a much older idea:

“Ideas in and of themselves have little value. The value lies in the way they are expressed. New ideas are never new. Nor are they the product of a single mind. Rather, they are the particular articulation of general ideas that are in the common marketplace of ideas, repeated endlessly until one particular articulation catches fire. Remember this when you have a new idea that you are excited about. If you want to have it accepted, you must be willing to express it in dozens of different ways.”

A man and a woman in love. Not new.

A man and a woman in love, meeting after a long absence and hungrily reaching for each other. Not new.

An apparent rape, which turns out to be a man and a woman in love, meeting after a long absence and hungrily reaching for each other. That’s something you win an Oscar for, which is what happened to screenwriter William Goldman after he wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Whatever. Maybe you see where I’m going with this. And maybe you don’t. If you don’t, then I guess I’ve done my job, and that job ain’t easy. As A-list copywriter Jim Rutz said once:

“You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy. This takes time and toil.”

Do you see where I’m going now? I want to make sure that you do, so let me spell it out:

I write a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and influence. If you’d like to be surprised on occasion, and maybe get exposed to some valuable ideas as well, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

Using Stefan Georgi in your copy

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“It might take some figuring out to do it to where people aren’t pissed at you and you do it right, but I think this could actually be a home run thing that just absolutely CRUSHES it.”
— Stefan Georgi

So now let me ask you:

What is it?

What is Stefan talking about in the quote above?

I’ll give you a hint:

It’s a little gimmick, which Stefan advises you to use to start off your ad and VSL copy. It ties into that all-powerful driver of action, curiosity. And additionally, it creates a feeling of insight.

No? you don’t know the gimmick Stefan has in mind? Let me give you one more hint:

It starts with the letter R…

Then I…

Then D…

Then another D…

All right, fine — it’s riddles. In a recent video, “Using riddles in your copy,” Stefan advises using riddles in your ads and VSLs.

Why riddles?

Because riddles — “How many months have 28 days?” — consistently go viral on social media.

And what Stefan and many other smart marketers like to do is to camouflage their sneaky sales pitch and make it look like something — a riddle, for example — which you might want to consume for your own ends, and not for theirs.

And now, let me throw off my cloak and hold up my wizard staff, and with a blinding light shining from behind me, admit in my deep and resonant voice that this is exactly what I’ve done with this email.

Because the underlying idea Stefan is recommending — people enjoy riddles, so give ’em riddles — is at the core of my Copy Riddles program.

My goal was to make Copy Riddles fun. So I covered up the teaching, the learning, and the transformation bit in what I call copy riddles, hence the name of the program. ​​Did it work? Here’s what copywriter Cindy Suzuki, who joined Copy Riddles a few days ago, thinks about it:

Hi John,

I am having a blast with copy riddles so far. It feels like a game. I love it when learning is actually fun. Was on the fence until the last day, and I’m so glad I bought it 🙂

Cindy

If you like fun and games, and maybe some sales, then don’t join Copy Riddles. But see if you can sign up for my email newsletter. You can get started on that puzzle right here.

I’ve done my best to hide a valuable lesson inside today’s email

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“I was in hell. I knew all the salesman’s tricks. Why wasn’t I rich? Why wasn’t I successful? I opened the Bible, and I read the 18th Psalm. ‘The Lord is my rock and my fortress.’”

That’s from the “Christ in Commerce” sermon in Elmer Gantry, a 1960 film that I believe should be required viewing for anybody interested in copywriting, marketing, and influence.

Elmer Gantry should be required because fun should be required. And Elmer Gantry is a fun, loud, and entertaining film starring Burt Lancaster, possibly the most manly man of all time.

But Elmer Gantry should also be required because it’s about a huckster, a scammer, a traveling salesman turned revivalist preacher, once he figures out that preaching pays better than selling electric toasters.

Elmer Gantry tells of a time in US history that also gave birth to direct response advertising.

In fact, the Elmer Gantry type of big-tent sermonizing was a cousin discipline to direct response marketing.

