Here’s a shameful confession:
My only ambition in life was to be a novelist, but I’m largely cured. An article by Robin Hanson, titled Why We Fight Over Fiction, does a good job explaining why:
We tell stories with language, and so prefer to tell the kind of stories that ordinary language can describe well.
[…]
Stories that take place in modern settings tend to focus on personal, romantic, and family relations, as these remain to us relatively familiar moral universes. Or on artist biopics. Or on big conflicts like war or corrupt police or politicians. For which we have comfortable moral framings.
In other words, we almost always tell the same stories, reinforcing the same mores we’ve been reinforcing for a long-ass time, dealing with the same types of characters we are already all-too familiar with.
This might be bad news if you had hopes of being a novel novelist… but great news if you want to influence and persuade people. Because even though we’ve heard the same stories over and over, we keep craving more. Storytelling remains a powerful way to persuade and get attention. And yet it’s as formulaic as making a soft-boiled egg.
Which brings me to the bullets course I am launching next Monday. Bullets happen to be great for mastering most of what copywriting is about. But one big piece is missing, and that’s telling a story.
So to fix that, I’m including a free bonus along with the course. It will be a special presentation, delivered by me, on how to tell a story in copy or your other sales messages. And for the record, this is something I know pretty well.
Over the past several years, I’ve written dozens of front-end advertorials — basically mini sales letters — all following the same “horror story” structure.
By my estimate, these advertorials have made several million dollars worth of sales from cold traffic, mostly Facebook and now YouTube. I think a big reason for this success is the stories right at the top of each of these advertorial — they grab prospects and keep them reading, all the way to the point where they are wondering, “What the hell did I just buy?”
So in this bonus presentation, delivered over Zoom so you can ask me questions, I will tell you how I come up with these effective stories… how I organize them and present them… and how you can do the same.
Again, this is a free bonus that you get if you sign up for my bullets course by Sunday. If you’re interested in signing up for the course, or just to learn more about it, then the first step is simple and risk-free. It’s to sign up for my email newsletter. You can do so here.