William Goldman

The fallout of my “rape” subject line

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3 days ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “Don’t rape your audience.”

That hook came from a quote from screenwriter William Goldman (Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid), who compared gradually seducing your audience (movie screenplays) to raping them (TV writing).

Like I said at the start of that email, rape is a shocking metaphor. In today’s society, it’s borderline impermissible.

So sure enough, when I checked my unsubscribe count for this email, it showed I disappointed, offended, or perhaps triggered a lot of people. ​​My unsubscribes proved it. I had 7 unsubscribes total, which might not sound like a lot, but is 5.8x my norm for the past 90 days.

I did the hard work of checking who all those unsubscribes were.

Some were new — they signed up only a few weeks ago for my “Analysis of Daniel Throssell” presentation.

Others had been on my list for a while.

Either way, none of them had ever bought anything from me… replied to any of my emails… played along with any of the engagement bait I regularly put out… or even opened and read my emails very often.

So there’s that, the hard and toxic fallout.

On the other hand, I also had a dozen thoughtful replies to my email, both about the subject line and the idea in the body. Almost all these replies came from successful marketers and copywriters. For example, copywriter Robert Smith, who runs his own CRO agency, wrote in to say:

Yo.

Yesterday I was on a zoom call with the team.

It was about our marketing emails.

I shared my screen and opened my email app to talk about a thing.

Instead of talking about our email stuff, we spent the next 10 minutes admiring your subject line.

It’s tier-1.

At first, I had a thought like:
“In a non-DR market this would get super-high Opens, but just as many Spam complaints.”

Addendum to original thought after opening:
“…Only if the body doesn’t deliver.”

3rd addendum after reading body:
“And… It delivered.”

Kick ass! And super inspiring to see. Really got me thinking: “my subject lines suck!”

Robert pretty much spelled out everything I wanted to say about this crisis.

Shocking subject lines, and shocking topics in general, will polarize your audience.

But if you can somehow back up your shocking stuff in a congruent way, you will only scrub away the barnacles clinging to the gleaming white hull of your magnificent ship.

At the same time, you will engage and bond more deeply with successful, thoughtful people, the kinds of people you want to associate yourself with, whether as customers, clients, or just readers.

You might say I am not telling you anything new here.

And you’re right. Ben Settle and Dan Kennedy before him have both been preaching this kind of repulsion marketing for years.

But fundamentals like this work. And so they are worth repeating from time to time. Until maybe the right time, when it all clicks for you and you decide to try it out for yourself.

Anyways, if you have a business, and you’re worried your subject lines suck, then you might want to hire me to help with that.

Because as of now, I’m offering consulting. And one of the things I’m highly qualified to consult on is email marketing and copywriting. And not just the shocking and repelling kind. And not just to my own email list.

If case you are interested, fill out the form below, and I’ll be in touch:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

Don’t rape your audience

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Today’s post is on the subject of email marketing, a rather milquetoast topic. The hook, though, is jarring — rape.

I didn’t think of that hook. Instead, it comes from William Goldman, somebody I’ve mentioned often in these emails.

Goldman was first a successful novelist and later a successful Hollywood screenwriter and then again a novelist.

Along the way, he also wrote a non-fiction book called Adventures in the Screen Trade. I read it a couple years ago. It’s a combination of memoir and an insider’s look into Hollywood as it was in the 60s and 70s of the last century.

Somewhere in the Adventures book, Goldman talks about the most important part of a screenplay — the beginning. And it’s here that he writes the following:

“In narrative writing of any sort, you must eventually seduce your audience. But seduce doesn’t mean rape.”

Goldman is contrasting movie writing to TV writing. At the beginning of a movie, Goldman says, you have some time. You can seduce. Things are different in TV land — you gotta be aggressive, right in the first few seconds. Otherwise the viewer will simply change the channel.

I had never thought about this difference. But it makes sense. And it makes me think of…

Sales copy, which is definitely on the TV end of the seduction/rape spectrum. Just think of some famous opening lines of blockbuster VSLs:

“Talk dirty to me”

“We’re going to have to amputate your leg”

What about email copy? Much of it also opens up in the same aggressive way. Here are a few opening lines I just dug up from recent sales emails in my inbox:

“MaryAnne couldn’t take it anymore:”

“In 1981, a dirty magazine published an article that had the potential to make its readers filthy rich.”

I always assumed this is just the way good copy is — VSLs or emails or whatever. Of course, that’s not true.