​​It continues to be so to this day. Just think of people like Dan Kennedy and Tony Robbins — and the thousands of marketers who have learned from them — speaking in front of an audience of ten thousand, while a hungry sales team waits near the exits.

All right, that’s it for my email today. In case you’d like to learn how to write emails like this, you can find that inside my Most Valuable Email training. The link to that is below.

“Whoa there,” I hear you saying. “Why in the Elmer Gantry would I want to learn to write emails like this? Just something from an old movie? Where’s the cleverness or the conceit in that? Where’s the valuable marketing idea? What exactly did I learn here?”

I promise there’s a valuable idea in this email, and it’s not just that Elmer Gantry is a fun film.

Perhaps you can figure out this idea on your own.

In any case, you can find it explicitly explained in MVE #14 in the Most Valuable Email Swipes, which is something you get with core MVE training. In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Gratuitous fun to make readers stand up and beg for buttermilk

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For the first 20 or 30 years of my life, I had this serious mental defect where I couldn’t enjoy a good bangemup action movie.

“So unrealistic,” I snuffled. “So predictable.” That’s how I wasted decades of my life.

Thank God I’ve grown up.

​​Because now I can watch and enjoy movies like True Lies, James Cameron’s 1994 action comedy.

​​True Lies stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as super spy/boring suburban dad Harry Tasker, and Jamie Lee Curtis as his stodgy/talented wife Helen.

The initial reason I watched True Lies was the following famous line. It’s delivered by a used car salesman who’s trying to seduce Helen and is unwittingly confiding to Harry about it:

“And she’s got the most incredible body, too, and a pair of titties that make you wanna stand up and beg for buttermilk. Ass like a ten year old boy!”

Which modern Hollywood screenplay would dare have that?

But even beyond the risky dialogue, I was surprised by how fun this movie is. I guess that’s the only word to describe it. For example, as the movie goes on, you get to see:

– an old man sitting on a public toilet, calmly reading a newspaper, during the first shootout between Harry and the bad guy

– Harry riding a horse into an elevator, and an aristocratic couple in the elevator getting whipped in the face by the horse’s tail

– Tia Carrere (the evil seductress in the movie) rushing to grab her purse before the bad guys drop a box with a nuclear warhead onto it

– a pelican landing on a teetering van full of terrorists and sending it crashing off the bridge

– Harry saving the day flying a military jet, perfectly landing the plane on a city street, and then accidentally bumping a cop car

The point is that all these details are what I call “gratuitous fun.”

They weren’t in any way central to the action of the movie… and even the comedic part of the plot could have done without them.

They were just pure, unnecessary fun that made the movie sparkle a bit more. And I guess they helped it become the success that it was, netting almost $400 million in 1994 dollars.

I think the message is clear:

This year, surprise your readers with some gratuitous fun in your online content, in your sales messages, and even your one-to-one business communication.

​​People love James Cameron’s movies. They will love your stuff, too. In fact, you’ll make them wanna stand up and beg for buttermilk. Whatever that means.

And if you are too close to your own marketing to know what “gratuitous fun” might look like… well, maybe you can get some ideas from my own marketing. If you like, you can sign up for my daily email newsletter here.

I just remembered Cialdini’s best way to teach anybody anything

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I’ve just awakened from a hypnotic trance.

I spent the last 16 minutes watching a video of a fridge repairman from Alabama disassembling a failed fridge compressor.

As my hypnotic trance cleared, I began to marvel at this mystery.

After all, I don’t have a fridge compressor to fix. And I’m not looking for DIY advice.

In fact, I have zero interest in fridges or handymanism. I wasn’t familiar with 95% of the technical terms the fridge guy was using. I really could gain nothing practical or pleasurable from his 16-minute video.

So why did I watch it, with rapt attention, from beginning to end?

Perhaps, you say, I was just looking to waste time instead of writing this email.

I certainly do like to waste time instead of working. But why not waste time doing something I like, like reading the New Yorker, or watching some Bill Burr on YouTube?

No, it wasn’t that.

But perhaps, you say again, I just enjoy feeling smug and right.

