The Fiction Factor

Hey JR,

Just a quick heads-up... my anti-virus alarm went off when I tried to visit your JR website so you may have a trojan or malware infection there. I'd contact your hosting company and see if they have an uninfected backup version of your site that they can upload for you. I'd then suggest double-checking your computer to make sure you didn't get infected there too.

I had a similar situation a few years ago where 7 of my sites and one of my computers got infected all at once... it was a few days of hair-pulling stress to fix fast.

Onto your questions...

I noticed some of the best known marketing pieces like the Martin Conroy's Wall Street Journal piece used a story in the copy. I had several client projects where they had a great story behind their product that was great to bring into the salesletter. When I wrote the original salesletter for CopyDoodles in 2007 or 2008, my client Mike Capuzzi's story on how the product came about was really important to share with potential buyers because it was a new, fairly unknown product then.

Fast forward to the present moment and the origin story isn't as important to share. That's because Mike's product has received countless testimonials, endorsements, and success stories... those credibility elements can drive the copy instead. It's the most popular product IMHO of its type and has spawn dozens of competitors as well.

I've done more studying of storytelling and other story elements in the last 2 years. Some of the storytelling and other story elements synch well with things like video salesletters and other types of marketing.

I brought in storytelling elements as I discovered them.

I'm not sure if I'll ever write a fiction novel. If I do, it would probably only be as a part-time hobby that I did over the course of months or years.

The funny thing is, the more story studying I do, the easier it is for me to point out plot holes in my wife's favorite TV shows. LOL

Hope that helps,

Mike

Hey Mike,

Thanks for the note on the website. Very strange. I recently updated a few things and have had a number of people check it out without getting that sort of notification. But I ought to check it out to be safe. Hopefully it's a false alarm of some sort...

I like what you said about how story necessity can differ between a newer, less-established product and one where its reputation does most of the work. Good point.

And yes! I know exactly what you mean in pointing out plot holes. The more you know the craft, the more you approach any storytelling medium with an almost editorial mindset...you learn the structure, the pattern, and what works, and are more easily able to notice when it isn't working for a particular reason.

I think that Gary Halbert was a master at using stories
in his copywriting. As far as copywriting is concerned,
the type of stories you use is more important than
your skill as a story teller on the fiction level. So a
fiction writer would be 'over qualified' for story telling
in the copywriting realm.

An example of this is the famous WSJ Letter.
There were no fancy story-telling (writing) skills
in the letter but the CHOICE of that story was
what carried the letter over the top.

So if the writer told a masterfully written story
about overcoming challenges it wouldn't sell
as well as comparing TWO people who made
similar choices where the results were determined
by the use of product being sold.

You therefore need "selling stories" above story
telling skills, even though the skills couldn't
hurt.

-Ray Edwards

Storytelling has always been a powerful tool for selling ideas and inspiring people to action. Just stand outside a movie theater and watch the young kids come out of an action movie. All of them are excited as hell because they want to BE the character in the movie.

Create a story around your product or service, one that people can see themselves being a part of, and you've got them hooked. In fact, I think Stephen King taught me more about copywriting than anyone because his stories were so damn addictive. I think a lot of us forget that copywriting is really just emotionally charged writing. ALL writing has the purpose of grabbing the reader's attention and invoking powerful emotions and any writing that does that well is worth learning from.

I actually started doubting my career in "English" when I was still an unenlightened college-goer precisely because I didn't want to be an author. Don't get me wrong, I love a good story, but I didn't want to be the person writing them. I was good at analytical essays and the like, but no one makes money with those... so when I discovered copywriting, it was practically a miracle. It satisfied all my needs: concrete results, ability to help people and opportunity for lots of money.

I still see a reason for storytelling, no doubt, but it was more of a "Oh, I can can still use this stuff" moment vs realizing it from the start. There was one copywriter I saw that pretty much billed himself as "The" storytelling copywriter. His sales page was pretty decent truth be told, but unfortunately not sure where I found it anymore.

*edit* You might find some interesting resources in this thread: http://www.warriorforum.com/copywrit...y-telling.html

Dude, I love this topic. Thanks for posting. When I first started copywriting, I was spinning my wheels trying to sound like a sales person. Wasn't working out so well. Then, I bought the new (at that time it was new anyway) book in Stephen King's Gunslinger series and it ruined my productivity for an entire friggin' week.

I coudn't stop reading it until I was done. It consumed by mind for the entire time...it was crazy. I actually don't read his work these days because of the impact it still has on me. Then I realized, HE was a copywriter. He'd sold millions and millions of books because he knew how to hold attention.

It assumed that if I could write like that, copywriting would take care of itself. That was the most important revelation of my career as a sales person and copywriter. Interesting thing is, when I got into Dan Kennedy's stuff I found that he and King both suggested the same thing, rewriting other great writer's works word for word...then rewriting them and adding your own voice.

Most important, King taught me the power of storytelling and how to use it to hold attention and arouse emotion. To this day, he's still my top mentor.

Anyway, I could go on but I've got other stories to write ;-) Thanks for posting this interesting topic

You picked an excellent example. I love the Dark Tower series! Personally, I consider it King's masterpiece (though I'm sure others would argue otherwise).

And yes! A book like...oh...The Da Vinci Code did so well not necessarily because it was well-written (though that never hurts), but because the author knew how to keep people reading the whole way through. Through cliffhanger chapters, through high tension, through fast pacing. To some it might seem like "gimmick" writing or unsubtle...but it does work!

I love to read and have a good imagination. I got started writing science fiction short stories. Then tried my hand at a novel, which I never finished and wrote a screen play of the novel that was rejected. Then sold on the auction block for 3k. It was shelved for a year by a producer and then rejected again.

Story telling in copy is a real good way to hold your audience hostage for 15 to 20 minutes to get the rest of the story and in order for the writer to get 25 pages.