When I actually look at some of my favorite newsletters (and even some successful sales letters), they don’t have an immediate and aggressive grabber. Instead, they build up and work their way into their point — without rambling, but without aggression either.

The difference comes down to the relationship you have with your list. Some businesses, including some businesses I’ve worked for, have little to no relationship with their list. Each email they send out is like a random infomercial popping up on TV — if it doesn’t capture attention right away, it never will.

But some businesses have a great relationship with their list. They can afford to take the time to light the candles and pour the wine and stare seductively at their reader across the table. In fact, if they didn’t, things would seem off.

Is it possible to go from one style of email marketing to the other?

I believe so. In my experience, people tend to mirror your own emotions and behavior. That means you’ll have to take the first step if you want things to change. Rather than waiting for your list to have a better relationship with you… start seducing, and stop trying to rape.

Now that we’ve warmed up the conversation:

I also have a daily email newsletter. You can subscribe for it here. And if you do subscribe, I promise to… well, I won’t go there.

An open letter to my non-native copywriting brethren

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For my upcoming business of copy guide, Copy Zone, I interviewed three working copywriters about their experiences getting client work.

Only afterwards, I realized a curious and unintended thing had happened:

All three of these copywriters are non-native English speakers. To be fair, one of them is writing copy in his own language (Spanish). But the other two are working and writing in English, and successfully so.

I bring this up because a few days ago, I got a comment and a question from a new reader:

I love your writing and how you take your readers (us) on the journey with you.

I mean, is it even possible for me (a non-native copywriter) to write close to your writing style and finesse?

I don’t know about my writing style and finesse. If there is something fine and stylish about my writing, I think it’s mainly the result of work.

But on the broader question of whether it’s possible for a non-native speaker copywriter to succeed… well, the case studies I will include in Copy Zone definitely show that yes, it is possible.

On the other hand, most people never do anything, and never achieve anything.

One of my favorite “fun” writers is William Goldman, who wrote the screenplays for movies like The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Goldman also wrote books, including one about Hollywood called Adventures in the Screen Trade.

And in that book, Goldman said that, in Hollywood, nobody knows anything.

​​In spite of huge money being on the line… in spite of a bunch of smart and ambitious people working day and night to identify or create the next hit… nobody in Hollywood has any clue of what will end up being successful or why.

My belief is that it’s not just Hollywood where nobody knows anything.

The world is a complex and mysterious place. The only way to find out the answer to many questions is to run the cellular automaton a few million steps and see what ends up happening.

And if you want an example of how weird and unpredictable life can be, then take me.

I am technically a non-native English speaker, though I consider English to be my first language. ​​Meaning, I didn’t grow up speaking English for the first decade or so of my life… but today English is the language I know best, because I’ve done most of my reading, writing, and arithmeticking in English.

I’m not giving myself as an example of somebody who succeeded in copywriting despite a non-native level of English skill.

All I want to point out is that, at birth, and for some years after, nobody could have predicted I would end up speaking English as my first language. And even fewer bodies could have predicted that, one day, I will make my living writing sales copy.

So can you make it as a non-native copywriter?

​​You certainly can. ​​I imagine you knew that already.

But will you make it?

​​Well, here’s something else you probably knew already. That’s a question that only you, and a bit of time, can really answer.

Last point:

If you want to know when my Copy Zone guide is out, or if you want occasional free advice on the business side of copywriting, then grab a spot on my daily email newsletter.

Rescuing the Dread Pirate Roberts from a creative shipwreck

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“There will be no survivors… my men are here, and I am here… but soon, you will not be here…”

Here’s a little riddle for you:

How do three men, one of whom has been mostly dead all day long, storm a castle gate guarded by 60 soldiers?

Inconceivable, right?

​​Even if one of the three men happens to be a giant, and another a master swordsman… the enemies are too many. Success is inconceivable.

But what if you also throw in a wheelbarrow among your assets? And what if you even have a magical, fire-protective, “holocaust cloak”?

Suddenly, the inconceivable becomes easy. Because here’s what you do:

Just load one of the three men — preferably, the giant — into the wheelbarrow. Wrap the holocaust cloak around him.

Then start rolling the wheelbarrow towards the gate… and have the giant yell death threats at the soldiers as you approach.

Finally, just as fear and doubt start to creep into the hearts of the castle defenders… set the holocaust cloak on fire. Have your burning giant yell:

“The Dread Pirate Roberts takes no survivors… all your worst nightmares are about to come true… the Dread Pirate Roberts is here for your souls…”

Presto. The soldiers scatter in a panic, and you have taken the castle.

