Today’s quote of the week comes from Alex Hormozi:
“You’ll get bored of your content topics before your audience even remembers your name. If you want your message to be remembered, repeat it. ”
1. Secret South Park’s Storytelling Technique
A simple change of approach to your storytelling can be the difference between a forgettable and an award-winning result.
South Park’s writers Matt Stone & Trey Parker explain their principle in just 2 minutes in the video below.
To summarize, if your story blocks flow into one another as “and then” events, the story will be boring. Instead, every new block/scene/paragraph will be more interesting if they enter the narrative as “therefore” or “but” events.
This subtle shift may be hard to grasp at first, but after watching the video, you will know exactly how to take your writing to the next level.
2. 12 writing mistakes to avoid
If I could advise all beginner writers to bookmark just one resource, it’s this thread by Kieran Drew.
When starting out, you don’t want to overwhelm yourself with tiny details about how long your sentences should be, how to format your texts, and which types of words you should avoid.
If you’re like I was, just bringing yourself to write and publish your ideas to the world is scary enough.
What if you had a short list of dos and don’ts that answer 90% of your questions when it comes to content writing?
And whenever you’re unsure, you can just refer back to it and ensure you’re on the right track.
Check out Kieran’s post below, which not only highlights 12 mistakes to avoid but gives clear examples of how to identify the problem and what to do instead.
3. How to make your content “worthwhile”
Last week, I loved reading Julian Shapiro’s long-form online writing guide “Write Well,” and I wanted to share one of my favorite insights from it.
I have spoken to many aspiring writers who fear publishing online, feeling that their ideas and messages may not be interesting enough and they will come across like an impostor.
People read nonfiction to learn and to feel. Julian’s framework for ensuring a blog post accomplishes both is to start with a first draft that focuses on “novel” ideas. An idea is novel if it receives one of five reactions:
Counter-intuitive — “Oh, I never realized the world worked that way.”
Counter-narrative — “Wow, that’s not how I was told the world worked!”
Shock and awe — “That’s crazy. I would have never believed it.”
Elegant articulations — “Beautiful. I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Make someone feel seen — “Yes! That’s exactly how I feel!”
When starting your draft, predict if your ideas and messages can elicit one of those reactions. If they do, you’re on to something meaningful and should have no fear of publishing it.
See you again next week.
Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:
- If your agency, company, or marketing team struggles with creating your weekly content and finding new clients on social media, I’d recommend considering my course:
Content Production Masterclass: A 7-step system to attract a steady stream of clients online by writing a high-impact newsletter and outstanding daily content in less than 8 hours a week. - If you’d like me to coach or consult you in private, I offer a 1-on-1 coaching program and a 1-hour consultation call. Learn more about my services here.