After all, the dead fridge compressor was from 2009. And the fridge repair guy specializes in maintaining long-running, old fridges that go back to the 1940s. So maybe I was just looking for confirmation of my belief that old is good and new is worthless.

Maybe. But if that’s the case, why did I have to watch the video, and all 16 minutes of it? I mean, the video’s title gave me all I really needed to feel smug:

“Declining quality of consumer-grade products – 2009 fridge compressor autopsy…”

So no, it can’t be that.

But perhaps I just wanted to share something cool with a friend.

Even though I have no interest in handymanism, I do have a friend who is into it. I wanted to forward him this video, and maybe, you say, I just wanted to make sure it was worthwhile.

But that doesn’t hold water either. After all, this video popped up on a news aggregator I frequent, where it got 2-3x the usual number of upvotes. That’s a lot of tacit endorsement of quality. And I could tell within just the first minute or two that my friend might find this video interesting, and that I should send him the link.

So why did I myself watch the entire thing?

In trying to figure out the answer to this puzzle, I jumped back to a critical point in the video at minute 5:54.

The fridge guy has just tested whether the compressor failed because of electrical failure. No, it turns out, it wasn’t electrical.

So he decides to cut open the locked-up compressor and see what’s going on inside. As soon as he cuts the compressor open, the motor moves freely, and is no longer locked up.

The fridge guy is in wonder.

“I don’t understand at all,” he says. He decides to try to power the compressor up again. “My guess is it still won’t start.”

“Aha!” I said. “I get it now!”

Because I realized what was going on. I realized why I had been sucked into this video so hypnotically.

It was the structure of the way the fridge guy was doing his compressor autopsy.

He was using the exact same structure I read about once. A very smart and influential professor of persuasion spelled out this structure in a book, and he said it’s the best way to present any new information and teach anyone anything.

I don’t know if the fridge repair guy had been secretly reading the work of this professor of persuasion.

But I do know that if you’re trying to teach anybody anything, whether in person, in your courses, or just in your marketing, then this structure is super valuable.

It makes it so people actually want to consume your material. They will even want to consume it all the way to the end (just look at me and that 16-minute fridge video).

This structure also makes it so the info you are teaching sticks in people’s heads. That way, they are more likely to use it, profit from it, and become grateful students and customers for life.

And this structure even makes it so people experience an “Aha moment,” just like I did. When that happens, people feel compelled to share their enthusiasm with others, just like I am doing now with you right now.

You might be curious about this structure and who this professor of persuasion is.

Well, I will tell you the guy’s name is Robert Cialdini. He is famous for writing the book Influence. But the structure I’m talking about is not described in Influence.

Instead, it’s described in another of Cialdini’s books, Pre-Suasion.

Now, if you read Daniel Throssell’s emails, you might know that Daniel advises people to skip Pre-Suasion. He even calls it the worst copywriting book he has ever read.

I don’t agree.

Because in Chapter 6 of Pre-Suasion, Cialdini spells out the exact structure I’ve been telling you about. Plus he gives you an example from his own teaching.

This is some hard-core how-to. ​And if you ever want to get information into people’s heads, and make it stick there, for their benefit as well as your own, you might find this how-to information very valuable.

In case you want it:

https://bejakovic.com/presuasion

Drop your phone in the toilet, grab a cup of coffee, and read this whole email word for word

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About two weeks ago, I got a surprise:

Dan Kennedy started sending me emails.

I’m not 100% how this happened. In the past, I’ve signed up for email newsletters on various DK websites.

​​As I’ve written before, I’m a big Dan Kennedy fan and I had high hopes.

But it always turned out the emails were not written by Dan. They were just random pitches for various DK stuff. Each time, I eventually ended up unsubscribing.

And yet, two weeks ago, I suddenly started getting emails from Dan again. And they are great.

I don’t think these new emails are actually written by Dan either, not now, not as emails. It’s probably just old Dan content, repurposed for the email format by some marketing monkey working under Russell Brunson, who has bought up Dan’s entire business.