Perhaps you recognize this as a scene from the 1987 movie The Princess Bride, written by William Goldman.

But perhaps you also recognize it as something else, written by me in 2021.

Because about a month ago, I wrote an email about pirates. In that email, I was re-telling another scene from another William Goldman script, titled Sea Kings. That other scene had many of the same elements as the scene above:

First, a giant all-black figure who appears on the horizon at dusk, and who keeps floating nearer and nearer…

Then, the deep voice rumbling out from the figure… “Death or surrender… surrender or die… the Devil bids you choose…”

And finally, smoke and flames that erupt from around that black giant… to truly identify the legendary pirate you’re meeting face to face:

“Run up the white flag… It’s Blackbeard…”

It turns out Goldman reused a bunch of elements from Sea Kings (written some time in the 70s, never produced) to The Princess Bride (written some time later in the 70s, produced into a movie in 1987, became a giant hit and a big cultural icon).

The bigger point is that if you write a lot, you will eventually come up with a good idea, phrase, joke, motif, trick, transition, or image… which is part of a big creative shipwreck.

​​​Maybe that’s a book you never got published… or a video you made that nobody ever watched… or a daily email that ran too long and failed to make a clear point.

So why not reuse that good element a second, or a third, or a fifth time? In the right context, that rescued element might become highly influential, even though it was part of a disaster initially.

Take my email today, for example.

I hope you liked it. But maybe you didn’t.

If so, would you like me to try again?

As you wish. I’ll try again tomorrow, by rescuing an element of the copy I used today… and fitting it to a new purpose and a different format.

Good night, dear reader. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely write you an email in the morning.

The status pirate game

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Imagine a large and hairy sailor, wearing a striped blue-and-white shirt and a bandana wrapped around his head, looking nervous.

​​The year is 1717, and he is the navigator of an English trading vessel that’s sailing through the Carribean.

A few times, the big navigator makes like he’s going to say something. But he stops himself.

His eyes keep darting forward — out toward the horizon – and then at the captain next to him, who is looking through the telescope.

It’s dusk and there is a ship up ahead. It’s very strange — there is nobody on board.

“It might have been the plague, sir,” the large navigator says. “Sudden plague could have taken them all.”

The captain shakes his head. He’s not at all worried. “Pirates,” he says. “Dusk is their favorite time. Have you readied the cannons?”

The navigator starts shifting his weight from one foot to another. “It would be a very simple matter for us to alter course, sir,” he says.

The captain squints his eyes and looks back through the telescope. “I — never — alter — course,” he says.

That’s the opening scene of a movie that never got made, called Sea Kings.

As you probably guessed, it’s about pirates.

And it’s also about how the human brain determines value.

In this case, start with a large sailor. From his physical size and job title, you would assume him to be a brave man. And he might be, in most situations. But out here, faced with pirates on the open sea, he’s nervous.

Then contrast that to the captain. He’s at another level of coolness and bravery. Unlike the navigator, he’s not afraid of pirates. He’s seen it all before and he won’t flinch.

And because the screenwriter — William Goldman in this case — set it up this way, it makes the next moment all the more dramatic and impressive.

Because in the next moment, a figure appears on the ghost pirate ship. It’s human shaped. But it’s entirely black and it’s enormous. It also appears to be on fire. And then the figure starts to speak. Its deep voice carries across the sea.

“Death or surrender… surrender or die… the Devil bids you choose…”

The big navigator starts screaming and running around. “What is that? WHAT — IS — IT?”

And the captain, who until a moment ago was so determined and tough, suddenly isn’t any more. He’s turned pale. He drops the telescope.

“Run up the white flag,” he whispers to the navigator. “It’s Blackbeard…”

That’s how you make an entrance for your main character.

Not by showing a closeup of him, scowling and looking scary and ugly.

Not by his credentials — the many cruel and daring things he’s done in his career.

Not by an action sequence in which your main character — a hulk of a man — fights a dozen frightened and incompetent soldiers.

No, if you want to make your main character frightening and awe-inspiring, you just put him at the top of a pyramid:

Blackbeard
Normally tough captain
Big and strong sailor who shouldn’t be afraid
The audience, representing the rest of soft and weak humanity

The fact is, the game of status is only ever relative.

You can think of it as a Ponzi scheme, or an MLM. The more people you recruit beneath you… and the more people they recruit beneath them… the better and more valuable your position.

