tags:: #source/video-course Storytelling Writing
author:: Iman Gadzhi

Your Secret Weapon: Story

Text goes straight through people. They read with the literal part but we want the more primitive part—that touches emotion. Images hit there much more easily. With text you need story.

Stories can be extremely short:

For sale, baby shoes, never worn.

Types of Stories

Anecdote

• Short, pithy, illustrate virtues.
• Focus is on memory and retention rather than emotional persuasion.

Narrative

• Emotional or logical pull, parallel to product or service
• Often aid in metaphor or analogy

Hero's Journey

• Most powerful
• Dangerously easy to overuse (so use it in a way where it's slightly ironic)
• Particularly useful with personal brands & info products

When to Use

• Illustrate a difficult point (use "kinda like")
• Introduce brand or person
• Exploit a fear (subtly works wonders)

Cognitive Dissonance

I strongly strongly recommend you read Benjamin Franklin's biography.

Franklin asked his enemies to lend him a rare book. It was a favor the enemy then did for him, cognitive dissonance, became his friend.

The human mind will try to resolve cognitive dissonance quickly.

Example of PETA ad: they're lying when they talk about goose feathers being bad.

How To Write

Speak like a human. But a human you'd actually listen to.

Gary Provst: vary sentence length. Create music. When the reader is rested, long one that crescendoes.

• Hypotaxis
  • Longer and longer sentences
  • Increasing complexity
  • Flowing from one to another
• Parataxis

Create writing that sounds right. Pay attention to the rhythm.

Get reader worked up with long sentences. Then shock with short sentence.

The Figures of Rhetoric

Figures of speech. Used in winning speeches, songs, advertising.

Ennalage

Like analogy, deliberate grammatical misuse. E.g., Apple's "think different." or "Thunderbirds are go."
Wrong enough to be right.

Alliteration

Use same letters or sounds over and over.

Anadiplosis

Last word of first sentence is first word of the next.

Tricolon

Logical extension of "rule of three."
If you give two reasons, people will look for a third.

Isocolon

Popular in slogans.
Reuse part of a sentence to associate it with what you have.

Staying Hidden

No one willingly reads adverts. People read them by mistake.

• Do not use graphic design
• Do not stick out

On social media:

• Mid-to-long-form copy
• Speak like a human
• Use emoji like a human would
• Use lifestyle imagery
• Make the image subservient to the copy

Now, stand out.
(Still most post are not intriguing)

• Instinct
  • You know instinctively what stands out.
  • Epicurean pleasure
  • Threaten safety
• Pattern interruption
• Counter-intuition
  • Take commonly accepted fact/truism and turn it on its head

Getting Specific

Specificity can broaden your appeal.

"Do not address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium.
When people read your copy, they're alone.
Pretend you are writing each one of them a letter on behalf of your client." – David Oglivy

Barnum statement is a statement that seems specific but appeals to everyone.

The Pillars of Persuasion

"We love to buy books because we believe we're buying the time to read them." – Warren Zevon

We're not buying the book, but an emotional journey. Same with copywriting.

Your product or service is just the ladder to their end state.

Four Pillars of Persuasion were first described in Aristotle's Rhetoric.

• Ethos
  • Be so well-spoken that you sound legit.
  • Scientific terms, namedrop
  • Experience and results
  • Terminology
• Pathos
  • Pick an emotion to exploit (fear, excitement, nostalgia)
  • Use stories and narratives
  • Make mountains out of molehills. Write with passion about your subject.
• Logos
  • Logic; presented with metaphors and imagery.
  • Present readers with a dichotomy: make them choose between two options.
• Kairos
  • Mention dates, times, link to specific events.
  • The Why is important.

Exercise: define these terms in my own words, write down how it applies to my style of copywriting.