The Novelist as Persuader
I’ll bet none of you ever thought of a
novelist as a persuasive writer. Yet the novelist is the most powerful,
influential writer out there. Over 50,000 novels are published every
year and people snap them up like candy (because they are the candy of
the book world).
And I’ll bet a lot of
you didn’t know this either. The best marketers use the same techniques
the novelist uses.
What does the novelist
do that makes his or her techniques so powerful?
First of all, the
novelist gets you to read a story about events that never happened to
people who never existed! Thank about that. Why would we read about
events that are just a figment of some writer’s imagination?
Here’s what the
novelist does that is so powerful:
-
Grabs your attention
from the very beginning.
-
Creates characters
you want to know more about (even thought they don’t exist).
-
Creates a situation
that ensnares the character in such a way that you just have to know
how that character resolves it (even though the event never happened).
-
Keeps you reading.
The best novelist won’t even let you stop at the end of a chapter.
-
Makes you want to
know more and more and more and more until by the end you are just
screaming for a resolution.
-
Creates opponents and
bad guys you believe and even are afraid of.
-
Makes impossible
situations sound normal (as in science fiction).
-
Has you quoting
characters who never existed.
You could probably
think of others.
Why is this important?
If you are a marketer
or non-fiction writer, don’t you want to do all the things the novelist
does? You want a powerful hook, a character the reader can relate to, a
situation the reader understands, a solution the reader wants, a call to
action the reader will respond to, and sales, sales, sales. Besides,
your material is all true, isn’t it? That makes it so much easier.
If you want to generate
a lot of sales with your copy, learn what the novelist does so well and
do it in your marketing materials.
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