And perhaps you’re wondering how you can specifically use this in marketing and sales copy.

The fact is, there are many ways. I could tell you what they are, but instead I’ll make you an deal:

Get a few people who are interested in direct marketing and form a little study group. With you as the leader. And then get them all to sign up for my newsletter. I’ll share my insights then.

To be Home Aloned

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The original Home Alone movie cost $18 million to make. It went on to gross over $476 million.

For a while, Home Alone was the third highest grossing film in history. For an even longer while, it was the no. 1 money-sucking comedy of all time.

According to screenwriter William Goldman, Home Alone was such a success that Hollywood insiders began to use the term “to be Home Aloned.” It meant to have your movie screwed because it was released at the same time as a runaway blockbuster.

The point being that success can have more to do with who else is in your market… than the inherent quality of your product. This is the essence of why you need positioning. Many fine films, including Look Who’s Talking Too and Hamlet starring Mel Gibson, never got much of an audience because they competed head-on with Home Alone.

But that’s enough on the matter of positioning for this holiday. I only bring up Home Alone because, as I publish this post, I too am home alone. Except my home is an empty room at an airport hotel, with probably no other guests on the same floor.

But much like Kevin in Home Alone, I’m making the best of my situation. In fact, I’ll try to use the fact I’m traveling on Christmas (again) as fodder for my new side-project.

I wrote about this project yesterday. It’s an email newsletter about travel during corona. In case you’d like to see it, or you’d like to subscribe, here’s the link:

https://masksonaplane.com/

Fast and Furry-ous choices for surprising readers

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Picture this scene from The Fast and the Furry-ous, the first Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon:

Wile E. Coyote draws road markers on the ground leading to a cliff. Then he paints a tunnel on the cliff, and hides.

​​MEEP MEEP. The Road Runner comes rushing up, and runs straight through the painted-on tunnel.

​​Wile E. Coyote comes out of hiding, puzzled. ​​He takes a step back, gets a running start – and slams himself into the painted-on cliff. Of course there’s no tunnel there. And just as he’s staggering back to his feet, MEEP MEEP, the Road Runner comes rushing back out of the tunnel, and runs over Coyote again.

Screenwriter William Goldman once wrote the following:

“In a sense, a screenplay, whether a romance or a detective story, is a series of surprises. We detonate these as we go along. But for a surprise to be valid, we must first set the ground rules, indicate expectations.”

Like a screenplay, a sales letter is also a series of surprises. And if you want to know how to detonate those surprises in your sales letters, MEEP MEEP, it’s all there in that scene from the Fast and the Furry-ous. You’ve got two choices. Can you see them?

You might expect me to tell you. But no, I will subvert those expectations. You’re on your own for this one.

But for other tunnels and other copywriting lessons, you might like to get my daily email newsletter. Simply send $0 to the ACME company, and you will get something in the mail very soon.

Don’t rape your audience

by

Today’s post is on the subject of email marketing, a rather milquetoast topic. The hook, though, is jarring — rape.

I didn’t think of that hook. Instead, it comes from William Goldman, somebody I’ve mentioned often in these emails.

Goldman was first a successful novelist and later a successful Hollywood screenwriter and then again a successful novelist.

Along the way, he also wrote a non-fiction book called Adventures in the Screen Trade. I’m reading it now. It’s a combination of memoir and an insider’s look into Hollywood, specifically as it was in the 60s and 70s of the last century.

Somewhere in the Adventures book, Goldman talks about the most important part of a screenplay — the beginning. And it’s here that he writes the following:

“In narrative writing of any sort, you must eventually seduce your audience. But seduce doesn’t mean rape.”

Specifically, Goldman is contrasting movie writing to TV writing. At the beginning of a movie, Goldman says, you have some time. You can seduce. Things are different in TV land — you gotta be aggressive, right in the first few seconds. Otherwise the viewer will simply change the channel.

I had never thought about this difference. But it makes sense. And it makes me think of…

Sales copy, which is definitely on the TV end of the seduction/rape spectrum. Just think of some famous opening lines of blockbuster VSLs:

“Talk dirty to me”

“We’re going to have to amputate your leg”

What about email copy? Much of it also opens up in the same aggressive way. Here are a few opening lines I just dug up from recent sales emails in my inbox:

“MaryAnne couldn’t take it anymore:”

“In 1981, a dirty magazine published an article that had the potential to make its readers filthy rich.”

I always assumed this is just the way good copy is — VSLs or emails or whatever. Of course, that’s not true.

