A 30-second Masterclass in Storytelling

 

The Hook:

Taylor Swift “…about a time she got her heart broken, although not in the way you might expect.”

The Story: In less than 200 words, writer Sam Lansky gives us a story to set up the Time Magazine’s Person of the Year 2023 Taylor Swift cover story:

“She was 17, she says, and she had booked the biggest opportunity of her life so far—a highly coveted slot opening for country superstar Kenny Chesney on tour.

“’This was going to change my career,’ she remembers. ‘I was so excited.’

“But a couple weeks later, Swift arrived home to find her mother Andrea sitting on the front steps of their house.

“’She was weeping,’ Swift says. ‘Her head was in her hands as if there had been a family emergency.’

“Through sobs, Andrea told her daughter that Chesney’s tour had been sponsored by a beer company.

“Taylor was too young to join. ‘I was devastated,’ Swift says.

“But some months later, at Swift’s 18th birthday party, she saw Chesney’s promoter.

“He handed her a card from Chesney that read, as Swift recalls, ‘I’m sorry that you couldn’t come on the tour, so I wanted to make it up to you.’

“With the note was a check. ‘It was for more money than I’d ever seen in my life,’ Swift says. ‘I was able to pay my band bonuses. I was able to pay for my tour buses. I was able to fuel my dreams.’"

Lansky’s next paragraph sums it up masterfully:

“Listening to Swift share this, on a clear fall afternoon in her New York City apartment, I’m struck by how satisfying the story is. There are high stakes at the outset; there are details, vivid and sensory; there’s a twist that flips the action on its head; and there’s a happy ending for its hero. It takes her only about 30 seconds to recount this, but those 30 seconds contain an entire narrative world.”

 

Sure, Taylor Swift will get attention, but you don’t need the Taylor Swift connection to tell a story that is concise and has the characteristics to make it engaging and compelling.

_________________________

Read the full article: https://time.com/6342806/person-of-the-year-2023-taylor-swift/ 

OOPS!

 

Uh-oh.

As you determine your dinner order, you notice a typo on the menu. 

What do you do?

Pretend you didn’t see it?

Point it out to your dinner companion?

Alert the waiter?

Ask to speak to the manager?

Approach the owner with an offer to re-do their menu?

Order that item, but smugly pronounce it incorrectly to match the typo?

Smile, and feel superior to whoever prepared the menu?

Gasp as you remember an embarrassing typo from your past?

The Meeting

Everybody was on the Zoom call.

Everybody had an opinion.

The headline was adjusted.

Words were reworked.

Logo size was changed.

Everybody agreed.

The big idea was lost.

Consensus cripples creativity.

Astronomer or Copywriter? Copy from Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan was an astronomer, not a copywriter. 

But the following words about the image below checks all the boxes for strong copy:

☑ It sucks you in.

☑ It keeps you engaged.

☑ It ends with a call to action.

But even if you don’t want to consider the parallels to copywriting, you can’t deny it’s a marvelous example of writing that makes you feel.

Photograph by the Voyager 1 space probe as it was leaving our solar system, 1990

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor, and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

"The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

 ________________________

NOTE: A nod to Carolyn Barclay who introduced me to this example of exemplary writing and drew a parallel to it and persuasive copy.