Demian Farnworth“Don’t panic, but one of your kidneys has been harvested.”
That’s the punch line for one of the most successful urban legends in the last fifteen years.
What makes it so successful? It’s hypnotic: understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought and behavior.
How do you create stories that are like that? Just follow these six principles.
In this 7-minute episode you’ll discover:
- How to think staggeringly simple
- How to attract attention
- How to help people understand and remember
- How to help people believe
- How to help people believe
- How to tell stories
Listen to Rough Draft below ...
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The Show Notes
The Transcript
6 Storytelling Lessons from a Famous Urban Legend
Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.
Demian Farnworth: Howdy, and welcome back to another episode of Rough Draft, your daily dose of essential web writing advice. I am Demian Farnworth, your host, your muse, your digital recluse, and the Chief Content Writer for Copyblogger Media.
And thank you for sharing the next few minutes of your life with me.
“Don’t panic, but one of your kidneys has been harvested.”
That’s the punch line for one of the most successful urban legends in the last fifteen years.
What makes it so successful? It’s hypnotic: understandable, memorable and effective in changing thought and behavior.
How do you create stories that are hypnotic? These six principles found in the book Made to Stick will help.
Think Staggeringly Simple
Find the core of your idea. Shave it down to a proverb. Hollywood script writers create the high concept pitch [Pretty Woman meets Die Hard on a cruise ship]. Journalists ask, “What’s the lead?”
Attract Attention
Surprise your readers. Create mystery and intrigue in your opening lines. Ask provocative questions. Seduce your readers by using the erotic potential of premeditated restraint and the human imagination.
In other words, tease.
Help People Understand and Remember
Make abstractions concrete. Employ nouns that engage your senses. Abstract equals freedom, love, revolution. Concrete equals spoon, velvet, blaring.
Insert hooks into your idea. Begin with a simile or a metaphor. A question. A definition. A quotation. A dilemma. A scene. Or an anecdote.
Put people into the story. Talk about people and not statistics.
Help People Believe
Use authority and testimonies. Insert convincing details. Make statistics come alive: “weighs less than a marshmallow and sails the length of a football field.”
And by all means, get naked.
Make People Care
People donate more to one little girl than to a huge swath of Africa.
Appeal to self-interest—and not just base self interest. Why does it matter to them? Her son might fail fourth grade. He might get into the school he wants.
Appeal to identity: Texans don’t litter and Americans fight evil.
Tell Stories
Use stories to show people how to act. And use stories for inspiration. The best kinds of stories to tell are those where the hero overcomes what seems like an insurmountable problem. Think mother against a tobacco giant.
So you think simple. You attract attention. If you help people understand by being concrete, and if you help people believe by using authority and testimonials, and you make people care and tell stories, then you can have an hypnotic story. Not like a harvested kidney story.
And let’s all be honest here, right? When we heard that story, like me, did you think to yourself, “you’ve got to be kidneying me?”
Yeah, I said it. I’ll be here all week folks.
Thank you. And until next time, take care.
Demian, I’ve read much of your writing. You have an individual style that is often illustrative and appealing. I like the way you introduce objects of daily use, like the mundane vacuum cleaner, and explain their virtues and why they help you in ways that are unexpected.
I hope you didn’t write the blurb for this post. I would be disappointed if you had. Whoever did write it must have taken no more than the 7 minutes it offers by way of education and information.
Whoever wrote it never read it. Please have a look yourself, and tell me what I’m writing about. I’ve duplication, omission and disrespect in mind. I’m thinking of not caring a damn what is discharged from the sausage machine — let them eat cake, if they have the stomach for it.
Talking of the human anatomy, since when have body organs become horticultural products? Why do you not question whether the very use of “harvest” in connection with a kidney’s removal is equally as abhorrent as the act itself? You blithely use the quote as an example of excellent writing. What you have failed to do is to think more deeply about its import.
When I read the word “harvest” I conjure up in my mind a process by which someone seeks to cultivate, to improve fertility, to sow, to nurture and tend, and eventually to reap. It is a path of hope that is lined with good intent and optimism. It is a worthwhile endeavour because it causes no harm, unlike its use in your post.
All you needed to do was to let the reader know of your revulsion, not just your pleasure at a neat quote.
Nick, organ harvesting is the actual term used for the surgical procedure that removes organs or tissues for reuse, such as in organ transplantation. (see the link). And Demian did write the post, so I’ll let him defend himself. 😉
Hey Nick, sorry you didn’t like the post. Hope you liked the episode better.