When I actually look at some of my favorite newsletters (and even some successful sales letters), they don’t have an immediate and aggressive grabber. Instead, they build up and work their way into their point — without rambling, but without aggression either.

The difference comes down to the relationship you have with your list. Some businesses, including some businesses I’ve worked for, have little to no relationship with their list. Each email they send out is like a random infomercial popping up on TV — if it doesn’t capture attention right away, it never will.

But some businesses have a great relationship with their list. They can afford to take the time to light the candles and sip the wine and stare seductively at their reader across the table. In fact, if they didn’t, things would seem off.

Is it possible to go from one style of email marketing to the other?

I believe so. In my experience, people tend to mirror your own emotions and behavior. That means you’ll have to take the first step if you want things to change. Rather than waiting for your list to have a better relationship with you… start seducing, and stop trying to rape.

Now that we’ve warmed up the conversation:

I also have a daily email newsletter. You can subscribe for it here. And if you do subscribe, I promise to… well, I won’t go there.

Screenwriting & copywriting: “If the structure is unsound, forget it”

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One of my favorite screenwriters of all time is William Goldman, the guy behind The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.

Writing about his craft, Goldman made the claim that “screenplays are structure.” He explained in more detail:

“Yes, nifty dialog helps one hell of a lot; sure, it’s nice if you can bring your characters to life. But you can have terrific characters spouting just swell talk to each other, and if the structure is unsound, forget it.”

Same thing in copywriting.

You can have all the nifty dialog and terrific characters you want, but if your arguments are out of order, or if you introduce a claim that doesn’t belong, you’re a dead duck.

Maybe you think I’m exaggerating. So here’s a relevant quote from one of the great A-list copywriters of the last century:

“If you violate your prospect’s established beliefs in the slightest degree — either in content or direction — then nothing you promise him, no matter how appealing, can save your ad.”

Ahe A-list copywriter behind this thought is Gene Schwartz. In his book Breakthrough Advertising, Gene wrote that the structure of your ad should be a bridge of belief between the facts your prospect currently accepts, and the final facts you want him to accept. Gene called this process of bridge building “gradualization.”

So how does this look in practice?

Well, in Breakthrough Advertising, Gene gave a line-by-line breakdown of gradualization in a famous ad (“Why haven’t TV owners been told these facts?”).

But that ad is kind of old. So I’ll give you a more recent example.

Except, it’s getting late. It’s time for me to quickly re-watch the swordfighting scene from The Princess Bride, and then get to bed. I’ll share that gradualization example with you, and all its structural wonder, in my email tomorrow.

What, you don’t get my email newsletter but you want tomorrow’s email? No problem. Sign up here.

Copywriting star or bust

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In the early decades of the film industry, there could be no stars.

In 1896, the first for-money movie theater in NYC opened up. By 1910 (a landmark year as will become obvious), thousands of movies came out.

These thousands of movies featured performers, even regular ones.

But nobody knew their names.

The producers refused to credit the actors. So the actors just acted their part and got paid a worker’s wage.

That all changed in 1910. That year, a popular actress named Florence Lawrence finally got her name to appear on film.

By 1912, Lawrence was paid $250/hr a week — the highest rate of any movie performer. But that was nothing. Over the next seven years, movie actor salaries went from Lawrence’s $250 a week in 1912… to Mary Pickford’s $2,000 a week in 1915… to the first guaranteed salary of one million dollars a year for Fatty Arbuckle, in 1919.

Stars were born. And they wanted more.

The next big step came in 1952, with a little-known film of Jimmy Stewart’s, called A Bend in the River. The film is mostly remarkable because it was the first time a Hollywood star got a percentage of profits.

That meant stars went from being well-paid to swimming in vaults of gold coins. Suddenly, the stars could dictate the terms. The studios needed stars more than the stars needed studios.

All of the above are some tidbits I read in William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade. And I think they illustrate a hard truth:

If you are in any service business… whether that’s acting or copywriting or haircuttery…

Being a star and getting paid real well go hand-in-hand.

Inversely, doing good work but not having any name recognition… well, you’ll always stay on the ground floor. You’ll get the modern equivalent of a worker’s wage — and that’s it.

That’s something to keep in mind if you are building up your freelance copywriting career. And it’s something you will have to address, if the prospect of being a star makes your bladder clench up right now.

Anyways, I have no interest in being a copywriting star. But the field does interest me. I write about it every day. And if you want to get emails with the stuff I write, you can sign up here.