Icarus

I was tearing my hair out and gnashing my teeth and shaking my fists at the sky.

​​Ok, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic but things were really bad. I spent a long time trying to come up with an example to illustrate the “Icarus” story template — and I still had nothing.

And then I had this brilliant idea. I would write about pickup artist Tom Torero.

​​Tom went from a shy, nerdy, anxiety-ridden Oxford student… to a professional pickup artist, living a life of confidence, adventure, and freedom… to finally being doxxed, deplatformed, and driven to suicide this past December.

​​Pretty Icarusy, right?

But here’s the thing. Maybe you notice I am sending this email out later than usual.

​​That’s because I spent an unholy amount of time trying to tell Tom’s story. But I couldn’t do it right, not without running into pages of text, completely obscuring the Icarus structure I was supposed to be illustrating.

​​After hours of fruitless work, crushed and defeated, I raised my fist up at the sky one last time, shook it weakly, and then gave up. All I can do now is report on my failure to write today’s email.

So remember there is such a thing as a canonical Icarus storyline. It can be represented graphically by /\.

And also, remember to be mindful of what details you include in your stories.

There are details — like the oversized brown corduroy pants that Tom used to wear, which emphasized his girlish hips and his narrow shoulders — that can give your story sticking power.

But there also details — like the many too many details I couldn’t keep myself from including today — that just sidetrack your story.

So learn from my mistake. Be conscious and continent with your detail sharing. Your stories will be more impactful for it — and you will be done writing much sooner.

If you want more advice on storytelling, including about the most powerful story template to use in online selling, you will want to read my email tomorrow. You can sign up to get it here.