Still, it’s great stuff, full of humor and valuable ideas. For example, here’s one bit from a recent DK email which caught my eye:

One of the great litmus tests of a newsletter is when yours arrives, are people so excited about it that they drop whatever they’re doing, take their phone and lock it in the trunk of their car, get a cup of coffee, then eagerly sit down to go through it? At least a quick skim to see what’s there and then say, “Tonight, when I have more time, I’m gonna read the whole thing word for word.” Is that how they react?

This caught my eye because last month, I launched my Most Valuable Postcard.

​​MVP is not a newsletter — really, it’s an un-newsletter. It covers tried-and-proven marketing principles rather than new techniques and tactics.

I was wondering how people would react to this approach, and to the format of the postcard. Well, initial reactions are starting to filter in.

One MVP subscriber, who shall remain unnamed, said that in the excitement of receiving her postcard, she ended up dropping her phone into the toilet (the phone survived).

​​Sure, a house is not a home, and a toilet is not a trunk. But it may be even better.

And as for reading the whole postcard word for word, MVP subscriber Jakub Červenka just wrote me to say:

Hey John,

Just wanted to let you know I just got your postcard. I am only half-way through your horror stories, but I am already sure you over-delivered on value.

And I have a feeling that your postcard newsletter thingie is case-in-point study in putting in work up front for your prospects.

I don’t have yet enough money / business big enough to be able to afford you, but you making this whole thing so personal, I cannot think of anyone I’d rather work with once I am launching my funnel in English market..

But in the meantime, I am pre-sold already on any copywriting course you may sell in future.

And my mind is already spinning trying to come up with ways I could use what I am learning from you into my business.

Thank you for inspiration, it is awesome!

Jakub has only read half the postcard so far. That’s hardly word-for-word reading… but as far a testimonial for MVP, I don’t think I could ask for anything better.

Still, I’m still not sure what to do with this project.

Like Jakub says, it’s very personal… but also very unscalable.

If I ever reopen this offer to new subscribers, I might tweak the format, and I will certainly increase the price.

But if that doesn’t turn you away, and you want the chance to lock your phone in your trunk or at least fumble it into the toilet when you get a postcard in the mail from me, you can sign up for my (free) daily email newsletter, so you can get notified if I reopen MVP again.

A fun and easy email about “appointment marketing”

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I’m in this bantering WhatsApp group with a few friends that I studied with. In the group, we exchange stupid jokes and tabloid headlines, and we reminisce about times spent drinking together.

I’m very happy to join in all that.

But sooner or later, the conversation turns to Netflix and the shows people are watching. Whenever this happens, I sit there, a frozen smile on my face, with nothing to contribute, quietly desperate inside, waiting for the storm to pass.

I stopped watching TV a long time ago, and I completely missed out on the streaming revolution. I never got into any of the millions of streaming shows.

I wish my friends never got into them either, so I wouldn’t have to sit on the sidelines during the latest rounds of, “It was soooooo good, you should check it out!”

So it was with some malicious glee today that I read an article on Vulture, about Netflix’s recent troubles.

The article came out late last month, on the heels of news that Netflix lost subscribers for the first time in 10 years. Netflix’s stock price dropped 35% as a result, erasing over $50 billion worth of value in one day.

“Good,” I cackled to myself, rubbing my hands together. ​​

But you know what? I might not watch Netflix, but I do care what they do as a company.

Because like Ben Settle has been pointing out for years, we have entered the age of entertainment. Today, not only your education or selling, but even your entertainment, needs to be presold through entertainment and still more entertainment.

And who better to learn from than the hottest entertainment provider today? That’s why I figure Netflix’s hits and misses are both worth studying.

The Vulture article gives an interesting analysis of what has been going wrong at Netflix. The article deserves digging up and reading in full. Here I will share just one fun and easy thing with you.

Netflix innovated binge watching. All episodes of a show were dumped to the public at the same time.

That means you can spend a weekend in bed, eating Nutella out of the jar, and watching episode after episode of Bridgerton until nausea sets in, either from the show or from Nutella.

But while binge watching got Netflix a cult of rabid fans to start, it has its drawbacks, which are now surfacing.

One drawback is obvious. The lifetime of a binged show tends to be short.

The second drawback is less obvious. Many people like the opposite of binge watching, something the Vulture article calls “appointment TV.”

For example, knowing (once upon a time) that Seinfeld is coming on at 9pm every Thursday isn’t just about having a ritual for a Thursday evening for an entire year.

It also creates expectation and excitement.

It allows viewers to bond with their friends who are also watching the same show.

And maybe most important, it allows people the pleasure of sharing and converting others, getting you free publicity, and money money money.

So what exactly am I telling you to do?

Absolutely nothing.

​​In fact, if you remember anything from this email, remember my disappointed face whenever I hear the conversation turn to Netflix recommendations… and remember my fiendish cackling whenever I read about Neflix’s troubles.

Because I figure that for anything like “appointment marketing” to work, it takes more than just a regular schedule.

The content itself must be fun and easy. Even a hint of work or seriousness is probably deadly.

So in the interest of having you go on Twitter to share the latest Bejako email… or tell your friends that my newsletter is soooooo good and they havetocheckitout… I will stop myself here. And I will go peek in my WhatsApp group, maybe for some political memes to make me chuckle.

And on the next episode of Bejako…

Well, that episode will air tomorrow, at around 8pm CET, in your inbox, in case you sign up for my fun and easy email newsletter.

Tell, don’t show

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Among copywriters, the most famous movie of all time is Lethal Weapon. That’s because Gene Schwartz, the author of Breakthrough Advertising, which is something like a bible in the field, once said that every copywriter should watch Lethal Weapon at least two or three times, preferably back to back.

Gene was recommending Lethal Weapon because of its BANG-talk-BOOM-talk-JOKE-BANG-BOOM-talk structure.

But Lethal Weapon is an influence gift that keeps on giving. For example:

In one early scene, we see Martin Riggs, a cop played by Mel Gibson, in the middle of a Christmas tree lot. Riggs is being used as a human shield by a cornered drug dealer, who is pointing a gun at Riggs’s head.

Riggs starts yelling to the gathering cops, who all have their guns out. “Shoot him! Shoot the bastard!”

The drug dealer is getting flustered. He begs Riggs to shut up.

​​Riggs keeps yelling. And in a flash, he turns around, grabs the gun from the drug dealer, headbutts him, and ends the standoff.

​​Next scene:

W​e see the same Martin Riggs, in his ramshackle trailer by the beach, late at night. He’s drinking and looking at a framed wedding photo of himself and his wife.

Riggs takes his gun and puts it inside his mouth. He tries to pull the trigger, but he can’t. He starts crying. “Oh, I miss you,” Riggs says to the picture.

Are you getting an idea of what kind of character Martin Riggs might be?

I hope so.

But in case not, there’s one more scene I want to tell you about. In fact, it’s the very next scene in the movie:

The police office psychologist is walking with the police captain through the police station. “May I remind you,” she says to the captain, “that his wife of 11 years was recently killed in a car accident? He’s on the edge, sir. I’m telling you he may be psychotic. You’re making a mistake by keeping him in the field. The man is suicidal.”

So now let me point out the obvious:

Probably the most famous bit of writing advice is to show and not tell.

And it’s good advice.

It’s almost as good as the advice to both show and tell, which is what’s happening in those Lethal Weapon scenes.

Because with buddy cop comedies, sales copy, and with influential writing as well, we are really not looking for people to draw their own conclusions.

Sure, it’s great if they conclude what we want them to, on their own. And that’s why we show them stuff.

But you don’t want to leave it there. You don’t want to give people any wiggle room. So that’s why you tell them your point as well as show it.

What? You say you knew that already? Or you say it’s so obvious that it doesn’t need to be pointed out?

Fine. So let me tell you something else, which might be genuinely new:

You can tell people stuff. Including stuff that’s not supported by the emotional visualization you just showed them.

Because an emotion is like syrup. It can be poured over anything… and once it’s poured onto the pancakes, it’s likely to spread all over the plate, to the sausages also.

That’s a super valuable idea, if you only grasp it.

​​In fact, all my emails are chock full of such super valuable ideas. If you want me to show you as well as tell you that, sign up for my newsletter here.